Boise State, Hate Facts and STDs

Hate Facts. We've told you about them. Now, Boise State knows all about them:

"Students at Boise State University are calling some fliers offensive and racist.

The literature first surfaced last week on World AIDS Day. It tells people how not to catch AIDS by suggesting no sex with bisexuals or people who inject drugs. But the language that has students most concerned is about African Americans.

Senior Jalara Walker, an African-American, came to BSU from California. She's loved her time on campus, but that changed last week after she found several fliers in a class.

"I really thought that stuff like this was over," Walker said.

The fliers read: "Don't Catch AIDS!" at the top. At the bottom they say: "Blacks are walking STD factories” and “once u go black we don't want u back.”

Well, we've also told you about the Center for Disease Control and the reality of Healthcare. We know: these facts are unpleasant. Boise State students find them revolting to point out and impolite to discuss in polite society.

So, some statistics for you all to ponder, why Boise State lock hands in an effort to eradicate hate from the souls of those who make informed points about sexually transmitted diseases and those who find themselves affected disproportionately:

"The majority of Allegheny County cases of sexually transmitted disease occurs in African-Americans, prompting county health officials to consider new strategies to tackle the problem.

In 2008, 49 of 89 cases of syphilis in Allegheny County, or more than 60 percent of all cases, involved African-Americans, who make up 13.5 percent of the county population.

Meanwhile, about 1,585 of 2,164 cases of gonorrhea last year (or 73.3 percent of the county total) and 3,070 of 5,206 cases of chlamydia (about 60 percent of the total) also involved African-Americans."

How about HIV/AIDS?:

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in African American communities is a continuing public health crisis for the United States. At the end of 2006 there were an estimated 1.1 million people living with HIV infection, of which almost half (46%) were black/African American [1]. While blacks represent approximately 12 percent of the U.S. population, they continue to account for a higher proportion of cases at all stages of HIV/AIDS—from infection with HIV to death with AIDS—compared with members of other races and ethnicities [2, 3].

The Numbers

HIV/AIDS in 2007

• Blacks accounted for 51% of the 42, 655 (including children) new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in 34 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting [3].
• Blacks accounted for 48% of the 551,932 persons* (including children) living with HIV/AIDS in 34 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting

And, how about a few more statistics:

• Minority populations have higher rates of reported gonorrhea and syphilis than whites. In 1993, compared with whites, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics had gonorrhea rates that were 42, 5, and 4 times higher, respectively; African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans had syphilis rates that were 64, 13, and 5 times higher, respectively.¹
• The South has consistently had higher rates of both gonorrhea and syphilis compared with other regions throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Minority populations are disproportionately located in southern states.²
• African American men have gonorrhea rates that are 68 times greater than those in white men. For women, these rates are 28 times greater in African Americans than in whites.³
• African American adolescents and young adults have STD rates that are more than 20 times higher than those in white adolescents.

Boise State has 19,000 students attending the university, and finds itself 80 percent white and 3.5 percent Black.

What all this means is those who believe truth will one day win out in America lack any semblance of grounding about the true nature of politics in this nation.

Truth is the first casualty in a heterogeneous nation, and as Boise State students hope to prove, hate facts can be displaced by locking hands and signing "We Are the World"...

Stuff Black People Don't Like will continue to showcase the truth, regardless of the implications. We'll be signing Toto's Africa instead, though.

Consult this site from the CDC (the United States government) to understand the reality of STD rates and Black people.