I’ve had a woman yell at me over the phone when I told her I was writing a story about people with AIDS.
Perhaps I should watch what I said.
“That’s offensive!” she said.
“What is?” I said.
“When you said that,” she said.
The woman, a nurse who counseled patients living with the disease, said that I shouldn’t refer to it as “people living with AIDS.” I should say HIV/AIDS or people with a chronic disease. She hung up on me. I called her back again to apologize. She said that’s okay but I don’t want to speak with you. She hung up on me again.
This whole project, in which students had to report on HIV/AIDS in South Florida, taught me something about language. Perhaps she was wrong for hanging up on me (I’m still resentful at that) but I learned how to approach the subject to people. Political correctness is now a way of life unfortunately and if you want to deal with people, you’re just going to have to learn how to phrase questions.
But this isn’t something I’ve learned about HIV/AIDS. I haven’t really picked up anything new from this course on the disease. As stated in my earlier blog, teachers in middle school showed me countless documentaries about HIV. So I'm still surprised that there is little coverage in South Florida on the issue.
I’m now looking to see a perspective from someone with the disease. I haven’t completed the course and there are still other stories to write.
