ON MEDICALIZED OPPRESSION

The New York Times > National > Patients With H.I.V. Seen as Separated by a Racial Divide

The linked article above reports on how people with African ethnic origin are much more likely to test positive for HIV than other ethnic groups. Read it. Unfortunately, considering the state of the world today, it is only natural that the medical syndrome authored by the U.S. government disproportionately affects minorities. Of course it does! AIDS is the perfect shadow of the white, heterosexual, non-drug using Christian monolith that rules the world.

Of course black men have AIDS!
Of course they're being diagnosed as terminal with the authored syndrome!
Of course the most feared constituency of the American populace is the one most AIDS-like!
Of course there's a corroboration!

Status quo must be maintained, via all channels available to us.

Of course the actual science of the HIV testing kits is overlooked: that antigens more common in the blood of those with origins in Africa that are known to trigger diagnostic interpretations as positive. (reference) Of course these facts are in wide disregard, as these facts do not reinscribe the dominant modes of discourse that maintain the hegemony of the status quo...and the status quo is to scapegoat black men. (let's be honest with ourselves, really.)

Do not stand there and take racist/heterosexist oppression in the form of medical science. Simply because most of our knowledge and beliefs today are mediated through the legitimating practices of science should not give reason to legitimate your oppression as it is played out in the arena of medicine and the religion of science.

Do not place faith in something as it simultaneously oppresses you, or you shall in turn, be oppressing yourself, even if that thing is the very thing that made you who you are and shaped your beliefs. Oppression can only happen if one permits it to happen by placing credence and participating in the systems and paradigms that oppress you.