AIDS victims and "untouchables"

While reading the article by Beth Berila a lot of things came to mind, one being about India’s “untouchables.” The “untouchables” came to mind especially when I read the line about AIDS victims seen as “invisible intruders” and that this phobia surrounding AIDS patients “reflects fears that ‘contamination’ will ‘seep into’ the heterogeneous and contained nation.” In India, this is what the “untouchables” are thought of as. They are people to not be associated with; they are a parasite on society. If you are not an untouchable you are to avoid them at all costs. Part of the reason for this is that the caste system in India has been a long standing tradition. ACT UP made it seem AIDS patients are viewed in a similar light in society, and I agree. Part of the reason that this ostracization exists is because of the social stigma placed on these groups of people. It has been ingrained in our society. In India, the idea of the “untouchables” has been around for forever. With AIDS victims, in the beginning, people knew very little about its means of transmission, and who fell victim to the disease. It became a disease of the careless, of the gay community, of the poor. This goes back to the idea about the uneducated not being able to make good decisions that we have talked about in class a lot. People were not informed about the disease and these perceptions were passed on and became the information that people received. It took a long time for people to realize that this is a global epidemic can and does affect everyone, and some people still do not understand this. I thought really interesting the law passed under the Clinton administration in 1993, allowing AIDS to be a factor in immigration and citizenship applications. I think this shows the ignorance of those times. By allowing these people into the country we were not spreading the disease.

I found the idea of being able to “pass” in society and marking bodies really interesting too. The exercises that some activists did by dressing up and walking into certain communities/groups and the people not recognizing them showed this “passing” ability. That was something I found different between the “untouchables” of India and the AIDS victims, their ability to “pass” in society. The “untouchables” are easily recognized by their appearance and they have no means of changing this because of their position in society. They do not hold real jobs, and are at the bottom of the chain socially and economically. AIDS victims appear “normal” in society and I think that is what scares most of the people with this phobia, that they may not be able to escape the contaminants. Even those that do not have this fear, show that they want to be able to recognize those that are different. With the term “gay-dar” people are openly picking out those that deviate from the norm. People I think use this term openly and freely, mainly as a joke, but it is a form of ostracization and identifying “outsiders.”

I was also thinking about the screening that occurs at airports across the nation. The screening has a lot to do with this idea of keeping outsiders out and insiders in. Since the tragedy of September 11^th there has been a significant increase in security and screening. We are very careful about who we are letting into this country. We do not want to take a chance of having another terrorist attack and therefore, have begun to become very suspicious, but at what cost? We are now openly picking people out of the crowd that do not fit the norm and forcing them to undergo in depth security screenings. Not all, but many of the people that are stopped are people of color, have accents, are foreign. Not all of these people are terrorists though. In our attempt to make this nation more safe have we reverted back to times of racial prejudice?