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Black Trans Lives Matter: Talking Back about Tony McDade

by Delilah Amilcar Pierre, Head of Communications – Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC)

TALLAHASSEE, FL – In a recent article written by reporter Robbie Gaffney and published by WFSU, a member of the Mayor of Tallahassee’s LGBTQ Advisory Council, Janel Diaz stated: “We have to call a spade a spade… Tony was profiled as a black man. It is what it is. They didn’t say, you know, the police did not pull out their guns to say ‘oh that’s a trans man let’s kill him. He’s part of the LGBTQ community. Oh let’s kill him.”

Tallahassee Community Action Committee disagrees. Here’s why:

Diaz’s statement shows a clear misunderstanding of how transphobia and anti-blackness intersect to perpetuate police violence. Whether or not the Tallahassee Police Department knew Tony McDade’s gender identity when they killed him does not dismiss how his gender identity impacted his relationship to police violence. Tony’s entire life, which he led as a black person and as a trans person, placed him at a disproportionately high level of violence from his white and cisgender peers. Council member Diaz’s dismissal of McDade’s trans identity as the reason why he was targeted by the Tallahassee Police Department is unwarranted, groundless, and factually misleading, which plays right into the transphobia that caused the murder in the first place.

According to a recent study done by the National Center for Transgender Equality (2019), “58% of transgender people who interacted with law enforcement in the last year reported experiences of harassment, abuse or other mistreatment by the police” and that rate is much higher for trans people of color. Furthermore, to place McDade’s identity as a trans person as secondary to his identity as a black person is false and misleading. It dismantles the lived reality of police violence, systemic racism, and transphobia, and places identity categories into silos where they don’t belong. Diaz’s misunderstanding of the lived intersection of both identities makes the reality of racist, transphobic police violence superficial and one-sided. It undermines the lifelong, deep-rooted affects of racism, transphobia, and police violence on a single individual’s life. It minimizes the distress and pain black trans people experience because they are constantly at higher risk of police violence, hate crimes, and systemic discrimination in the areas of employment, housing, education, and public accommodations.

The statistics are real. According to a report released on June 4th, 2020 by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Black people are known to have a 20% percent higher rate of experiencing psychological distress than their white peers and Blacks exposed to violence (as Tony was) are at a even greater risk of suffering from PTSD. According to the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute (2019), “transgender adults have a prevalence of past-year suicide ideation that is nearly 12 times higher, and a prevalence of past-year suicide attempts that is about 18 times higher, than the US general population” due to the high rates of trauma caused by discrimination, rejection, and bullying. Rates of mental illness, substance abuse, depression, and anxiety are also much higher for transgender people than cisgender people for the same reasons.

Tony had to experience the daily trauma of living at the intersection of being Black and being trans his entire life. The harsh beating he received the night before his death is depictive of this – as was the unjust treatment he experienced in the criminal justice system. To understand why Tony was in a confrontation with the police, one needs to understand all the contributing factors: bias, racism, transphobia, lack of support for people of color (POC), and a history of trauma that is perpetuated by social systems, educational systems, criminal justice systems, and law enforcement agencies in Tallahassee and nationwide.

As a community, we respect and uplift the McDade family, especially his mother, in their grieving process. No one should have to lose a child simply because a police officer decided to murder them due to fear and profiling. However, we also realize the parents of transgender people often have conflicting ideas about the validity of their child’s identity. A transgender person’s relationship with their pronouns, and with whom they disclose, is up to them. Including whether or not they disclose to their parents. Unfortunately, Tony’s life was cut short by police violence and we will never know how his identity process would have played out. Part of the tragedy of Tony’s murder is that he was murdered for being who he was as he was coming to terms with how to express that within the complex, and often unaccepting, social system which he lived.

Finally, transgender people are always the sole deciders of what pronouns they use, and with whom. This situation was complicated by Tony’s untimely death. Diaz’s statement that, “That mother don’t have to say anything or appease anybody because that was her child,” utterly fails to address the real issue here. Tony McDade, especially in death, is the only one who decides who Tony McDade is. On Tony’s social media accounts, and to his chosen family, he identified as Tony. For media outlets and the Mayor’s LGBTQ Advisory Board to think that they can use his complicated relationship to his family as a deflection of their own deadnaming, misgendering, and callous lack of care for who Tony wanted to represent himself as, is wrong.

As a collective of transgender, non-binary, queer, black, brown, cisgender, and white organizers for justice, Tallahassee Community Action Committee is shocked and disappointed by the lack of thought Mayor Dailey’s LGBTQ Advisory Board put into their statements on Tony McDade. Trans people, whether in life or death, deserve to be given the same standards of respect and dignity as everyone else. We will fight to defend this and we continue to demand #JusticeForTony because #BlackTransLivesMatter.

Originally Published by Tallahassee Community Action Committee

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While The Courts—And Anti-Abortion Extremist Governors—Play Politics, Women’s Lives Are In Danger

Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt:

Washington, D.C. — Governors have just one job that matters today—to keep their citizens safe, healthy and protected from the coronavirus.  But anti-abortion politicians like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, as well as Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, are using the pandemic as an excuse to fuel their personal vendetta against abortion care.   

They issued bans on abortion, labeling the procedure as “non-essential.” This would force patients to delay this urgent and time-sensitive care or require them to travel hundreds of miles to another state—which travel bans may make impossible as well. 

On Monday, federal judges in Texas, Alabama, and Ohio blocked the governors’ brazenly political actions, but the next day the Texas 5th Circuit Court of Appeals put a hold on that order, allowing Gov. Abbott to proceed with his unconstitutional, cruel and dangerous executive action.    

And talk about hypocrisy!  While Gov. Abbot pretends to care about protecting health and safety by limiting women’s freedom, he refuses to tell churches to shut their doors during the crisis.  

Women already bear the brunt of this pandemic— homeschooling children, caring for sick relatives, working essential but often low-wage jobs and making up the majority of health care workers. For women stuck at home with an abusive partner, the risks of being forced to continue a pregnancy are even higher. These bans must not stand.  

NOW condemns the Texas court’s actions and supports efforts to overturn it on appeal.  In the meantime, we are continuing to defend women’s constitutional right to abortion care.  This is no time to play politics with women’s health.  

Contact

Kimberly Hayes, Press Secretary, press@now.org,

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All Women’s Wage Gap Obscures Diversity in Earnings 

Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today’s Equal Pay Day marks how far into the year women must work to be paid what men were paid on December 31st of the previous year. This date highlights a wage gap based on a ratio of median annual earnings for all women as compared to the median for all men: the wage gap for all women in 2019 was 18.5 percent. But the wage gap for women among racial and ethnic groups is quite different. 

Looking at the ratio of women’s to men’s median weekly earnings for full-time workers in 2019, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, reveal a significant variation between communities: 

Latinas    

Black Women 

  • Black women are paid 61.4 cents to the dollar as compared to White men.   
  • Black women are also being paid 91.5 cents of every dollar Black men make.   

White Women   

  • White women are paid 78.4 cents of each dollar made by White men.  

Asian American Women   

  • Asian-American women are paid 89.4 cents to the dollar made by White men.   
  • Asian-American women are also paid only  76.7 cents to each dollar that  Asian-American men make.   
  • Even within these racial communities, there are other factors impacting women’s pay. In the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, for example, Vietnamese women are paid 67 cents to the dollar as compared to White men, and 80 cents to the dollar as compared to AAPI men within the same ethnic group.  

Native American Women   

  • Native American women receive 57 cents to every dollar made by White men.   
  • There is a lack of data regarding pay gaps between Native American women and men, however, it is likely that this gap exists.   

The narrowing of the gender pay gap has slowed to a near standstill in the last 10 years, shrinking by less than half a percentage point. If the pace of change stays steady, it will take until 2059 for women and men to reach parity, and much longer for women of color.  

The gender pay gap hurts women, families, and our society at large. NOW is a longtime supporter of legislation such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, first introduced nearly 20 years ago, which would take modest steps towards narrowing the gender pay gap. But what is needed is a strong equal pay ‘for substantially similar work’ law as several states have recently adopted. 

 These disparities must be addressed by state and federal governments and by employers, and we must be aware that wage disparity is not an isolated issue. Equal pay must be paired with access to paid sick leave, health care, a higher national minimum wage, and other critical protections. Especially now that the country is continuing to face the fallout of the Coronavirus pandemic, women’s economic security is more important than ever.   

Contact

Kimberly Hayes, Press Secretary, press@now.org, 202-570-4745