Sexuality among African-Americans

Against a backdrop of acceptance, ambivalence and denial, a social commentary of same-sex relationships in Oprah Winfrey’s production of Alice Walker’s Color Purple and implied in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, needs examination.
The Color Purple , with its run on Broadway ended, attracted not only notable stars to many of its leading roles, but hordes of African-Americans who came to see the performance, which to some reflected the suffering and redemption running like a strong river through their lives and to others, to see their favorite stars up close and personal or as close as they could get to the stage to biblically touch the hem of their idols. In its final week, I was privileged to share this theatrical experience with a full house of African-Americans from all walks of life. Notwithstanding, there were a few non-African-Americans in the audience and in the row I shared with about twenty other patrons, there sat the president of ABC-TV.
Interesting though the play was, I was struck by the seeming acceptance, if that is what it was, of deliberate actions acted out on the stage. At the end of the play, Channel 7, ABC News Anchor Sade Baderinwa hosted a question and answer session with the cast and audience. Without boring you with a re-hashing of the play, I asked a question about the significance to African-American women of the kiss shared between Celie and Shug Avery, when Shug first came to visit. The response from Zonya Love (appropriate surname?) the leading lady and from Angela Robinson, the actress who played Suug was anything but satisfactory. At best they skirted around the issue and dissembled, referring to the reaction of Robinson’s mother coming to see the play and after seeing it made a dismissive comment about Celie and Shug kissing and the continued development of their relationship.
The fact that it seemed perfectly acceptable to everyone in the theater to see the depth of the relationship between two women shared so openly, with ease and without question, much less a raised eyebrow is cause for question. While art imitates life, if in real life women are having close sexual relations with each other in private and in secret, and with all the denials and vitriol against same-sex relations, the long passionate kiss between Celie and Shug should have stirred catcalls and jeers, to say the least. Does this not suggest an accurate reflection of what is happening between women, but is denied, unaccepted, and covered in pretense?
While many women would scoff at a sexual relationship between two women, the lack or absence of any type of reaction, averse or accepting, pointed to a development in social awareness: that two women should kiss on stage without boos, catcalls, hisses or jeers.
Understandably, the suffering, the pain, and the loneliness Celie experienced when Nettie, her sister, was sent away no doubt left a hole in each other’s world. She and her sister were companions in suffering whose deep love for each other was forged in the fires of pain and hardship and was the means to a flight of fantasy of their creation to help them escape from the realities of their lives. When Shug came to visit, Celie so desperate for companionship and to identify with another woman, gravitated to her. Shug, on the other hand, insecure and with her own low-self esteem issues, was drawn to the appearance of strength and stability, forged out of pain in Celie, like a moth to a flame. While on the many different levels, whether sociologically or psychologically, it was the expression of a longing and finding satisfaction for that longing that proved to be the bond between Celie and Shug. And, even when Shug eventually left Celie and returned, then left again, Celie seemed to have become filled with strength and purpose where she didn’t need Shug anymore.
However, while the Color Purple began with abuse, poverty, pain, it was resolved with forgiveness, care, concern, prosperity and a renewed sense of a family unit that had been tested, battered, stripped, survived, and reconstituted stronger than before.
On the opposite side of this tale, of the intricate machinations of people caught up in hardship who were able to resolve their differences and heal, is the raw exposure of a dysfunctional family in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Indeed, all the actors’ selfish agendas only served to heighten their individual sense of expectation, like cats on a hot tin roof, ready to spring into the air and jump off for the heat on soft exposed skin of their paws. Like the Color Purple, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof in its limited run, attracted some famous actors, James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, Phylicia Rashas as Big Momma, Anika Noni Rose as Maggie, and Terrance Howard as Brick. As the play unfolded, the characters were all motivated by greed or some form of selfishness: hoping Big Daddy would die and leave the estate to them, driven to wresting control of another through pregnancy, and yet, others were anxious their secrets be preserved.
As the layers peel away, we are left wondering: why did Maggie have sex with Skipper, if she actually did, or was she saying she did just to get a rise[pun] out of Brick?
Let us then take a closer look at the secret Brick harbors. Brick is pursued by Maggie, his recent wife, to become a father. In Maggie’s mind, a child would cement not only her relationship with Brick but solidify her position in the family and so inherit the estate on Big Daddy’s demise. Why, with Big Daddy’s death from cancer looming, who else would inherit and take over management of the estate? As the story unfolds, Brick’s alcoholism is already a problem, but one which is known, tolerated as befitting men who drink, and passed off as normal. But when Big Daddy gets involved and begins to interrogate Brick about his drinking, because it seems that the alcoholism is not related to having been cheated on by a woman, feeling aggrieved over some slight or insult to his manhood by a woman; for after all, Maggie is literally throwing herself at him. As Big Daddy with his crude methods was able to deduce, that Brick’s drinking was to hide, escape and deny the relationship that existed between him and Skipper. But with the persistence of a dog digging for a bone, Big Daddy would not let up in his questioning and eventually, in as much as he didn’t get a direct answer from Brick as to whether or not Brick’s drinking was tied to the closeness with Skipper and Skipper’s death, Big Daddy was expressing his concerned for Brick’s health. What was Brick’s relationship with Skipper? We were told they were young men who grew up together and were close friends. How close were they? It is obvious that Brick’s drinking, intending to hide his feeling rather drew attention to them. Brick was undoubtedly caught in his own Catch-22: drinking to hide his feelings over Skipper and Skipper’s death and drawing attention to his feelings by his drinking. What should he do? Come clean and admit to Big Daddy and Momma and to Maggie, that he loved Skipper much closer than two close friends? Is he to admit that, if not in so many words as to offend the Southern sensibilities, to a particular special friendship? It is clear, his drinking is a pathetic attempt to hide his grief, longing and desire, not for Maggie, but for his friend, and like a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he is filled with anxiety: he can’t stay on the roof – he misses Skipper so much, it hurts so he drinks, but that is drawing attention to his problem; he wants to, but is afraid to say how deeply he is hurting, because if he does, he runs the risk of losing everything, Maggie (whom he really doesn’t care for but who is necessary for appearances sake) and the love, respect and acceptance of his family. What is he to do?

Innovative prostate cancer technology

by Antoine Craigwell

HIFU, high intensity focused ultrasound, is prostate cancer technology used to eliminate cancerous cells in the prostate, with comparably lesser side effects, cost and a quicker return to normalcy than other commonly used treatment methods currently available in the U.S.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) 2007 Cancer Facts and Figures says that while incidence rates of prostate cancer are significantly higher in Blacks than in white men and although prostate cancer death rates have been declining nationwide since the early 1990s, mortality among African-Americans still remains more than twice as high as those of white men.
The ACS 2007 Surveillance Research estimates 26,730 new prostate cancer cases in African-Americans in the New York tri-state region and 8.5 percent or 2,270 deaths. The ACS says that though common among men in North America and southern Europe, statistics show that Afro-Caribbean men have the highest prostate cancer incidence rates in the world and advises men with a strong family history to begin screening for it as early as age 45.
As a treatment method, HIFU goes back to the early 1940s through to the 60s when it was used extensively for the treatment of various cancers in women. It is an alternative to already established treatment methods, including: cryotherapy, freezing cancerous cells; radical prostatectomy, prostate removal; external beam radiation, radiation through healthy tissue for six to eight weeks; and internal radiation seeds, permanent implantation of 80 to 100 radioactive seeds in the prostate — all of which have periods of hospitalization, extended recovery, varying percentages of impotence and incontinence (insufficient bladder control), pain and other lower abdominal abnormalities. While avoiding nerves and blood vessels, HIFU focuses a large pulse of high-energy ultrasonic waves on a single location, raising the temperature of cancerous cells to 100 degrees Celsius, and causing the lipids of cell membranes to melt and the proteins in them to denature.
John Rewcastle, Ph.D., of the Radiology Department at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in a comparative review paper says this treatment method is minimally invasive, without any incision— a probe into the rectum— the recovery is less than one week, the impotency rate is 28 percent, and the incontinence rate is lower that other methods. Other forms of prostate cancer treatment leave radiation failures and prostatectomy residuals — rectal injury, blood loss, and cancer cells. After receiving the HIFU treatment, lasting up to three hours, patients are able to return to their regular lives almost immediately, with only two follow-up treatments for about two hours each.
While acknowledging its effectiveness, Brian Stone, M.D., assistant professor of urology at Columbia University Medical Center, cautions, “It is experimental because there are still questions about it.”
Though accepted and practiced in Europe, Canada, South Korea, Australia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Brazil, HIFU is in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Phase III clinical trials, which examines equipment safety and efficacy, and has not been approved for use in the U.S. Current insurance payouts for approved prostatectomy or radiation procedures range between $100,000 to $150,000; a HIFU treatment costs $25,000 when there is a low prostate specific antigen (PSA), the level of antigen found in the blood, and the tumor is localized in the prostate, and $30,000 if the tumor has traveled and has compromised the seminal vesicles, and the PSA is higher than seven. It is not a treatment option for those people whose cancer has metastasized beyond the prostate.
But, Abraham Woods, III, M.D., one of three African-American urological specialists in the country who work with HIFU, says an alternative prostate treatment is predicated on preventing the certain death men face with undiagnosed prostate problems.
“For those who have had conventional forms of treatment and are living lives with impotence and wearing pads against incontinence, the result is psychological damage to their masculinity,” he says