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Reviewed by:
  • No Access: Young, Black & Positive by Adri Murguia
  • Kameron J. Copeland (bio)
No Access: Young, Black & Positive, Directed by Adri Murguia: Jackson, MS: Vice Media LLC. 2016, 25 min. Retrieved from https://video.vice.com/en_ca/video/no-access-young-black-and-positive-in-the-us/582c7c758cd031aa77075eba.

At the height of the aids epidemic of the 1980s, strong efforts were made to alleviate the crisis among White gay men often to the detriment of Black men and women (Robinson, 2009, pp. 1511–1515). As a result of past narrow public health and media strategies that frequently underrepresented African-Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities, by 2011, 58 percent of HIV-positive young men who have sex with men (YMSM) in the United States were Black, as were almost half of all modern patients diagnosed with HIV (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2014, 2017). While these statistics have occasionally been used to pathologize Black male sexuality in media discourse via depictions of promiscuity, deception, and the downlow, HIV-positive Black YMSM face a myriad of intersectional trauma triggered by experiences of social oppression (Collins, 2004; McGruder, 2010; Huebner et al., 2014). Marginalizing factors such as racism, homophobia, internalized homonegativity, and HIV stigma have rendered many Black YMSM highly vulnerable (Arnold, Rebchook, & Keegles, 2014; Quinn et al., 2015). Unlike past stereotypical approaches to representing Black HIV-positive YMSM, Murguia’s No Access: Young, Black & Positive (2016), which was produced by the digital media broadcast company Vice Media LLC and released as an online special, presented a story of hope and resilience among traumatized HIV-positive Black YMSM in Jackson, Mississippi.

The documentary’s primary subject is a twenty-one-year-old Black openly [End Page 91] gay HIV-positive resident of the Grace House, a Jackson-based organization offering support, housing, and services to homeless people living with HIV/AIDS. When he was first diagnosed, he neglected his health, overburdened by the distresses of racism, homophobia, familial rejection, spiritual struggles, homelessness, and the lack of job and educational opportunities. His status as a Black gay man made him feel as if he was an inferior member of society, initially rendering him hopeless, which led him to succumb to alcohol abuse and addiction. However, once he became acquainted with the Grace House, he was able to gain access to treatment and medication and began to regularly attend a support group consisting primarily of HIV-positive young Black gay men.

The film features various support groups for Black HIV-positive YMSM including the Grace House and Open Arms Healthcare Center, which is aimed at helping lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) patients who are underserved throughout the Southern city. In the documentary, droves of young Black HIV-positive men in their early to mid-twenties attend a group meeting to discuss their experiences of oppression and how they are coping, physically and socially, with their condition. In the Deep South, a place characterized by notorious racism, religious fundamentalism, and homophobia that has served to define the sociopolitical environment, many of the young men are in search of love and acceptance, as lifelong experiences of rejection have taken a toll on their health, wellness, and desire to manage their HIV statuses. The support group and many other initiatives seeking to assist them are led by other HIV-positive men who are racial minorities and once neglected their statuses due to the stigmatic traumas associated with their intersectional identities. However, over time, these men, who were able to undergo transformations upon gaining access to resources and overcoming their hopelessness and despair, became highly dedicated to ensuring their contemporaries were not left behind. Based on the testimonies in the support group meetings, they reformed their self-concepts that had been destroyed at the times in which they were made to feel as if they were inferior for possessing stigmatized masculinities. This allowed them to become leaders in public health efforts to confront the current HIV crisis faced by Black YMSM, transforming from traumatized individuals who once internalized the traumas of inferiority to championed advocates who guide and care for other Black HIV-positive YMSM in the South who find themselves...

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