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McCain and Obama Must Break Their Silence on Black AIDS Crisis
By
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
A
clearly befuddled and flustered presidential contender John McCain
stumbled almost laughingly over a question from an audience member
during a townhall talk in Iowa in March 2007. The questioner asked
what he’d do to combat the AIDS plague. McCain after several
stumbles nervously said that he didn’t know enough about the
problem and then tossed the ball to his advisors. He said he was
confident that they’d come up with some solutions.
The media had a mild field day poking fun at McCains’ AIDS
bumble, but the issue is hardly the stuff of a bad comedy routine.
A few months after McCain’s wobble, Obama and wife, Michelle,
in a widely shown photo were shown getting their AIDS test. Obama
followed this with a public pledge to formulate a national AIDS strategy
on AIDS, ramp up government spending on testing, education, and treatment,
and expand access to generic drugs in Africa and other poor nations.
This was admirable but unfortunately it was a year ago. He
hasn’t publicly addressed the issue since. During the campaign,
he and McCain have given countless speeches, made statements, issued
reports and position papers on the terrorism fight, the Iraq War,
the Iran Missile threat, immigration, the housing and banking crisis,
a tanking economy, and affordable health care. These are crucial
problems and millions of Americans demand that both candidates tell
exactly what they’re going to do about them in the White House.
But as devastating as these problems are to many families, they do
not pile up bodies and wreak catastrophic havoc on entire communities,
mostly poor black communities. The AIDS/HIV plague does.
The Black AIDS Institute in a recent report backed up by statistics
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sounded
a loud alarm that the number of African-Americans afflicted with
the disease is now so high that blacks would rank sixteenth among
the nations whose citizens are afflicted with the disease. Blacks
make up nearly half of all new AIDS cases in the United States. That
figure has remained virtually unchanged for the past few years.
The AIDS plague has long been the single biggest health issue
that has screamed for massive action by the government and health
agencies in poor black communities. This is all the more reason for
Obama and McCain to speak out on the crisis and then spell out just
what they will do about it. So far they haven’t done that during
the campaign. In a campaign position paper Obama has said he will
push for more funds for AIDS treatment, education and testing. But
much of his emphasis has been on African and other nations. In 2006
Obama did publicly lambast government negligence in the AIDS battle.
But the government was the South African government for it’s
disgraceful head in the sand attitude toward the mounting crisis
in that country.
Bush actually went further and modestly delivered on his promise
to increase funds for treatment and education programs and push for
greater access of drugs in Africa. The Black AIDS Institute notes
that since then the number of AIDS cases have dropped in some African
countries. Even more embarrassing, more African Americans are afflicted
with AIDS than persons in Botswana, Ethiopia, Haiti, Rwanda and Vietnam.
These are among the poorest countries on the planet and have been
wracked by war, civil war, genocide atrocities, and chronic political
unrest. Yet they have managed to reduce the numbers of their AIDS
afflicted while the number of African Americans with AIDS continues
to rise.
Meanwhile, McCain hasn’t done any more homework on the AIDS
crisis since his stumble in Iowa more than a year ago. HIV/AIDS is
not even mentioned as an item in the detailed health care plan on
his official website.
But even if McCain had boned up on the AIDS crisis and laid
out a specific plan to confront the crisis, and Obama had fleshed
out more details about confronting the crisis in African-American
communities, it’s still no substitute for them speaking out
on the campaign stump about the crisis and pushing and prodding government,
health agencies and private donors to do more to combat the AIDS
plague.
Obama or McCain will occupy the White House in 2009 and he
will be there in 2010. That’s the target year that the U.S.
along with other international agencies have set to prevent seven
million more HIV infections. The likelihood is good they’ll
meet the target goal. The Bush Administration did play a role in
helping some of the poorest of the poor nations dramatically turn
the corner in combating AIDS. But it happened because Bush reacted
to the withering fire he got for not speaking out and doing something
to help these nations. Presidential candidates Obama and McCain can
and should do no less. They should break their silence now.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst
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