All Black Lives Matter: The Erasure of Black Trans Lives from the BLM Movement

By Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed, 25-year-old, cisgender Black man, was shot and killed while jogging near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia. While outcry ensued, it wasn’t until a few months later, after video footage of the murder of George Floyd—an unarmed, cisgender Black man who was killed after officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds—that the world saw widespread protests against the anti-Blackness that fuels violence toward the Black community and heard the rallying cry: Black Lives Matter.

The Black Lives Matter movement was founded on July 13, 2013, by Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors, in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter has since developed into an international human rights organization that aims to end systemic racism. 

Garza (who identifies as queer) initially helped to bring an intersectional lens to the movement—intentionally addressing how race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity impact oppression. Yet, as Black Lives Matter has grown into a global movement, the fight has become increasingly centered only on certain Black lives, predominantly Black, cisgender, (perceived) heterosexual men. Black TGNC (trans and gender non-conforming) people have been largely absent and continue to be blatantly erased within the movement and within the Black community at-large, despite the ever-growing murder rate of Black trans folks (especially Black trans women) in the United States.

In 2019, there were at least 27 deaths of TGNC people in the United States due to fatal violence. The majority of those killed were Black transgender women. In 2020, there have already been at least 14 TGNC people fatally shot or killed. We say at least because too often many cases go unreported or misreported. Not even two days after Floyd was shot and killed, Tony McDade, a Black trans man, was shot and killed by police. While details of the event are still being uncovered, several onlookers reported that McDade was unarmed and that police fired first without identifying themselves. 

On June 1, Iyanna Dior, a Black trans woman, was brutally beaten by a mob of more than 10 cisgender men and women in St. Paul, Minnesota—only minutes away from Minneapolis, where Black Lives Matter protests were ablaze. No arrests have been made in Dior’s case.

Since May, at least three additional Black trans women have been killed: Nina Pop (stabbed to death in her apartment), Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells (dismembered, her body found in the Schuylkill River) and Riah Milton (shot several times in a robbery attempt in Liberty Township, Ohio). Fells and Milton were murdered within 24 hours of each other. 

The lack of public outcry around Dior’s attack and the murders of McDade, Pop, Fells, and Milton signal the underrepresentation of Black trans people in the Black Lives Matter movement (if they are represented at all). This erasure is predominantly due to the consistent and continued transphobia and misogynoir within the Black community. While many murders of TGNC people are not at the hands of the police, the lack of institutional response and consequences still applies.

Whether state-sanctioned violence or not, Black bodies are being slain in this country. Black Lives Matter, at its core, was formed to end violence against Black people in America. To accomplish this, the killings of the most marginalized within the Black community must be acknowledged and action must be taken. There will be no revolution if the disproportionate ways in which Black TGNC people are disenfranchised and marginalized are not addressed.

Black lives cannot matter unless ALL Black lives matter, and that includes the lives of Black transgender and gender non-conforming people.