What have we come to?

As we all know the world is full of unexpected happenings that we can only take in stride. But there are also many things that we can do and take that problem into our own hands and make a difference. I’m just going to get right to the point. HIV/AIDS is not a sickness among the majority of African Americans in Africa but it is more prevalent among our own African Americans in our state (MS) than you think. According to the Essence Magazine, the July 2007 issue, “A recent study of attitudes toward HIV/AIDS among Black women in the Mississippi Delta- where we account for 70 percent of new HIV/AIDS cases- found that more than 70 percent of those surveyed engage in casual sex without condoms.”As most of you may know Mississippi has never really been portrayed as a great place to be and to be quite honest that fact is becoming more and more true each day of our lives. I am a product of the Mississippi Delta and I love where I come from but I am not ecstatic of our accomplishments, or lack there of. And to be quite honest I can’t say that I want to go back when the people there are hurting themselves by using misguided judgments. I mean really, when did we become so naïve of the happenings around us that we stopped striving to do what was in our heart and what was right, why have we stopped protesting for our “rights” that we gained not even 5 decades ago? When I read that small paragraph I instantly became outraged that our people, My people, have become a statistic so severe that it will be years to overcome that fact. I’m not sure how many times Mississippi has been written about in a positive way in that particular magazine and it doesn’t matter. Now you think about it, How many times have you seen an article that has uplifted our state that would have made you proud?, probably a few but definitely not many. And that is what makes me so mad, the time we are written about we have to be talked about for our foolishness.