Dear Stronach Prize Committee,

I had a very interesting and thought provoking conversation with Jih-Fei Cheng, an ethnic studies doctoral student at the University of Southern California I recently met this past week. He has had extensive work experience with the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (APICHA) in New York and the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team (APAIT) in Los Angeles and shared many sentiments I similarly hold but have yet found an appropriate avenue to express them through. Throughout our conversation I thought to myself, what we can do to further empower our communities, what can we do as individual stakeholders to effectively reach out to communities that are hitherto still susceptible to HIV/AIDS and other health disparities. I recall another conversation I had with Ben De Guzman, another colleague I had a chance to meet while in Washington D.C., and how he pointed out the fundamental shifts in the HIV/AIDS paradigm within the United States. While the epidemic is not what is was in the 1980s and 90s, widespread budget cuts and a diminished urgency has created a very precarious situation for service providers, clients living with HIV/AIDS and those deemed most “at-risk.” Then, how am I best able to effect impactful change? How can I take into account, reconcile and bridge the apparent gaps in outreach and treatment? A theoretical (and continuing personal) introspection has been the dominant theme of the past month.

I am constantly striving to tie this Project with what I have learned as an undergraduate. Jih-Fei and I talked at length about his research and how he is attempting to “queer” Asian American studies and he proposed several ideas that stem from his work. As people of color, we face a variety of challenges in our daily lives, that range from bread and butter issues of education, housing and employment to more abstract and equally as pressing lived experiences of racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, etc. He pressed further, erecting a theoretical framework around HIV/AIDS and how it intersects (and further complicates) racial/ethnic identity both in its formation and expression. He proposed the concept of “falling out of time.”

Numerous studies and mountains of personal experiences attest to the disproportionate amount of contact and violence that people of color have with law enforcement, and by extension, the State. Living under the perpetual threat of violence disrupts an individual’s normative sense of time (e.g. obtaining a higher education, establishing a career, buying property, etc.), it problematizes the hope of fashioning a “normal life,” and they essentially “fall out of time.” For example, many individuals would argue that gay rights have progressed by leaps and bounds the past decade. Major metropolitan cities have gay neighborhoods, clubs and nightlife that provide an outlet to congregate and socialize within a space that is clearly marked as “our own,” but would it be a stretch to say that there is an invisible, a fine line that demarcates safety from danger? These explicitly gay spaces offer opportunities to self-actualize our queer identities but only within predetermined psychic and physical borders. To intentionally or unintentionally overstep these socially negotiated and agreed upon boundaries would be at our own risk. Are we able to rely on law enforcement when they have the potential to protect or terrorize us, especially as queer people of color? To “fall out of time” is in essence, to displace or disrupt the natural progression of personal growth.

For those of us who do not neatly fit within the dominant group, the threat of violence is omnipresent. But for a queer person of color an HIV/AIDS diagnosis adds another specter to an already precarious life. While the threat of violence is subtle in its difference, it is nevertheless heightened. Medications have dramatically increased the lifespan of individuals living with HIV/AIDS to the point it has reached parity with individuals who are HIV-negative—but that is based upon a volatile and unequal calculus: access to quality and affordable health care, the (un)availability of supportive and open avenues for a healthy expression of sexuality make for an unbalanced equation. Thus, the danger of an HIV/AIDS diagnosis is not necessarily a physical death, but rather, a spiritual and emotional one.

The notion of falling in and out of time is something I hope to further expound upon in the near future.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the Stronach Prize is having the ability to travel and meet with amazing and awe inspiring individuals who challenge and encourage me to envision more radical possibilities of action.

Sincerely,
William Ching

(UPDATED to reflect name changes 2/26/10)

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