Word: blacks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...recent years, civil rights leaders have awakened belatedly to the toll of AIDS among black Americans, who now account for more than half of the new cases of HIV infection in the U.S. But for all their kente-cloth shawls and lavish Kwanza celebrations, only a handful of African-American leaders, such as Julian Bond of the N.A.A.C.P., philosopher Cornel West and former Congressman Ron Dellums, along with a few church and charitable organizations, have aggressively addressed the disaster in Africa. As Rivers says, it's long past time for black leaders "to come from under the shroud of denial...
Suppose, for example, that the black intellectuals who have been burning up the Internet to castigate the alleged shortcomings of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s television series Wonders of the African World were to devote an equal amount of brainpower to publicizing the AIDS epidemic. They might come up with ways to make drugs more available to impoverished Africans or to build support in Congress for California Democrat Barbara C. Lee's proposal for an anti-AIDS "Marshall Plan." They might develop strategies for changing the promiscuous sexual behavior that allows the disease to spread so rapidly...
...suspected) and so had stopped to ask directions. We pulled over next to a median strip, on which stood eight or 10 people, half with shopping bags, presumably waiting for a bus. We rolled down the window, smiled sheepishly and directed our confusion to one of the men (tall, black, in a shiny Adidas jersey). With a swift sort of purpose, he nodded and stepped forward from the island and toward us, in a gesture we took as exceptionally friendly and helpful, getting so close to better relate the coordinates...
...smiles thank-you, and we smile goodbye--and again we're empty. We don't like to be empty. Through the Cuban countryside we feel ashamed to have the back seat unpeopled--all this room we have, all this fuel. It's getting dark, and as the roads go black, what was a steady supply of hitchhikers, punctuating the roads like mile markers, quickly disappears. Where they go is unclear. What happens when night comes but a ride hasn't? It's a problem of basic math we cannot fathom: always there are more riders than rides...
...next day we're off, Varadero to Cienfuegos. First passengers, from a roadside crowd of 15 or 20: a mother-and-child duo, the mother skinny and snaggle-toothed, the baby perfect and in pink, 11 months old, little black shoes, shiny; they're headed home. We roll with them past horse-drawn wagons and slow, lanky cows. Egrets skim over the road, perpendicular. Air warm, sky overcast. The car screams...