Data provided to a person regarding critical issues that he is dealing with should provide important coordinate regarding his "walk" and, when objectively received by this person, provide guidance and course correction for them to progress toward their goals.
This is the case ONLY IF the receiver of this information has CHANGE as one of his options so that he might succeed.
Sadly for some people THIS IS NOT THE CASE.
The term "Ideological Bigotry" is an important one. It helps explain why certain people keep doing things that are AGAINST THEIR ULTIMATE BEST INTERESTS despite the painful facts that should tell them otherwise. They are so bound and so smitten in their current course of behavior that the results provided back to them is still not enough to garner a change of heart in them.
Sadly, within the Black community the CONSPIRACY THEORY is used frequently as a means of immobilizing any sort of INTROSPECTION that might result in a COURSE CORRECTION.
Think about it!!! IF SOMEONE ELSE HAS INJECTED HIV/AIDS INTO YOUR COMMUNITY AND YOUR COMMUNITY IS FALLING AS A RESULT - the obligation for CHANGE shifts from YOUR COMMUNITY over to FORCING CHANGE IN THIS ADVERSARIAL FORCE that is seeking to DESTROY YOU!! So much of the vested Black Establishment is ordered toward protest and grievance (just as the good brother Shelby Steele has noted) that OUTWARD STRUGGLE rather than INWARD MANAGEMENT of the situation is the only answer.
With the HIV/AIDS issue what appears to be "inward management" is still "outward struggle". If you listen to various AIDS activists they are busy attacking their CRITICS. They focus on how the "Black church has chosen JUDGMENT over ASSISTANCE to those in need". Thus despite the fact that the infected individual turned his back on what the church had warned him about it is the CHURCH which is to blame for "allowing him to continue .......without handing him a condom" rather than that person and the SECULAR messages that he had accepted.
The Progressives preached "Wrap It Up" but the now infected person RAN OUT OF CONDOMS and did not want to allow the occasion where the tactile stimulation on the tip of his penis to escape him even without a condom. Since the progressives focused on THE CONDOM rather than THE PERSON and his BEHAVIOR.......it was the person who ultimately lost when all has settled.
Please note - last year when I watched "American Gangster" on BET which focused on Rayful Edwards - the drug dealer from Washington DC - Rep Elenore Holmes Norton blamed the spread of HIV on the "conservatives in Congress who did not allow the city of DC to purchase clean needles". Ms Norton - the gig is up!!! In your obfuscation PEOPLE ARE DYING IN YOUR CITY. Your favored party has been in power in Congress going on 3 years and STILL you have "3rd world like conditions" making busy work for the Grim Reaper.
What do you do to a people who are so entrechend in their ideological biogry where they love "the fight against their enemies" more than they like MANAGING THEIR OWN AFFAIRS????
ANSWER: NOTHING!!!
You wait until those who had been going along with the agenda to see that a death spiral is taking place and then you WAIT until a prevailing among of people place their PERMANENT INTERESTS over their BIGOTED POSITION!
I reject the notion that as a Christian I am supposed to suspend my JUDGMENT and OFFER HELP to those in need.
I SEE MYSELF AS OFFERING HELP RIGHT NOW.
If I see the ROOT OF THE PROBLEM and I am speaking out against it, seeking SYSTEMATIC CHANGE so that fewer people will perish then I am doing my job. A Christian who works at a homeless shelter that feeds a man but says nothing about the fith of Jack Daniels hanging out of his back pocket every day that immobilizes the man from pursuing gainful employment is seeking to pleasure God via his ability to HAND OUT FOOD rather than TRANSFORM man and the walk that he is pursuing.
We need to turn the eye of inspection upon the PRINCIPALITY that the people in Washington DC is bound to NOT to the shortage of federal funds to purchase condoms which allow them to continue without considering the risks of what they are doing.
There are few who still shrug off HIV and AIDS as exotic calamities that befall only specific segments of the world's population. But many of us are probably oblivious to just how badly the virus is ravaging our nation's capital. According to a city report, 3% of Washington, D.C., residents suffer from HIV or AIDS — a figure that ranks as the highest in the nation and far outstrips the 1% benchmark at which a health issue becomes a "generalized and severe" epidemic. The district's HIV/AIDS administration director, Shannon Hader, couched the severity of the problem in stark terms, noting the city's rate of infection surpasses those in West Africa and is "on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya." The most disquieting part? Things may be getting worse.
1 comments:
This is a long response. If it is too long to publish on your site, i understand. But I do hope you will read this and get the points I am making.
I must take exception to this posting. I hate to be mean and nasty, but in fact, you know NOTHING about the efforts the District of Columbia is making to battle the AIDS epidemic in DC. NOTHING.
You have harped on this isolated comment from Norton as if it is the be all and end end of the discussion of DC and HIV. That's ridiculous.
For enlightenment, here is a link to a radio discussion of DC and HIV. ( http://wamu.org/programs/kn/09/03/20.php )The page has links for an audio download of a discussion of DC and HIV with DC City Councilman David Catania. In the audio, Catania makes these points:
(1) DC has the most aggressive HIV testing program in the nation, which explain why its reported HIV rate is so high. Since 2007/08, DC has tested more people than the state of Florida and the city of New York combined (note: Florida: population of 15.9 million in 2000; NYC: 8.0 million in 2000; DC: population of 572 thousand in 2000). There is NO DOUBT that if other cities and states had as aggressive a testing regimen as DC, their reported HIV rates would be higher.
(2) To expand on the above: DC's HIV testing programs are a model for the nation. For example: DC has mandatory HIV testing for all persons who go to jail. This has discovered pockets of HIV infection, and better enables the city to treat those infections and prevent their spread. Very few other jurisdictions do this.
(3) Another way that DC is a model for the nation: DC is one of the few jurisdictions that GUARANTEES that anyone who is HIV positive will get medical treatment for the disease. Studies have shown that 37% of 6th grade males in DC are engaging in sex, so the city is taking this aggressive approach in the schools to combat the problem.
There is more I could say, but I would refer you to the audio. The bottom line is this: your condemnation that the city is just dwelling on ideology and is not otherwise working constructively to combat HIV is totally unsubstantiated by the facts.
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Second thing. Your isolated sound-byte of Norton does her a huge disservice. A fuller, more detailed version of her comments follows, which includes (a) why needle exchange is so important, and (b) her comment that the true responsibility for fighting AIDS lies with individuals.
(Note: I did a Google search on "Eleanor Norton HIV AIDS", and this showed up as the first item found; it is from her webpage in the House of Representatives.)
Norton's comments, in more detail:
{{Norton's staff combed the new report but could find no mention of the congressional prohibition on needle exchange. Yet, the report found that injection drug use accounted for the largest proportion of deaths and was the second most reported mode of transmission of HIV.
"The report does a disservice in creating headlines that the District has the highest AIDS rate without, at the very least, mentioning the possible effect of many years without fully operating and life saving needle exchange programs," Norton said.
In 1994, for example, Baltimore reported that 62 percent of new cases resulted from injection drug use, which is now down to 40 percent with needle exchange programs. New York City has reduced its injection drug use rate for HIV/AIDS from over 50 percent of all cases to 13 percent in 2001.
However, Norton said that the District's report may have left the impression that sexual transmission alone is responsible for the District's rate by not mentioning the possible effects of the congressional ban. Norton credited a privately funded program, PreventionWorks!, for excellent work with limited funding, which the organization has long said does not meet the need.
She said a preliminary look at D.C.'s statistics compared with other midsized cities shows that, with the aid of a needle exchange program, the District might be well within the range of HIV/AIDS rates of those cities. Without such an analysis, the ranking of midsized cities from worst to best is District of Columbia; Baltimore; Oakland; Boston; Nashville; New Orleans; Charlotte; and El Paso.
Norton has spent the last year encouraging safe sex and raising the level of discussion about HIV/AIDS through a series of four community town hall meetings on the epidemic, focusing on the clergy, men, women and teens.
While pointing to the needle exchange ban as a significant cause of spreading the disease, Norton has emphasized at her meetings that the primary responsibility of fighting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases lies with individuals and their behavior, especially safe sex and testing to know your status.}}}
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Lastly, it must be understood that Washington, DC is a colony, er, "district." The people of the District have no voting rights in the House or Senate. The Congress is able to (and often does) override the decisions of the city's elected officials.
Notron takes every opportunity to note when Congress meddles with the affairs of the city. The fact of a Republican or Democratic Congress has no bearing on this.
The residents of DC don't want anyone of any party to either reject or even approve city policies. The idea of having to lobby either side to enable the enactment of our own laws is distasteful, undemocratic, and poor use of our time and resources. DC residents want to see our laws enacted without meddling or politics from either party.
As a resident, I appreciate her citations of Congressional mis-rule of the city. Any person who doesn't do this does not deserve to have the privilege of represent the District (as a non-voting member of Congress.)
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