The AIDS Scare

I did some minor research about the early '80s and found the scare that touched everyone in the United States. Once called the Gay Related Immuno Deficiency, the AIDS epidemic had killed 171 people in the United States by 1980 and was spreading very fast. This scare came at a time where the civil rights movement had just hit its peak and Americans were not living together in peace. There were many racial and sexual tensions that made this AIDS epidemic a lot more violent than it needed to be.
In today's society, race and sexual preference is not as big of a conflict as it was in the early 80's. AIDS greatly increased some of the battles that gays had went through, especially with this deadly diesease. Imagine living in the world around that time, the discrimination must have been crazy. In America, you couldn't be black, gay, or a woman without facing some sort of everyday discrimination.
Debates were widespread and violent; it was just a time in US culture when many Americans hated eachother. We have forgot about this harsh discrimination now because its not so bad, but back in this time period it must have been hard to walk on the streets without seeing some sort of brutality. Obviously through time we all realized that AIDS wasn't a "gay" disease and a lot of the violence towards gays has definitely stopped. We have come a long way as a society and to take a look back at a big epidemic like AIDS makes us realize the types of violence and debates that we once were faced with. Take a second to realize what it might've been like to live in a time period like the 80's. Especially if you were black, gay, or female.