The New York Times ran a series of articles in May, 1992 expressing alarm that many Black people believe in various conspiracies – with AIDS as a prime example. In their editorial of 5/12/92, the Times could only understand this as "paranoia." Educated white folks, to the degree they are aware of such matters, tend to be "amazed" by such beliefs among Blacks. But what is actually amazing is that so many white people are so out of touch with the systematic attack by the government-medical-media establishment on the health and lives of New Afrikans. Indeed the problem is far more powerful and pervasive than any narrow conspiracy theory can capture.
The health horror this society imposes on New Afrikans is not at all made into a "mainstream" public issue, but Black people know what they are experiencing. That may explain why some people become very vested in a plot scenario that seems to crystallize, in an unmistakable way, the damage being done. The bitter twist, though, is that those conspiracy theories are serving as a red herring that can divert people from tracking down and stepping to the real genocide.
There was a radical gap between the life expectancies of New Afrikans and of white Americans even before AIDS burst onto the scene. A Health and Human Services Dept. report showed that "excess deaths" among Black people for 1980 – the number of Black people who died that year who would not have if they had the same mortality rate as whites – was 60,000. That figure marks more unnecessary deaths in one year alone than the total of U.S. troops killed during the entire Vietnam War.
The Black body count is a direct result of overwhelming Black/white differences in living conditions, public health resources, and medical care. The infant mortality rate – a good indication of basic nutrition and health care – is more than twice as high for Black babies, and Black women die in childbirth at three times the rate of white women. There are also major differences in terms of prevention, detection, treatment, and mortality for a host of other illnesses, such as high blood pressure, pneumonia, and appendicitis. (The summary in the two paragraphs above is based on "Black Health in Critical Condition," by Steve Whitman and Vicki Legion, Guardian, 2/20/91.) The comparisons are even starker when you look at class as well as race, and, of course, the health status of both Latinos and poor whites is worse than that of the more well-to-do whites.
The situation has worsened since 1980 with the advent of AIDS and the new wave of tuberculosis (TB). TB, long considered under control in the U.S., began to resurge in 1985. One big factor was the greater susceptibility of HIV-infected people. But TB is an important example for another reason: It has always been closely linked to poverty. Crowded tenements, homeless shelters, jails, inadequate ventilation, and poor nutrition all facilitate the spread of this serious disease. Given the distribution of wealth and privilege, it is not surprising that the rate of TB for New Afrikans is twice that for white Americans.
In addition to disease, the tragedy of the high rate of Black-on-Black homicide – a secondary but particularly painful source of needless deaths – is in its own way a corollary of the frustration and misdirected anger bred by oppression. Black people are also assailed by a range of problems such as high stress, poor nutrition, and environmental hazards. One telling example of environmental hazards is the excessive blood levels of lead in children – a condition with proven links to lowered academic performance and to behavioral disorders. For the latest survey, in 1991, harmful levels of lead were found in 21 percent of Black children compared to 8.9 percent for all children. 41
The public health history makes it clear: Far from being a mysterious new development with AIDS, it is all too common for epidemics and other health hazards to flow along the contours of social oppression.
While government plots such as the Tuskegee and the secret radiation experiments do in fact exist, the brutal damage they've done is small-time compared to the high human costs of the everyday functioning of a two-tiered public health system – the malign neglect of denying people basic means of prevention and treatment.
Overall, the conditions for people of color within the U.S. can best be described as a concatenation of epidemics cascading down on the ghettos and barrios: AIDS-TB-STDs; unemployment, deteriorating schools, homelessness; drugs, internal violence, police brutality, wholesale incarcerations; violence against women, teen pregnancies, declining support structures for raising children; environmental hazards. All of these mutually reinforcing crises very much flow from the decisions made by government and business on social priorities and the allocation of economic resources. (The numerous public health essays of Rodrick and Deborah Wallace provide excellent analysis of the sources and effects of this series of epidemics.)
When governmental policies have such a disparate impact on survival according to race, that fits the crime of genocide as defined under international law. Whatever term one uses, the cruelty of tens of thousands of preventable deaths is unconscionable. This reality is the basis for the scream of a people that "mainstream" society seems unable or unwilling to hear. These conditions are the real genocide in progress that must be confronted.
