A Black Lives Matter protest in Washington DC. (GettyYasin Ozturk)
A leading LGBT+ rights organisation has said that the Black Lives Matter movement must do more for murdered Black trans women.
Widespread protests against ongoing police brutality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd have spread across America.
But the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an LGBT+ advocacy organisation that tracks anti-trans violence, has said that the movement must speak out more on the violence experienced by Black trans women in the US.
Tori Cooper of the HRC told Reuters: “I don’t think that anybody would say that there’s been enough attention focused on and around trans people and the state of violence they live in.
“I think it is a weakness of the Black Lives Matter movement…. We only speak out when Black men are being harmed or murdered.”
In 2019, 26 trans people were killed in the US, and the majority of them were Black trans women. There have been at least 12 trans people murdered in American so far this year.
On May 27, Black trans man Tony McDade was shot dead by a police officer in north Florida.
While protests across the US have successfully helped Floyd’s killers to face criminal charges, police are yet to even release the name of the officer who killed McDade.
Last week, Iyanna Dior, a Black trans woman, was brutally beaten by a mob of more than 30 men in Minnesota.
Mariah Moore of the Transgender Law Center also told Reuters: “Violence does not just occur to Black men and Black women. It occurs to all Black LGBT+ people.
“We are the people that are not being heard in this movement.”
Last week, Pose star Billy Porter addressed anti-LGBT+ prejudice within the Black community, and spoke about the violence faced by Black trans women.
He said in a video on Instagram: “As a Black queer man in America, my basic human rights have been up for legislation every single day that I have had breath in my body.
“By that I mean that the Black community’s relationship with the LGBTQ+ community is appalling at best, and eerily similar to that of white supremacists versus Black folk.
“Hear me Black people and hear me well. I’m calling y’all out right here right now. You cannot expect our demands of equality to be met with any real legislative policy and change when y’all turn around and inflict the same kind of hate and oppression on us.”