Magic Johnson on fighting AIDS and homophobia via rappers

 From an interview in the Huffington Post (Canada) with Magic Johnson:


How do you think you have personally been able to affect how people with HIV and AIDS are treated by others?

First of all, Elizabeth Glaser helped me. She was dying of AIDS at that time and she said to me as she was dying that she wanted me to become the face of the disease and to go out and really effect change in terms of the discrimination. So that's what I decided to do.

I started in the [George H.W. Bush] White House but they were not doing enough. So I quit and decided to do my own thing and I’ve been able make headway block by block, community by community. I've been to 300 high schools and colleges speaking about HIV and AIDS, 300 churches to rally their community about what needs to be done.

Last but not least, I learned a lot from the white gay community because they had gotten their community, rallied them, educated them and did a wonderful job about driving the numbers down. That is the best approach that I've seen; it's been the most effective. So what we try to do in our community is bring those results to us. So I'm working hard to continue to educate minorities about HIV and AIDS and we've got to band together. We're too fragmented right now, but if we can do that, we're going to do well.

As a hip-hop fan, you realize that homophobia is still an issue everywhere, but especially in the black community. When people are scared to talk about it, that's how the disease spreads. So what have you been doing to get that risk reduced?

What we're trying to do is reach out to the hip-hop community because they have power — power with their voice, power with that mic in their hand and power with the lyrics that they sing. I have a lot of friends in that industry and so what we're trying to do is rally them to get behind the cause, deliver the message to these young people that HIV and AIDS is big and it's not going anywhere. They can make a difference right away by speaking out, because they have a big fan base.

So we're finding out that a lot of them want to be involved; they're just looking for a group like ours to latch onto and be a part of it. We haven't really had any push-back from the hip-hop community.