Raniyah Copeland of the Black AIDS Institute can remember a time when HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — was the scourge of the 1980s. She remembers when the virus wiped out a whole sub-population of Black and Latinx men — she remembers what they faced while they were alive — and she knows that while HIV isn’t the scourge it once was, it’s still a disease that disproportionately affects the Black community…and she knows why. “In the United States, health is driven by inequity,” she told AfroTech. “HIV, as a disease, has a unique stigma in that it’s associated specifically with certain sexuality, a certain race, and a certain socio-economic class. While society isn’t as overt with its racism about AIDS as it once was — there was a time when the CDC would say that being Haitian, for example, made you more susceptible to AIDS — we still have progress that needs to be made.” Progress is, ultimately, the goal of the Black AIDS Institute. Dedicated exclusively to eradicating the disease...