Alok Vaid-Menon on why race *does* matter on Transgender Remembrance Day, when so many of the deaths mourned today are those of trans* people of color. These are powerful words. on this trans day of remembrance check out this NCAVP report and lets get our facts right. in 2012 73.1% of LGBTQ homicide victims were people of color -- the majority of who were transwomen of color. transgender people of color are 2.59 times as likely to experience physical violence by the police and 2.37 times as likely to experience discrimination compared to white cisgender people. transgender women are 2.90 times likely to experience police violence. the specificity and brutality of this (trans)misogynist and white supremacist violence gets lost when we speak about discrimination against the LGBT community. even though the white gay establishment makes little effort to substantively challenge the root systems of capitalism, anti-black racism, and (settler) colonialism that cause this violence, it is all too willing to appropriate these casualties and circulate narratives of general violence against the LGBT community fabricating superficial solidarity in order to justify its COLONIAL (gay neighborhoods please! -- doesnt matter if we gentrify and displace thousands of people of color because theyre not gay anyways) RACIST (hate crimes legislation please -- doesnt matter if we actually end up creating more mass state violence via the police and incarceration) and CLASSIST (marriage equality will help the LGBTQ community doesnt matter if a significant percentage of said community doesnt even hold stable employment) agenda. which goes to say that i do not think that the disconnect between the (neo)liberal gay rights agenda (progress! equality! family) and the actual violence that happens on the ground (increased state violence, poverty) is incidental -- rather, it reveals a carefully crafted strategy to fabricate an illusion of progress which facilitates white power and control at the cost of trans* of color people -- bodies regarded as dispensable, already marked for death. these casualties are not isolated instances, they are part of an ongoing genocidal logic of white supremacy. now more than ever we need a mass movement that takes this violence as CENTRAL to its agenda!
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:28:20 +0000
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