Mary Li, AIDS educator
Mary Li knows that silence about the * tiger of AIDS equals
death. She is determined to break the equation.
‘
B Y
A N D E E
’
H Q C H M A N
f f right posters quilt the walls of Mary Li’s
I I office, headquarters of the Oregon
Minority AIDS Coalition (OMAC). Some of the
posters have captions in other languages;
others show vivid graphics or photographs of
children. On the wall to the right of Li’s desk,
tacked there almost as a postscript, is a strip of
three round stickers, each with a pink triangle
and the words: “Silence - Death .”
Mary Li takes that message home on several
levels — as a woman, as a person of color. She
knows silence can mean the death of com
munities, the fracture of traditions, the
extinction of a culture.
So Mary Li will not be silent. She will talk,
with a mixture of outrage and cheerfulness, an
even tone broken by ripples of laughter. She will
tell you about racism in the white community,
and homophobia in communities of color. She
will point out privilege where she sees it and
insist that we all take a look.
OMAC, a non-profit coalition of programs,
is housed at the International Refuge Center of
Oregon (IRCO), on East Burnside. As OMAC's
sole paid staff, Li’s job is to help educate minor
ity communities about AIDS. Which means
understanding those cultures — the Asian
traditions that are her own, as well as the
Black, Hispanic and Native American com
munities. From a community-of-color perspec
tive, the state Health Department’s ‘ ‘AIDS is a
killer. Protect yourself ’ message was shouting
in the wrong direction. The posters Li is
preparing — colorful, hand-lettered, with
flames leaping around the word “AIDS” —
talk about preserving community.
The picture on the poster, of a skull and bones
poking from a pot over a bed of flames, seems
almost too morbid. But Li, drawing on a folk
tale analogy, explains the context.
‘ ‘ You have to let people know there is a tiger
in the village and make them scared of the tiger
so they can protect themselves . . . when you’re
talking about people who’ve been in refugee
camps and seen relatives starve to death next to
them, it takes a lot to shock! ’
Li knows that silence about the * ‘tiger’ ’ of
AIDS equals death. She is determined to break
the equation.
‘ * 1 Previous to this, for the last five or six
1 years, I worked in the area of domestic
and sexual violence. I was getting pretty tired of
working in primarily white organizations, being
the only woman of color, being one of two
women of color. I was feeling like I needed to
be working in my own community, with my
people.
“ It’s very hard. Say something happens to
you at a job, and the same thing happens to me.
You, as a white woman, have the privilege or
the opportunity to not have to think, ‘Did that
happen to me because of racism; was that
racist?’ Whereas I have to look at everything
through that screen. Also, trying to raise issues
within the organization about racism, you
become the ‘bad person’ because you’re raising
hard stuff all the time and people get tired of
hearing about it.
“ But even if people thought, ‘Oh, Mary’son
the soapbox again,' it still made them think.
They had to deal with me. In some sense, you
raise stuff for the other person, but also for
yourself. I have to do it for me.
“ Part of what's very different about working
here at IRCO is that the office is mostly Asian,
mostly refugee, and I love it. It’s wonderful to
hear different Asian languages, it’s wonderful
that we have parties and we have ethnic food,
Vietnamese food, Chinese food, Cambodian
food. The reverse side of that is feeling some
times that I traded racism for sexism. Because
now I am working in an environment where
most of the managerial positions are filled by
men. White men or men of color. You’ll hear
disparaging comments about women every so
often. And many of the women here haven’t
had the opportunity to be exposed to the extent
of feminism that I have been immersed in.
“ Basically OMAC is to provide HIV-
infection and AIDS prevention education to
communities of color in Oregon. I’m the only
staff person; we have highly committed
volunteer board members who actually began
the organization. And then we have volunteers
in various places in the state who we meet with,
do co-trainings with, do speaking engagements.
We don’t do direct service; we’re not planning
to do direct service. Where our talents are best
put is getting that prevention education out, and
then advocating for those services that already
exist to become more inclusive.
“ What I do know is that within communities
of color, if they have even heard about AIDS,
by and large the perception is that it’s a white
gay male disease, and it has nothing to do with
their community at all. And that’s across the
board, which is real scary. The numbers here, in
terms of how many people of color have AIDS,
are not very high, compared to places like New
York and San Francisco. So it’s very easy for
our communities to continue to be in a state of
denial.
“Also, when you look at the continuum of
social problems that each community of color
has to deal with — like crime, high unemploy
ment, lack of access to health care, AIDS is just
one more thing along that continuum. And
because it's such a time-loaded thing, it's hard
for people to say, ‘Well, I may not have a way to
feed myself and my family, or I may have my
son get hooked on drugs. What’s my concern
about something I may or may not get five to
seven years from now?’
“ We’re looking at our education efforts in a
three-phase way. The first phase is basically to
say that AIDS is dangerous. And that it’s
dangerous to YOU. We have a series of Asian-
language posters that say, for instance, to the
Chinese community: ‘AIDS is dangerous to the
Chinese culture. The Chinese people are spe
cial; the Chinese culture is a beautiful one.
Preserve our culture. Protect our people.’ That’s
basically all it says, and then there's artwork.
The second phase of what we’re doing is to say,
‘How AIDS is dangerous to you.' and then talk
about sexual contact, and needles, et cetera.
“ I think there is a major difference in the way
messages have to be given to the minority com
munities. Family is a very big issue for people
of color. Even if they’re not connected to what
we would stereotypically think of as family.
Even if they’re on the street, working the street
or using drugs, they still have ‘family.’ If some
body’s using drugs, they feel bad enough about
themselves already. So if you’re telling them,
‘Take care of yourself,’ and they’re using drugs
because they feel so bad about themselves,
that’s not going to be a big motivator. But if you
say to them, ‘Think about your wife or your
girlfriend when you get home. If you’re having
sex with men, and you go home to your wife or
your girlfriend, think about her, and think about
your kids.’ In all of our cultures, children are
very, very important. The next generation is a
big issue.
“ We have a commitment to not mince the
issues. So every time I go out, I talk about
homophobia, 1 talk about how this is not a white
male disease. I also talk about risk behavior as
opposed to risk groups. What I think is some
what tricky is being sexually explicit and talk
ing about safer sex techniques. That is what we
see as our third phase. I think that’s hard for a
couple of reasons. First of all, traditionally,
condoms have been viewed as birth control.
And when you, as white person, or anyone,
come into a community of color and talk to
them about something they perceive as birth
control, you’re touching on very sensitive sub
jects — of genocide and population control and
all of those kinds of things.
“ In the second place, in many cultures, it’s a
taboo to talk about those subjects openly. That
doesn’t mean that people-of-color communities
don’t talk about sex or don’t have jokes about
sex, but there are strict rules about how you
do it.
“ For instance, it would not be appropriate
for me, as an Asian woman, to go to a group of
Asian men and talk about safer sex. I’ve done it,
and I was mortified, and they were mortified. It
went okay, because I just said to them. This is
very embarrassing for me; I know it’s very
embarrassing for you; so let’s just get through
it.’ They were acculturated enough in western
culture that it was okay.
“ The message [OMAC gives to the white
community) can be perceived as pretty confron
tational; the message doesn’t exclude talking
about racism, and the message really talks
about what is the responsibility of the white
community to people of color. And I don’t think
any of those are easy things for white people to
hear. And it’s never easy for any of us to hear
about accepting responsibility for the privilege
we have. I really think that the white lesbian and
gay community and the white community at
large have to accept responsibility for racism
and have to accept responsibility for the
privilege they get for being white. Yes, we’re
all the have-nots, because gays and lesbians are
no more well-liked than people of color are, and
we have to work together and realize that. But
■ BARBARA
G.
C L I N I C A L
we also have to acknowledge the differences.
People-of-color communities have to accept
responsibility for homophobia, as does the
white heterosexual community, and they have
to accept responsibility for the privilege they get
by being majority heterosexual. That has to be
our common commitment and understanding.
“ At the most recent PAL training, I talked
about not expecting people of color to relate in
this intimate manner very easily, if at all. What I
don’t think people understand is that for a
person of color to enter into a ‘counseling’
relationship — talking about their feelings,
emotions, things that are inside of themselves
— is not something that’s going to happen very
easily. Particularly if you’re a white person.
The majority of people who are PALs right now
at CAP and the majority of people on the board
and the majority of people on the staff are
white. And a majority of them are male, and a
majority of those men are gay men. That’s
problematic in terms of working with people of
color.
“ White gay males are still white men. I was
at an AIDS conference in November and this
one gay man stood up and said, ‘You know, gay
males don't think of themselves as being like
white men. We think of ourselves as being gay
men.’ And this black man stood up and said,
‘Well, you know, that's just you choosing to
think about what you want to think about.
You’re still a white man. And your having the
choice, to choose whether you’re going to think
about yourself as being a white man or not, is
something I don’t have. And that’s your
privilege.’
“ What keeps me going? Well, a couple of
things. One, I really feel like I’m in a constant
state of rage. There’s so much that’s not okay
about this world and our society. I couldn't be
angry all the time, or I’d be crazy. But I feel
anger is a great motivator to work. You have to
use your emotions. They can either be barriers
to you getting work done, or they can move you
along.
“ I love working with people of color. I love
what I have been able to learn. Also, I work
with a lot of women. There seem to be many of
us in AIDS work. And I love to work with
women. There’s something really wonderful
and affirming and life-giving about working
with women, particularly women of color.
“ I think everything is interrelated. So I can
see the work that I’m doing here and how it
helps to make change for all of us. And that’s
important to me. Also, 1 feel like I’m respon
sible. I’m responsible not only to the larger
world, in terms of changing it, but I’m respon
sible to — not for, but to the people around me.
And to myself, to do everything that I can.’’ •
ISAACS,
Ph.D.B
P S Y C H O L O G I S T
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just out • 1 1 * January 1989