If Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, attempts to out-social justice his Democratic rivals at next week’s presidential debate, just remember that he’s probably full of it, just like he was at the first debate.
At that first debate back in late June, he defiantly declared that “We do not talk enough about trans-Americans, especially African American trans-Americans and the incredibly high rates of murder right now.”
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As I describe in my forthcoming book “Privileged Victims: How America’s Culture Fascists Hijacked the Country and Elevated Its Worst People,” there is very limited data on transgender murders in the U.S. Some nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups like the Human Rights Campaign attempt to keep count, but if you look at the numbers, you find that the murders aren’t, as Booker seemed to suggest, due to a rash of intolerance for transgender people. They’re more often than not the result of robberies, drug dealing, or any number of other factors that have nothing to do with the victim’s gender identity.
Take the story of Zoe Spears, a black transgender woman who was found shot dead on a sidewalk just outside of Washington, D.C., on June 13. The sidewalk where Spears was found is reportedly known for prostitution, and police said Spears had previous done sex work in the area. After an intensive investigation, police said on Thursday that they had a suspect in custody. Gerardo Thomas, 33, was charged with first-degree murder.
In the Washington Post’s report on Thomas, it’s not until eight paragraphs in that you find that police have no reason to believe that Spears’ gender identity or sexuality had anything to do with her murder. “He did not mention anything about her being a transgender female,” head criminal investigator Brian Reilly said of Thomas.
And I’m not sure if it matters, but Thomas is also black. In other words, we’re probably not looking at a hate crime here.
There are similar circumstances in dozens of other cases involving murder victims who happen to be transgender.
The Advocate, a gay-centric magazine, put together a list of transgender people killed in 2018. Among the entries:
— Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, 42, who was stabbed to death by her own husband. He went to police after the incident to turn himself in.
— Phylicia Mitchell, who at 46 was shot dead in Cleveland. When the suspect was apprehended, a local news report said that the incident was the result of Gary Sanders “collecting a drug debt.”
— Victoria “Viccky” Ramos Gutierrez, 33, of Los Angeles, who was stabbed to death during an attempted robbery.
— Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez, 33, had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and on May 25 was pronounced dead, apparently due to dehydration and complications of HIV.
Any murder or preventable death is a tragedy, obviously. But there is no basis in the data for the assertion that there is a rising threat of violent intolerance toward transgender people in America. When politicians say otherwise, they are lying and pandering.
Remember that as Booker and his rivals try to out-woke one another.
