LeRoy Whitfield, 36; Wrote on AIDS In Black Community

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The New York Sun

LeRoy Whitfield, a writer who focused on the battle against AIDS among black Americans, died of AIDS Sunday after living 15 years with the HIV virus – while refusing to take medication. He was 36.


Whitfield was a contributor to Vibe magazine, as well as several gay and AIDS-oriented publications.


After being diagnosed with HIV in 1990, Whitfield challenged the use of antiretroviral drugs, whose possible side effects range from fatigue and nausea to blurred vision.


Whitfield used his personal experience – including relationships with both men and women – to reflect on larger issues surrounding the disease.


He linked AIDS among blacks with public housing, poverty, and violence, which he said contributed to the rise of HIV in the black community. However, he debunked the notion voiced in some circles that AIDS was a white conspiracy to spread the disease among blacks.


“Widespread violence, for example, is not a reality in upscale gay communities. Gay white men do not overpopulate public housing. Gay communities have no shortage of HIV services nearby,” he wrote in the September 1997 issue of Positively Aware magazine. “AIDS is the gripping issue of the gay community. For African Americans, it’s the atrocity du jour.”


A Chicago native, Whitfield attended the University of Chicago and the city’s DePaul University, then worked as an associate editor at the Chicago-based Positively Aware and as a community educator for Positive Voice, an AIDS awareness organization. He moved to New York in 2000, contributing to Vibe and becoming a senior editor at POZ, a magazine aimed at HIV-positive people.


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