Black & Trans, At The Intersections

In Minnesota a black trans woman is attacked by a mob…

A Black Trans Woman Named Iyanna Dior Was Beaten by a Mob In Minneapolis
LGBTQ activists are sharing Dior’s story as part of an effort to bring awareness to the increased rate of violence against black transgender people
The Rolling Stone
By EJ Dickson
June 3, 2020

Viral footage of the brutal beating of a black transgender woman named Iyanna Dior on Monday has enraged activists, prompting nationwide calls for justice and awareness of the high rates of violence against black transgender women.

Dior, 21, was attacked by a mob in a Minneapolis gas station, reportedly after a fender bender. The city has been wracked by protests following the violent death of George Floyd in police custody last week. Footage of the attack, which Rolling Stone is not posting, has also been circulating on Twitter.

In a post on her Facebook, Dior said she needed time “to process everything that’s going on.” “Thanks to everyone reaching out making sure I’m OK, Imma talk real soon,” she wrote. She also posted her CashApp handle #NajaBabiie for those interested in supporting her.
[…]
LGBTQ activists are sharing Dior’s story on social media as part of an effort to bring awareness to the increased rate of violence against black transgender people. According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 26 transgender or gender non-conforming people were violently killed in 2019 alone, with the vast majority of the victims being black transgender women.

Being black and being trans multiplies the hate, Hate².

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Black Trans Protesters Are Marching for a Police Killing That Cis People Aren’t Talking About: Tony McDade
“We have two different worlds. We’re fed up with the murders. We’re fed up with law enforcement just brutally killing us.”
VICE News
By Tomas Navia and Sam Donnenberg
June 3 2020

As protests surrounding the killing of George Floyd and police brutality entered their eighth night, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the historic Stonewall Inn in New York Tuesday yelling the name of another black man killed in a confrontation with police: Tony McDade.

McDade, a 38-year-old black trans man, was shot and killed by police in Tallahassee, Florida, on May 27, two days after Minneapolis police kneeled on Floyd for almost nine minutes until he couldn’t breathe. Tallahassee police said in a press release that McDade was the suspect in a local stabbing and was armed, which led to the shooting.

His death hasn’t received much attention in the wake of Floyd’s killing. Protests have happened in Florida, and national LGBTQ rights organizations including the Human Rights Campaign and the National Black Justice Coalition released statements about the killing.

Now, trans rights advocates are taking to the streets in New York, during Pride Month, to call for an investigation and bring more attention to the killing of black trans people.

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In Jezebel they reported his murder,

On May 27, Tony McDade, a trans man and Tallahassee resident, was killed by a police officer. No video exists of his death, so both local and national outlets have deferred to the police department’s description: McDade was a suspect in a fatal stabbing; as officers attempted to arrest him he allegedly moved as if to draw a weapon and was shot. Though a Florida law allows the person who killed him to remain anonymous, bystanders identified the officer as white.

Days after McDade’s death, Equality Florida issued a report calling the state an “epicenter” of brutal transphobia, a situation they found was exacerbated by the police and local media. “Issues of misgendering by law enforcement and the media often cloud initial reports of trans related violence, disrespecting the victims.” After his death, residents of his apartment posted Facebook Live videos, contrasting police reports that McDade had posed a threat; one resident in the apartment complex, Clifford Williams, said that police had opened fire on McDade with no hesitation, contradicting the narrative that officers feared for their safety. But even in such accounts, residents still misgendered McDade.
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Alongside the Tallahassee Police’s swift action to render McDade an alleged killer, his death is not the first time a publication has misgendered a victim of the violence that black trans people endure in America. It is also not the first time a black trans person’s murder has gone largely ignored in the larger conversation about police brutality. But amid what has been described as an epidemic of violence against black trans people, the erasure of McDade’s death is abhorrent, especially in the early days of Pride, when of the oppression the LGBTQ+ community faces is either sanitized and given a rainbow sheen or generalized into a specter of violence, stripped of the underpinnings of race.

If you are trans and black and murdered you don’t end up on the front page but buried inside the newspaper that is if their murder even makes it into the news and not swept under the rug.