The Low-Down Dirty Truth

ColorLines reports on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher Greg Millet's White House statement on Black men and HIV transmission.  Turns out that according to the data, the myth about Black men "on the down-low" (i.e. men who identify as straight but have sex with men secretly) spreading HIV to Black women is largely untrue.  Black bisexual men are more likely to have protected sex with male and female partners and less likely to test positive for HIV, which explodes the myth of bisexual men as disease vectors.  Also interesting is the finding that most gay and bisexual Black men identify as gay or bisexual and are not closeted as the cultural myth seems to suggest.

There's a lot going on here in the intersection of race and sexual identity, of course largely filtered through White social constructs of Black masculinity (and white fear of Black masculinity). White people "hear" that Black people are homophobic without learning anything about Black GLTBQ culture, and the myth of the down-low as a widespread phenomenon in the media further stigmatizes queer Black men as disease carriers and Black culture as homophobic.  The findings of these studies are important, so kudos for ColorLines for its great reporting on this issue.