Slate, which prizes the word “myth” in headlines almost as much as “Apple”, runs a reheated myth-piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates, poo-pooing what is apparently…

The Down Low theory, as an overarching explanation for the spread of HIV, has been debunked several times over (see here and to greater effect here).

We say “reheated” because that first here points to a Voice article titled, “Sex, Lies, Death: The irresistible pull of the down-low myth—uh, story—hooks reporters and their readers,” that was written by the same (we assume) Ta-Nehisi Coates. Though her first missive was just as hard-hitting as its subhead implies, Coates now must take up the subject again in response to a black character recently coming out in the TV soap Passions. Uh huh.

The second here is a 2004 Slate article asking, “Why is there such a high percentage of HIV and AIDS among black women?” Its answer is that while “the down low” makes a good story, there are no studies to establish causation. But hey—maybe it’s because of prisons!

Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, suggests, rather, that the single biggest driver of the heterosexual spread to black women is the incarceration of black men. “The prison industry in America is an almost exact replication of the mining industry in South Africa …” says Wilson. As studies conducted in South Africa have shown, men who leave their homes for the mines often have new sexual partners

“New sexual partners.” Well, that’s one way of putting it. Then it gets real:

Incarceration also exposes many men to anal sex, whether by coercion or choice

“Exposure to anal sex.” Another way of putting it! Seems like someone’s trying very hard not to use the word homosexual. You might even say that they’re afraid, or phobic, of the word homo! Anyway, back to Ta-Nehisi’s article:

And yet the Myth of the Down Low Brother persists.

Listen. Just because you begin them with capital letters does not make your words true. And we can’t help but notice that you capitalize “Myth” here but not “theory” above. Shift key all tuckered out?

But the down low is neither a myth nor a theory. It is a story. And it is a story only. It is not “pseudoscience” or “mythology” any more than calling it a myth is pseudoscience and mythology.

In the face of all the skeptical science, why is the belief in the Down Low menace so entrenched?

(Different question: why does Ta-Nehisi like the word “the” so much?) If not having science to support something either way equates “all the skeptical science,” I guess we can just use that line for anything. Like we want it, ha ha.

The reason this story has legs, we should remember, is that 36,257 American black women living with HIV/AIDS are estimated to have contracted the virus sexually, compared to 19,360 American black men infected through heterosexual sex. The country collectively is saying, “what?” And more importantly, what can black women do to protect themselves?

Speculation about bisexual black men seems pretty reasonable given the circumstances, but Coates charges that it’s driven by “white commentators of all political stripes” looking to cast black people as either amoral or homophobic. (This, in the middle of an article that may as well be titled Our Black Men are No Closeted Queens, God Dammit.)

And after she’s done calling everyone else racist, Ta-Nehisi goes on to explain that the down low story is popular among blacks only because it is a “conspiracy theory.” Oh, what? We have no idea what you’re talking about. This looks like our stop right here, yup—bye bye now!

We hope Ms. Coates has saved some energy for a third down-low debunking when Isaiah Washington’s character on Grey’s inevitably comes out as a “faggot.”