Every so often amid the Black Lives Matter chants, you’ll hear someone interject that black trans lives are also important. If they’re not quickly muzzled, they might get an affirming tweet like the one from Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris on June 3: “All Black Lives Matter — that includes Black trans women.”
That little boost of encouragement (Harris said nothing else on the subject) came after a video went viral on social media showing the horrific gang beating of Iyanna Dior, a young black transgender woman. In the video, Dior is seen smashed up against a cooler inside of a convenient store while multiple men pummel their fists on top of her head, face, and back, some of them pulling at her hair and clothes.
At one point Dior is pulled outside, and it literally looks like that could be the end for her. She’ll be beaten to death. But she’s able to make it back inside behind the store counter, where employees appear to look on in both shock and terror, unsure if anything they do will turn the mob on themselves.
The men who were beating Dior continue taunting her, telling her she’ll need to come outside. “You should have brought your f—– ass out the store,” one man says. A couple others manage to get around the counter, but somewhere along the way, Dior is able to escape through a separate exit.
How strange that this graphic episode of violence against a black transgender woman hasn’t shaken the national media into airing the footage around the clock and demanding that the vile humans who attacked Dior be held to account —especially given that it happened in St. Paul, Minnesota, just miles down the road from Minneapolis, the city racked by tumult after the death of George Floyd.
Nah, they’re not interested. Dior’s attackers were, like her, black. When a white person isn’t involved, it’s suddenly not so interesting. You might even say that the life seems to matter a little less.
That’s the case with most violence against black transgender women, much of it traced to high-risk activities such as drug dealing and prostitution, though that wasn’t the case with Dior.
As she tells it, she was with a few friends when one asked Dior if she would move the friend’s car. When Dior went to do that, she accidentally hit a few other cars while pulling out. The area, she said, was dangerous, so she asked her friend to get in the car and drive them somewhere else. But by that point, the people in homes nearby had come outside and noticed the damage. They demanded money from Dior, who said she had none on her. She made it to the store where she had hoped to have the police called, but she was followed, and that’s when they began brutalizing her body.
That incident was a lot like the gang beating of black transgender woman Muhlaysia Booker in Dallas last year. That was also captured on video, which shows dozens of men circling Booker before several begin taking turns punching and kicking her while she writhes on the asphalt. Eventually, a group of women pick her up and drag her away from the crowd to safety.
That altercation also started with a minor car accident, and every one of Booker’s attackers was black and male.
A month later, Booker was found dead on a Dallas road. The man charged with her murder is Kendrell Lavar Lyles, a black man who police also suspected of being linked to the killings of two other black transgender women.
The Human Rights Campaign attempts to track the deaths of transgender people in the United States each year. Of the 12 counted so far, four were black.
Monica Diamond of Charlotte, North Carolina, was shot dead in March while she was being treated for other injuries inside an ambulance. The man charged with her murder is Prentice Bess, who is also black.
That same month, a transgender woman in New York who went by the name Lexi was stabbed in the neck on a sidewalk where she had been soliciting. Her attacker hasn’t been identified in news reports, though a friend of Lexi’s told the New York Post that it may have been another transgender woman who had been in an earlier altercation with Lexi after Lexi allegedly pulled off the transgender woman’s wig.
The body of Nina Pop was found in her Sikeston, Missouri, apartment on May 3. Joseph Cannon is charged with murdering her with a knife. He’s black.
Lastly, in May, transgender man Tony McDade of Tallahassee, Florida, was shot dead in an altercation with police. According to the police chief, McDade was approached by the officer who believed that McDade matched the description of a suspect in a stabbing incident. McDade reacted by pointing a gun at the officer who then fired his own weapon at McDade. The police have yet to release the name of the officer.
Hmm. No wonder things get strangely awkward for liberals anytime someone says “black trans lives matter.” The tragedy of violence experienced by black transgender people, mostly women, doesn’t quite fit the story they’re used to telling.
