LYCOS RETRIEVER 
African Americans: United States
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African Americans are the American ethnic group most affected by HIV and AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has been estimated that "184,991 adult and adolescent HIV infections [were] diagnosed during 2001-2005" (1). More than 51 percent occurred among blacks than any other race. Between the ages of 25-44 years 62 percent were African Americans. Dr. Robert Janssen (2007) states, "We have rates of HIV/AIDS among blacks in some American cities that are as high as in some countries in Africa". The rate for African Americans with HIV/AIDS in Washington D.C. is 3 percent, based on cases reported. In a New York Times Article, about 50 percent of AIDS-related deaths were African-American woman, which accounted for 25 percent of the city's population.
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[I]t was once believed that high rates of hospitalization for the treatment of selected mental disorders among African Americans was due to an "inherent racial susceptibility" to certain kinds of psychopathology (Thomas & Sillin, 1972; Williams, 1986). It was ... believed among some psychiatrists that African Americans, as a group, tended to have low rates of depression because of their historical social and educational oppression. Somehow, being oppressed and deprived functioned as a social psychological shield against depression: Blacks were less vulnerable because they had less to lose (Prange, 1962). Epidemiological and etiological research have subsequently shown that depression and other illnesses are much more complex disorders than that suggested by the foregoing statements and must be carefully studied, including cross-cultural variations in symptoms of disorders before drawing conclusions and formulating treatment plans.
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Although African Americans have higher rates of obesity, researchers do not believe that obesity alone accounts for their higher prevalence of diabetes. Even when compared to white Americans with the same levels of obesity, age, and socioeconomic status, African Americans still have higher rates of diabetes. Other factors, yet to be understood, appear to be at work.
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Though southern food is typically known as "soul food," many African Americans contend that soul food consists of African-American recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation, just like other African-American rituals. The legacy of African and West Indian culture is imbued in many of the recipes and food traditions that remain popular today. The staple foods of African Americans, such as rice, have remained largely unchanged since the first Africans and West Indians set foot in the New World, and the southern United States, where the slave population was most dense, has developed a cooking culture that remains true to the African-American tradition. This cooking is aptly named southern cooking,the food, or soul food. Over the years, many have interpreted the term soul food based on current social issues facing the African-American population, such as the civil rights movement. Many civil rights advocates believe that using this word perpetuates a negative connection between African Americans and slavery.
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From their earliest presence in North America, African Americans have contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, foods, clothing styles, music, language, social and technological innovation to American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the U.S., such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to African and African-American influences. A couple of notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 from pecans; and George Crum, who invented the potato chip in 1853.[54] African American music is one of the most pervasive African-American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, R&B, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from other black forms of music, including blues, rag-time, jazz, and gospel music. African American-derived musical forms have ... influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular musical genre in the world, including country and techno. African-American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions.[55]
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For African Americans... the ability to exercise their new rights was short-lived. Southern whites created laws and practices to circumscribe and oppress the lives of blacks. They created Black Codes, which limited the areas in which blacks could purchase or rent property, and vagrancy laws that forced African Americans to return to work on the plantations from which they were recently liberated. These measures helped force blacks into a state of peonage that would last well into the second half of the twentieth century. Blacks were not permitted to testify in court, except in cases involving other blacks, and fines were levied against them for alleged seditious speeches, insulting gestures and acts, absence from work, violating curfews, and the possession of firearms. Blacks had their freedom assaulted by white terrorist organizations as well.
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