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Current mood:  focused Category: Life
INNER CITY YOUTH MISS HIV MESSAGE
-DENNIS LEVY
“ My cyberspace friends don’t care about HIV or AIDS,” says Deniece
Kinash, a young multi- racial female volunteer who does HIV outreach for Blac_ ny on
the popular internet social network Myspace (200,000,000 plus members).
She said by filling out a simple on-line application, she has
unprecedented access to millions of young members of the popular
cyberspace social networks like Facebook and Myspace. Creating pages
that reflect each member’s individual personality is only part of the
teenage fad. Finding compatible members and adding them to your
friends is the other part. Some Myspace stars have hundred of
thousands of friends on their pages. Many members play on-line games
like ‘Mafia Wars’(see http://www...zynga.com/games/index.php?game=mafiawars).
That is a story
for another time. The point here is when you question Black youth
about HIV you will see that they are not clear on how HIV is
transmitted or how to use condoms to protect themselves. And many don’t
care. They “tune it out,” says Deniece. This is surprising in view
of the Kaiser Family Foundation report that found Blacks are six times
more likely to be very concerned about becoming infected with HIV than
Whites. Apparently, the concern doesn’t mean that the Black youth are
educated about HIV and AIDS. A study from the University of Chicago a
few months back found that Black youth are not getting the HIV message.
(Parker, Chi-Town Daily News, 2/2/09).
The researchers looked at
seven focus groups that totaled about 50 college-age youth including
Blacks, Hispanics and Whites of both sexes. They used a 30-minute
public service announcement as an example of traditional messages. Children’s Place funded the study and said that one of the most
interesting findings was Blacks’ distrust of traditional means of
disseminating HIV and AIDS awareness messages. “There’s been a
disconnect between government and health institutions in the Black
community.”
According to the study, many PSA’s are “bookended by
sexually suggestive programming.” They were saying, ‘OK, sure, you’ve
got this flash on the screen for 30 seconds ... but this [is] in a sea
of music videos where people are engaging in sex’. Tack added, “You
don’t see people using protection; all this stuff is glamorized, and in
the middle there is a commercial telling you to protect yourself.” Some
young people believe that getting tested for HIV is an admission of
guilt for having sex. While others, Black women in particular, do not
feel empowered to demand a Black man use a condom.
To deal with the
misinformation, some small community based organizations around the US
have rolled out on the internet HIV awareness initiatives. BLAC NY is pioneering this effort on myspace. Another group texts
safe sex information to teenage cell phone users( see http://www.safeteens.com/). And BET Entertainment
has one of the most successful safe sex Public Service message campaign
in the US: “Rap It Up”(see http://www.rapituppresents.com/), President Obama’s new HIV initiative called
“Act Against AIDS” and the National Black Leadership Commission on
AIDS’s “National Call to Action” will address this problem with a
stepped up HIV multimedia awareness initiative targeting inner city
communities across the US. This is a great start to put the HIV
epidemic back on the US public radar and begin to correct the
misinformation about HIV and AIDS.
More must be done. HIV awareness messages and the
way they are targeted to inner city youth must be revisited. It’s time
for us to double down on HIV messages to inner city youth. Let’s put
more young Black stars giving HIV awareness messages in heavy
rotation on popular TV shows like “106 and Park” and the Black cable
series like “Lincoln Heights.”
Let’s embrace the youth culture.
Young people text or twitter messages on their cell phone rather than
talk. The new safe sex messages must be culturally appropriate, age
specific, and text or twitter friendly. Hip Hop is still immensely
popular with inner city youth. Check out Lil Wayne’s “Get Informed,
Not Infected” PSA on Youtube. Let us get internet smart about
explaining to Black inner city youth how to use a condom and target
some of the HIV awareness messages to Black internet entertainment Web
sites. In the words of young people, “Lets get BZ.”
2:03 AM
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