Last week The Hustler offered a one-liner concerning the recent find that HIV first entered the United States through Haiti in the late 1960s.
Given that this paper is the premier news publication on campus, it ought to cover such issues, and I commend The Hustler for presenting this breakthrough to students. However, I am a bit bedeviled by The Hustler's brief nuanced presentation of this matter, which I found to be wholly imprudent and shortsighted.

If you missed the excerpt, it was one of the subject lines of "The Verdict" and read, "Haiti: Thumbs down. Though not given credit until now, this tiny Caribbean country was, in fact, the original gateway to America - for AIDS!"
Unfortunately, in printing this The Hustler took an impartial, fact-finding study and transmuted it into an object of antagonism, discord and condemnation. The Hustler obtusely made a value judgment concerning an entire nation due to the results of the advancement of a disease that currently inflicts 40 million people worldwide, as if the citizens of Haiti are somehow at fault for the state of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. I'm quite sorry, but the dissemination of this disease does not adhere to anyone's politics. This particular disease has no politics. It afflicts one regardless of age, sex, gender, nationality, creed, race or religion, and our actions need to reflect this fact.

Sadly, The Hustler is not the only publication that committed this callous error, which is all the more disheartening. I wonder if we would we really attempt to condemn an entire nation? Would we truly forge such an aversion toward the one Haitian with the disease who came over to start anew on American soil? I surely hope not. But for those who would have the audacity to consider it, first consider the reasons why a Haitian might feel impelled to move to America during this particular time period. Might it have been to escape the vicious military rule of the Duvalier dictatorship, made possible by the preceding two-decade long failed American occupation and subsequent abandonment of Haiti? Perhaps; perhaps not.

Alas, I digress from the real matter at hand and the point that needs to hit home with the might of Zeus: Haiti is not responsible for HIV and AIDS, nor are diseases exclusive to those who are impoverished, nor are they confined to one particular region, nor are they fettered by any chain, real or imaginary. It's a human problem and a global issue. We need to stop addressing this matter depending on where it happens to fall along lines of race, region or anything else. We need to recognize everyone in the world is inextricably linked, and unless we achieve genuine solidarity as human beings the true potential to combat this epidemic will never be realized.

Michael Poku
Junior, A&S