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Abstract
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There is currently a war on Black and Brown transgender and nonbinary (TNB) people in America. TNB people include those whose gender differs from the sex assigned to them at birth, those who do not identify with gender binary constructs of "man" or "woman," and those who are expansive or fluid in their gender. The year 2021 was the deadliest on record for TNB communities, with at least 57 documented murders of TNB individuals; 66% of the victims were Black women, 86% were people of color, and 69% were killed with a gun.1 These numbers are likely an underestimate, as TNB victims are often misgendered in official reports1 and most murders of TNB people remain unsolved. Beyond lethal violence, data indicate that nearly one in 10 TNB individuals have been physically assaulted in the past year and 47% experience sexual violence in their lifetimes.2
Victimization of TNB people must be understood within the larger context of discrimination at the intersection of interlocking systems of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism, and cisgenderism). Discrimination against individuals and structural sources of oppression are mutually reinforcing or co-constitutive and jointly contribute to interpersonal violence against TNB people. For Black and Brown TNB people, community violence linked to cisgenderism and gender oppression is intertwined with White supremacy.2 TNB people of color are uniquely targeted and criminalized by police, government, and media, as evident by widespread dissemination of misinformation in news, political scapegoating, biased law enforcement, and legislation designed to exclude Black and Brown TNB people from public life (e.g., "walking while trans" bills).3
Because of discrimination, TNB people of color experience disproportionately higher rates of unemployment, housing insecurity, and incarceration compared with White TNB people. In the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS),2 Black TNB people had nearly twice the unemployment rate of all TNB respondents (26% vs 14%) and over three times the unemployment rate of the broader US population (7%). Black transgender respondents also reported a much lower rate of homeownership (14%) compared with transgender respondents of all races (32%) and the general US population (67%). An alarming 41% of Black respondents reported experiencing homelessness compared with 19% of all transgender respondents. Thirty-five percent of Black respondents had been arrested or held in a cell because of bias compared with 7% of all transgender respondents. These disparities are directly linked to the pervasive violence to which Black and Brown TNB people are exposed in the public sector (e.g., employment, housing, health care, prisons)...
Language: en |