… negotiate condom use and that has to happen. We have to take another route and the kids who don’t think their mothers, who are single women at home and maybe don’t see their mothers as sexual beings, talk to them about it anyway. Say, ‘This is what I learned at school today’ or ‘Somebody at the college campus came by with this brochure that said Black women over 50 are still getting infected and I wanted to talk to you about it. You don’t have to tell me about your sex life. I just wanted you to know I want to keep you here.’ If you are having sex make sure you protect yourself. Grandmothers! Everybody needs to know. It’s not just the young.”
On talking to youth about HIV/AIDS:
“We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface with our young people. I don’t think that we know how to talk to them. Our young people are getting loads of information from the Internet…This whole movement that’s associated with technology – information technology, social media – has taken over their lives. So, we have stopped talking to each other. We are all walking around looking at our cell phones, texting and emailing, and nobody’s really talking one-on-one to each other anymore. I think parents should take this as an opportunity. I know when I tell my grandson, ‘No, I don’t want to text. I want you to put that down and I want you to look at me,’ it’s like a revelation to him. Tell your kids to put down the machines and look at you directly and then have a serious conversation with them again. And give them the numbers. Give them the facts. ‘This is what’s really going on.’ And let’s see if we can save another generation.”
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On people in 2016 still being afraid to learn their HIV status:
“If you’re afraid to learn your status then you’re afraid to stay alive. If you have some thought that you need to get tested and you don’t get tested, you are playing Russian roulette with your life. Why would you even have a thought, ‘Maybe I should test,’ which means that you’ve been involved in some interaction in your life. Somebody who’s never had sex in their life is not gonna say, ‘Maybe I should test.’ But if you have had sex any time in your life you should test. No matter who you’re with, just go get tested.”
“Somebody called me just the other day found out they were HIV positive. They were having some symptoms that they thought were either flu-like or associated with their diabetes – tingling in the arms, the legs, fatigue, all these things that they thought were associated with their diabetes and in fact, they went in and when they took the tests and the doctor said, ‘Would you like to get tested?’ and they just said yes, why not, and found out she was positive. She’s been positive for years. It’s still happening.”
On what makes her hopeful about the future of Black health:
“My first answer to that is God. God makes me hopeful for everything. But my second answer to that is the Black community is like the children of Abraham. We seem to have our ups and downs, but Abraham was God’s best friend and He said I will give you children and generations and generations and they’ll survive. And that’s what we are. We’re survivors.”
“No matter what, we comin back! Stronger than we were before. I love us. I think we’re fabulous.”