The Battle to Render Black Women Visible in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic Continues

• In Event: Research Dangerously: A Scholarship of Consequence and Pushing Barriers in Educational Research and Praxis

Abstract

Commentary Objective: Although the world is consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the HIV epidemic continues to unequally ravage US communities (Center for Disease Control [CDC], 2018; UNAIDS, 2020). In fact, a recent UNAIDS report suggested the COVID-19 “crisis has the potential to blow [HIV reduction] even further off course” (UNAIDS, 2020, p. 2) due to decreased testing because of service disruptions and reallocation of global HIV funding towards COVID-19 vaccines. Worse yet, many believe HIV/AIDS infections are on a downward trend because of their statistical stability. However, many U.S. communities unequally bear the brunt of this reality. HIV/AIDS rates continue to rise in communities of color, particularly among young, college-aged heterosexual Black women. These realities suggest an urgent need for more nuanced examinations of the HIV/AIDS crisis. However, I have found that education journals, given their specific scope, leave little room for fully exploring this issue.

Perspective Framework: I use endarkened feminist epistemology (EFE; Dillard, 2006) and Black feminist thought (BFT; Collins, 2000) to explore how Black women are presented, positioned, and described within and across HIV/AIDS research. EFE focuses on Black women’s cultural positioning and perspectives while BFT questions how controlling images of Black women are used to (un)intentionally downplay the importance of their sexual health and agency.

Modes of Inquiry: To explore my experiences and the associative risks with seeking to center Black college women in their own words and on their own terms in HIV/AIDS research, I operationalize autoethnography. Autoethnography enables researchers to “utiliz[e] data about self and its context” that “is qualitative, self-focused, and context-conscious” (Ngunjiri et al., 2010, p. 2). I will draw upon my own experiences with barriers to biomedical HIV-prevention tools as a student using a campus health center (Boerner, 2019), academic gatekeeping through misogynoir laced journal reviewer commentary, and pushback from publicly engaging these issues.

Point of View: Many campus health centers still fail to provide a full range of safer-sex supplies (Habel et al., 2016). Moreover, some campus leaders misbelieve HIV/AIDS to be a minor issue thereby dismissing the disparate impact of the epidemic. This hyperfocus on statistical HIV/AIDS prevalence obscures the unequal impact of HIV/AIDS and further relegates such critical scholarly inquiries to the margins of academe. This makes this work less likely to be published in a timely manner thereby disincentivizing its exploration among the very population best positioned to examine it: Black college-educated women. The very same Black women who continue to be denied tenure en masse due to academic publication expectations.

Significance: Examining the roadblocks preventing researchers, especially Black women faculty like myself, from examining pressing issues within vulnerable populations is critically urgent. Given the historic and ongoing framing of HIV/AIDS as a crisis among men who have sex with men, there is an urgent need for critical, identity-conscious intersectional examination of this issue. This can only happen if and when academic gatekeepers allow space for these issues to be centered.

Author

• Brittany M. Williams, University of Vermont