AIDS and "Black Denial"

Is it white kids or black kids who are wrecking their communities the worst? This week, the pendulum swung back to blaming young black men after the release of a new report on the 20th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic showing 15% of young gay black men are HIV-positive.

Bob Herbert, an African American columnist for the New York Times, called for black leaders to issue "thundering" demands to stop "the self-destructive sexual behavior and drug use ... that have inflicted gruesome damage on one generation after another of young black Americans." For Herbert, the issue is bad attitude and behavior: "One of the biggest obstacles to controlling the spread of the AIDS virus among young blacks is denial."

As with older whites who pretend no suburban kids until today's ever harbored guns, dope, or bad values, the illusion among older African Americans such as Herbert that drugs, AIDS, and irresponsibility are scourges of "young blacks" is the worst denial of all. Today, no one is creating more fear and anger at young black people than their own elders.

Reality is more complex, for those who go beyond press sensation and political negativism. In fact, today's younger black generation is showing remarkable resistance to drug abuse, imprisonment, and other self-destructive tendencies despite massive deterioration in well-being inflicted by older generations and their business and political leaders. Meanwhile, baby-boom blacks, whose affluence has risen for 30 years, are mired in drug abuse, rising crime, and disarray -- and the fastest-rising AIDS rate of any group.

As among whites, the "wealth gap" between African-American generations is massive and growing. Since 1970, the real, median family income of blacks 45 and older has leaped 70% while blacks under 25 have seen a staggering 40% drop in real income. Today, the average black 50-year-old has a family income of $45,000; the average black 21 year-old, $13,000 -- the largest age gap on record. The rising black education and employment achievements won by civil rights activism and sacrifice in the 1950s and 1960s eventually rewarded older blacks with rising incomes.

Yet, trends among younger blacks have gone backward: the lowest real incomes in four decades. Many older blacks, including progressives such as Herbert, posit character and behavior flaws in younger blacks, the same as Jim Crow segregationists in decades past blamed for the poverty of African Americans in general. But the reason for today's stark generational split is not "self destructive" behavior among younger blacks. In truth, the most startling development is that better-off, older African Americans are the ones displaying baffling personal behavior crises -- a trend parallel to that of whites. Among blacks, 80% of drug-related deaths today occur among those 35 and older -- the same age group show escalating felony arrest and imprisonment rates. Cumulative AIDS diagnosis levels rose 450% among younger blacks over the past decade (allowing for a 10-year lag between HIV infection and AIDS diagnosis), but they increased even faster among blacks over age 40 -- up 600%. In 2000, for the first time, blacks 35 and older approached half of new African-American HIV infectees (including a majority among males).

In California, deaths among blacks 30 and older from heroin, cocaine, and speed leaped 50% and imprisonments rose by 134 per 100,000 population -- the largest increase of any group (though older whites showed greater percentage increases). Meanwhile, defying perception and theory alike, young black men showed huge declines in crime and imprisonment during the 1990s. Among California black teens, drug deaths fell to near zero in the late 1990s and imprisonment rates dropped by an amazing 690 per 100,000 population -- the most rapid improvements of any group.