Posts of: NMAC

The plane broke into spontaneous applause as we safely landed in Puerto Rico. I’d forgotten about this sweet custom and was reminded why I love the islands. Some folks think the applause is a thank you to the gods for arriving safely, others believe it is gratitude for being home with their people. I’m in San Juan to celebrate Pride and hold a board meeting/site visit for the 2022 United States Conference on HIV/AIDS.

Words cannot describe how good it felt to be at Pride in PR. It’s been too long. I missed being with community. I’m too old to walk the entire route, so I want to thank Ariana’s Center for letting me ride on their float. To experience their Trans Pride was a gift. Right now, too many are using the transgender community as a punching bag. It was an honor to ride with them during this difficult moment.

Leadership means showing up for the communities hardest hit by HIV.

Congratulations and thank you to everyone working to hold Pride events in-person. The world is an awful place and it’s easy to be overwhelmed and depressed. Public events are not for everyone. There are real risks for getting COVID or Monkeypox. As we learned from our safer sex days, abstinence from the world is the only sure way to be 100% safe. COVID showed me the challenges of being alone. I need to be in the world, traveling and experiencing life. That’s why I was so grateful for San Juan’s Pride.

This year’s USCHA will be a love letter to Puerto Rico. Life is beautiful and difficult here. The meeting is at their amazing conference center (I took the photo myself) and will lean into the culture by highlighting the organizations and people working to end the epidemic in a country that is also a territory. The Opening Plenary will be in Spanish with simultaneous translation into English. USCHA did this to give attendees the experience that impacts too many non-English speaking clients. You are going to learn about the culture by tasting the food and listening to the music, but the best ambassadors are the people. There is a pride to being Puerto Rican. NMAC is working with an amazing local host committee to give you an authentic experience. USCHA is the first big meeting to happen at the center since COVID. There are many jobs and lots of economic development dependent on us.

The 2022 meeting has the largest pre-registration in history. Two hotels are already sold-out. Only 30% of the exhibit space is still available. People are ready for an in-person meeting. Our COVID protocols are stricter than Chicago. Everyone will be required to have initial vaccines and at least one booster. The meeting will also follow all local ordinances. Masking will be encouraged and celebrated. Rapid tests will be available for free for attendees. However, there are no guarantees. Of the 1,033 attendees at this year’s Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit, four people let us know they got COVID after the meeting. We’ve also had two people test positive at two different regional trainings (one per training). No one was seriously ill or went to the hospital. As a health organization that works with people who are immune compromised, we feel a duty to inform. As a gay man of color living in America, I understand risk. There is no one right answer for everyone. I hope you will join us this year, but completely understand if it is too soon.

The world is crazy and that makes Pride even more important. I reject being labeled a groomer. It’s just the Right’s dog whistle for pedophiles. Make no mistake, they are coming after all of us. I stand with Pride, not only for my own mental health, but also as a “fuck you” to all who would deny my humanity. We are headed for war because nobody wants to go back into the closet. There need to be a NATO pact between the oppressed. When they go after abortion, Black Lives, immigration, Asian Lives, climate change, Trans Lives, limits on guns, and the LGBTQ community, we must stand together in our outrage.

There are no playbooks for how to be the first leader of color of a mostly White agency. I know, because I was the first person of color in too many rooms during the early days of the epidemic. Suki Ports and I would joke that we were a caucus of two at most HIV conferences. Back then, leaders of color started their own agencies because they did not see their reflection in the boards or staffs of AIDS service organizations and/or health departments.

The inequity became a flashpoint. It’s taken decades but change is happening. How should our movement support leaders of color? I talk about race because of its impact on leadership. Our movement needs to fund leadership development for people of color not because it is politically correct, but because it is the right solution. It is not easy to manage white people. I am still amazed at White fragility. Also, too many people of color living with HIV have fallen out of care. Too few people of color benefit from PrEP. I’m not saying throw the baby out with the bath water because there is lots of good. I’m just asking for leadership development to support people of color in key management roles in the organizations working to end the HIV epidemic.

There are so many sad stories of agencies who hired their first leader of color only to have it blow up in everyone’s face. Nobody wins those fights. Agencies need to do internal work before hiring their first executive of color. When you’ve hired one person of color, you’ve hired one person of color. You have not solved racism in the agency, community, or planet. Unreasonable expectations make excitement about new hires go off the rails. While I am grateful to all the health departments and community based organizations who are hiring people of color, please make sure it’s not just entry level positions.

Our community is so quick to judge when someone makes a mistake. As an executive director who has made many mistakes, I appreciate that my board understands the challenges of leading while colored and who understands that people are going to get mad because I lead with race and call out White privilege. It is a very difficult line that leaders of color must walk, particularly when they are new. Many are accused of overusing racism as an excuse but, once again, we all live in different worlds with very different realities. As a person who walks in both, some of you are not as “woke” as you think. It takes work to understand, work that too many are not willing to do.

Thank you to all the agencies committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is an important next step, but there is still more to do. Too often values and systems in the workplace continue while clients and staff change. Too many HIV meetings happen where community is diverse, but government is not. Health departments are not exempt from the need to be diverse. Besides color, that diversity must include gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and NMAC wants to talk about education.

As a highly educated individual, I think educational requirements for employment are bogus, particularly in the HIV field. Our work requires staff to know communities that you can’t learn about in textbooks. Sometimes lived experience is more important than a BA. It’s time to value community. Another reason I talk about race is that our work is missing too many. Systems led by community need to be supported and valued. Professional standards are not necessarily community standards. Existing systems retain 49% of all people living with HIV in care, but they do not reach everyone needed to end the epidemic. Once again, we need to keep the good and use new funding to figure out ways to reach those who have fallen out or are not reached by existing systems. It is time to expand our business model to include the urban market.

My plea is not only to hire people of color, but to also give them the support and resources needed to succeed. Things you take for granted may not be their reality and vice versa. Too many executives of color have experienced horror stories of donors that are friends to the movement but less than understanding on race or gender identity. Unless you’ve been there, it’s almost impossible to appreciate the trauma these meetings create, having to smile while a person with wealth says, “you’re one of the good people of color.” This really does happen. I have too many stories and too many names of donors who just don’t get it.

It comes down to dignity and respect. It’s what we all want and deserve. In the ideal world everyone would be treated like cisgender White heterosexual men while also keeping their community identity and values. Until that day, it is important to understand that our worlds are not the same. Being a leader of color is hard, especially when people say they don’t see color. There are no roadmaps for how to lead a predominately White agency as an authentic person of color. But understand you will be judged based on values that are not yours and/or you may not even know. Pass these life lessons to the next generation. Hopefully, there will be a time when no one is judged by the color of their skin. A boy can dream! Thank you for the privilege of saying difficult things.

I’m telling stories because May 19th is National Asian and Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Sharing my life is how I celebrate my heritage. Like many Japanese Americans who came of age after World War II, my early years were spent fighting racial stereotypes and expectations. Sadly, I still get “ching-chonged.” That’s what I call racist statements made by uneducated people who suffer from the illusion that their America is my America. White privilege is alive and not well in our work.

Not only did I grow up Japanese, I also was a Queen. From a very early age, I was one of those little boys who could not hide the fact that he was gay. It must be genetic because nobody else in my family loved Barbra Streisand. Living in the closet was not an option. Now I am grateful for this blessing, but back then it was difficult. I had no role models for what it meant to be Asian and Gay, so I struggled to figure it out by myself. That lonely little boy is still a driving force in my narrative. As you can probably tell, I’ve spent many years in therapy.

When I turned 12, I was sent to the fields to pick strawberries. We got 25 cents per flat (that was 24 boxes). It was long days and back breaking work, but don’t feel sorry for me. I got to keep the money. Back then it was the Japanese American version of summer camp. No one in my circle of friends could afford to pay to go to camp, but we could all catch the bus together to pick berries. Our mothers would pack our lunch and see us off at the stop. It did not seem unusual because I was with all my friends.

I started going to gay bars when I turned 16. I’m still amazed I wasn’t carded, but I did have a mustache. Back then most gay bars were on back streets, usually via alleys, places that no self-respecting Japanese man-child should go, and I loved it. Going to bars and meeting men felt exotic and grown up. I can still hear the thump thump beat of disco music. Donna Summer (back when we still loved her) wailing “Love To Love You Baby.” Coming to terms with being gay helped me to understand that I did not have to live the life my parents expected. I did not have to be the good Asian boy.

In the hierarchy of desire among gay men, Asian men have our “rice queens,” older White men who are trying to relive their youth during World War II. They desire the Geisha experience and prey mostly upon foreign born Asian men. I’ve disappointed too many rice queens with my big mouth and certainty.

Success in our work depends on our ability to reach communities who live in the margins, in worlds most of us will never understand. I’m telling my story to open a window into the world of an old Asian Queen who is also the executive director of NMAC for over 32 years, to be vulnerable in the world that is not kind to people like me. Fighting HIV stigma is key to the success of our work. Now you are 15 minutes closer to being culturally sensitive. Unfortunately, it takes more than reading my exploits to understand the people we need to reach. Malcolm Galdwell, in his book Outliers, says it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on a topic. I don’t know if that’s true because I’m still on my journey. I just want to be here for the end the epidemic. Then I get to go home to the rice queens who love me.