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ABSTRACT
This paper explores the lived experiences of former NBA player Magic Johnson, and the late ‘Godfather of Gangsta Rap’ Eazy E to examine how their everyday realities as Black men with different socio-economic opportunities around the Civil Rights era affected their fight against HIV. Johnson contracted HIV nearly 30 years ago, and continues to live a healthy, productive life. Eazy E on the other hand, contracted the virus around the same time and later succumbed to AIDS. The differences in the lived experiences of the two men warrant scholarly attention, particularly now amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Their differences in social position, stemming from the uneven inequities of the culture and racialization of poverty, much like the wider global epidemic of HIV/AIDS itself, are crucial in the spread and survival rate of those that contract HIV. Overall, then, this paper aims to address the following research question: how do social issues of space and racialized poverty affect the lived experiences of African Americans with HIV? This paper will examine the production of social space and spatial structural violence, as well as racialized poverty, and their effects on likelihood of infection and survival of HIV and infectious disease more broadly.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This can perhaps be most succinctly demonstrated in the Flint water crisis, wherein the water source for residents of Flint, MI was switched from the Detroit River to the Flint River, to save money. This decision is one that resulted in several environmental problems such as polluted water and corroded pipes, and health problems among residents such as skin rashes, Legionnaires’ disease and cognitive impairment due to lead poisoning (Bonam et al., Citation2017; Hersher, Citation2018). According to a report by The Michigan Civil Rights Commission, systemic racism and implicit racial stereotypes about the area’s predominately Black residents likely resulted in a ‘too little, too late’ response. It also explains how the history of federal and local government using housing policies to systematically disenfranchise Flint’s Black residents played a key role in facilitating the crisis (Bonam et al., Citation2017). These implications are most recently reflected in the coronavirus pandemic amongst Black and racialized communities who have been disproportionately affected (Blake, Citation2020; Berkovitz, Citation2020).
2 The use of chokehold killings against young black men in custody is a practice still excused today, such as in the chokehold killing of Eric Garner; the officer who murdered him was never convicted. The use of this practice was most recently seen in the death of George Floyd. Floyd was arrested for reportedly using a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill and died from asphyxiation after officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck and refused to move even after Floyd became unconscious. In response to his death, protests have erupted around the world, with calls for police reform and defunding police departments. Amidst these calls to action, there have been numerous accounts of police harassing and brutalizing protesters, as well as resigning from their departments to protest calls for reform and the suspension of their colleagues accused of excessive force (BBC, Citation2020; The Guardian, Citation2020; Gabbatt, Citation2020; Byfield, Citation2020). There have also been numerous reports of protestors being harassed and threatened by ‘counter-protestors’ (Horton, Citation2020; Veloso, Citation2020; Bates, Citation2020).
3 For Black youth in Los Angeles, unemployment rates were 45% (Davis, Citation1988).
4 According to the CDC, half of new HIV diagnoses in the United States occur in Southern States due to factors such as concentrated poverty, stigma, high levels of unemployment, poor health infrastructure and lack of access to health resources (Scientific American, Citation2011; The Conversation, Citation2019).
5 This rate is just under 20% for working-age African Americans (Black Demographics, Citation2020).
6 Pape (Citation2011) argues HIV is the leading cause of death for Caribbean people aged 25–44.
7 However, after Suge Knight’s interview about injecting people with tainted blood, some believe Eazy E was murdered.
8 Magic Johnson was also heralded as a hero when compared to Greg Louganis, a white Olympic diver, who was ostracized after revealing his seropositive status to the public. The media framed Johnson as a hero, whereas Louganis is almost never framed solely as a hero and often framed as a carrier; this is largely shaped by their sexual identities. Within this context, HIV is framed as both the fault of gay men and a punishment for being gay. Certain types of sports became an integral part of the construction of masculinity. In general, team sports were considered male appropriate; they involve direct physical contact and physical confrontation. Sports that emphasized grace (Louganis as a diver) were associated with femininity. Johnson, through his participation in basketball, is part of the cultural discourse that defines and reproduces hegemonic masculinities (Connell, Citation1987). He is an icon or exemplar of ‘how to be a man’, and part of this definition includes sexual access to women (Wachs & Dworkin, Citation1997). Johnson’s perceived sexual access to women is noteworthy when considering how Black men are hypersexualized, and Black athletes are commodified based on this fetishization (Abdel-Shehid, Citation2005).
9 Racism based on Eurocentric standards of beauty in sports can be seen through the abuse Jonathan Diably endured during a hockey game. He describes spectators touching his father’s hair and telling him to go back home, as well as one fan comparing his hair to a mop (CBC News, Citation2019).
10 Dworkin et al. (Citation2013) maintain that female athletic bodies from the Global South disproportionately have their sex questioned, while those from the Global North do not elicit such surveillance. Racism in sports has also been used based on the pseudoscience that associates race (whiteness) with intelligence; this can most commonly be seen through the practice of racial stacking (Abdel-Shehid & Kalman- Lamb, Citation2011).
11 Similarly, Serena Williams is often described as ‘manly’ or is compared to an ape due to her muscular physique (although if Williams were a white woman it is likely she would not be described in such a way) (Kendall, Citation2015; Batelaan & Abdel-Shehid, Citation2020).
12 For more on the difference between ‘sex/ gender verification testing’ as well as on the differentiation between sex and gender, see Batelaan and Abdel-Shehid (Citation2020).
13 People who had appearances that that were ‘characteristic with rap music’ were three times more likely to be arrested, even when controlling for relevant legal factors such as suspect demeanor, priors, and seriousness of the offense. Some of these characteristics associated with rap music included wearing baggy pants, fake gold teeth, and wearing one’s hair in braids. The criminalization of Black hair is particularly problematic, and illustrative of how Black people’s natural hair has always been subjected to scrutiny (Brown, Citation2018). Moreover, profiling people with these features supports the notion that racial disparities in the criminal justice system are justified because racism is no longer explicit (Dunbar, Citation2019; Alexander, Citation2012).
14 For example, in 2012, Jamal Knox, an emerging rapper in Pittsburgh, was arrested after police found heroin and a stolen firearm in his vehicle. Shortly after his arrest, Knox and a friend wrote a rap song called ‘F – the Police’ and posted it on Facebook, calling out the arresting officers by name and making references to killing them. After the officers learned about the video, Knox was charged with and convicted of witness intimidation and making a terrorist threat, which was upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They stated his lyrics are admissible because they ‘do not include political, social, or academic commentary, nor are they facially satirical or ironic’ (Dunbar, Citation2019). Therefore, rather contrary to Knox’s argument that his lyrics are a form of artistic expression, they were viewed as intent to carry out violent acts (Dunbar, Citation2019).
15 However, oftentimes rappers like Eazy E are portrayed as unintelligent and pathological in the media due to the way they dress, speak, or challenge these forms of oppression (GoldenEra, Citation2010).
16 Tupac Shakur’s music was similarly seen as dangerous despite his music speaking out against various forms of anti-Black oppression.
17 In their song Fuck Tha Police, this can be seen in the song's lyrics which speak to the devaluation of Black life and the threat that is associated with one’s Blackness (Cube & Ren, Citation1988).
18 The Black Lives Matter movement has also brought to light not only fatalities but severe injuries that Black people have sustained at the hands of the police.
19 AIDS is ‘the late stage of HIV infection that occurs when the body’s immune system is badly damaged because of the virus’. A person with HIV is considered to have progressed to AIDS when their CD4 cells fall below 200 cells per cubic millimeter of blood or they develop one or more opportunistic infections regardless of their CD4 count. Without HIV treatment, people with AIDS typically survive about three years, and life expectancy falls to about one year for those who have an opportunistic infection and are not undergoing treatment (CDC, Citation2019; CDC, Citation2020; HIV.gov, Citation2020; K. Katz, Personal Communication, July 22, 2020).