Fighting HIV’s Racist Stigma

WASHINGTON, DC, March 8 — Capitalism has always created ways to weaken the unity and militancy of workers.  Its ruling class primarily uses racism to stereotype and demean black, Latino, and Asian workers and divide the entire working class.  These stereotypes portray black workers, in particular, as lazy and criminal.  Politicians then use these lies to explain high rates of unemployment and incarceration among black workers and to justify policies to cut services and benefits even more.   

These negative stereotypes or prejudices are called stigmas.  In ancient times, Greeks branded criminals and slaves with a physical mark called a stigma and treated them as outsiders, people to be scorned, avoided, mistreated and exploited.

 Today, the ruling class and its media brand people whom they want to be considered immoral, dangerous, abnormal, inferior or simply different in some way.  Stigma pushes shame onto people who are poor, women, gay or transgender, incarcerated, mentally ill, or HIV positive. It also contributes to high rates of HIV and AIDS, since people who are blamed for their conditions are less likely to take care of themselves and their partners or to seek health care. 

Need Class Analysis of Stigma

The Health Disparities Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) has been holding workshops to reduce the stigma associated with HIV. Where some committee members focused on individual biases, which they attempt to counter with facts, Progressive Labor Party members and committee leaders argued for a class analysis of stigma. We linked the stigma placed on people living with HIV to the need for the ruling class to shame and distance workers from one another, leaving the working class weak and divided.  This analysis directs us to involve people targeted by stigma in the fight against capitalism and racism.

In January, MWPHA held a community workshop in a public housing neighborhood. More than 80 people, including health and prison activists, students, and public health workers ventured out on an icy morning to discuss how stigma affects our health and how we can fight back. A number of students said they had never visited a public housing community and that this workshop had led them to see the residents as neighbors, friends, and allies. While the residents liked students and public health workers visiting them for a change, some warned that they didn’t want to be used as research subjects for academic projects, an important point for students to hear.   

In the short run, there are many ways we can unify to fight stigma and oppression, from hosting more workshops to joining struggles to demand housing, jobs, and treatment of people with HIV.  But to eliminate stigma, we need to end the conditions that require stigma and exploitation. We need to abolish the system that profits by dividing workers: capitalism.

Communism creates a society where the working class makes the rules.   A true communist system requires the cooperation and unity of all workers in order to contribute to a world that is safe and healthy for everyone.  Join the Progressive Labor Party!