Ethnic minorities who live in socioeconomically disenfranchised communities suffer disproportionately from many health problems including cancer. In an effort to reduce these disparities, many health-care practitioners and scholars have promoted "culturally competent" health education efforts. One component of culturally competent education is a grounded knowledge base. To obtain knowledge about the cancer-related ideas of members of one African American community, researchers conducted focus groups with public housing residents and used the findings to develop a five-part television news series about breast, prostate, and cervix cancers. We found that participants gathered information from the folk, popular, and professional health sectors and constructed their cancer-related ideas from this information. Furthermore, experiences of racism, sexism, and classism colored their beliefs and behaviors regarding the prevention, detection, and treatment of common cancers. For this community "cancer" represents a giant screen upon which individual fears and societal ethnic, political, and economic tensions are projected.