So, in New York in 2002, the intersection of HIV-AIDS advocacy, racial outreach, and sex education has come to this: the city is spending $1 million of taxpayers’ money to plaster the city with advertisements, including one with two cuddling scantily clad African-Americans and the message:

He calls you sweet baby And sweet sugar plum. If he won’t wear a ______ He ain’t getting none.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene actually announced this campaign with a press release in which the city’s health and mental hygiene commissioner, Thomas Frieden, proclaimed that the ad campaign “targets demographic groups with the greatest risk for HIV,” including “sexually active women of color between the ages of 16 and 30.”

Well, the idea of targeting people “of color” with a city-funded ad that uses the phrase “ain’t getting none” strikes us as it ain’t none too good. It’s bad enough that the city’s public schools are failing to teach students, many of them minorities, proper English. But for the city to reinforce the improper English with advertising based on the assumption that people of color speak using double negatives and “ain’t” — it boggles the mind.

We’re hardly the guardians of political correctness on racial or for that matter any other matters, so we called around to test our own reaction with some of the city’s civil rights leaders. The interim CEO of the New York Urban League, Adrian Lewis, made clear that she was speaking on her own behalf and not that of the league. But she said, “Any time you blanket an entire group of people with one form of language or colloquialism, it is unfortunate.”

The executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, Michael Meyers, called the ad “offensive.” “It’s insulting to resort to stereotypes when standard English can communicate your point,” he said. “Why can’t the Health Department speak plainly to black people without using the vernacular? Black people and Hispanic people can speak and read standard English.”

The national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, Niger Innis, called the ad “very unfortunate.””It sounds like it is promoting a negative stereotype of African Americans,” Mr. Innis said. “We get enough of it through rap videos. We don’t need the city of New York to become part of one problem while trying to solve another problem.”

The director of health, media and marketing for the department of health and mental hygiene, Jeffrey Escoffier, defends the ad, saying no one has complained to the department about the ad’s grammar. “We’re trying to save lives… We’re trying to reach people,” he said. “Those little poems have a sense of humor to them.” Mayor Bloomberg’s name appears at the bottom of the ad. A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Jordan Barowitz, responded to our inquiry about the matter by asking, “Are you [expletive] kidding?” and then demanding to know what editor at The New York Sun had put the reporter up to asking about the matter.

Our own view is that if the mayor is going to be spending a million dollars of taxpayer money on condom ads with his name at the bottom, his spokesman ought to be willing to at least entertain questions about the matter without breaking out into vulgarity. The mayor and his aides might find the ads an example of humor. But there’s nothing funny about being condescended to.