Hate Crimes and Political Dynamics
Posted: April 26, 2011 Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Crime, GLBT Rights, Violence against women | Tags: Chrissy Lee Polis, hate crimes, transgen, transgender 22 CommentsWe’ve run a lot of blog posts on GLBT bullying recently. We’ve never focused directly on the incredible numbers of hate crimes that are aimed specifically at the transgender community. An unfortunate incident in Baltimore provides an opportunity to specifically look at the bullying and assault that this community endures. There’s a crime story playing out in the MSM that has brought some public attention to transgender victims of hate crimes. We’re beginning to find out more of the details on the beating of Chrissy Lee Polis in a McDonald’s bathroom in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s a touchstone story because there are issues of race involved also. This story involves two groups of people that have historically been victims of hate crimes.
Chrissy is a white woman in trans. Her two attackers were both black teenage girls. One was 14 and the other was 18. Video of the crime was captured by an employee on a cell phones and has made its way to the internet. (Warning: This is an extremely violent video.) There is also a video interview at the Baltimore Sun–posted below–of Chrissy Lee speaking about her attack and the incredible bigotry encountered by the transgen community. The police are taking the crime quite seriously and McDonald’s has issued statements condemning the crime. Chrissy is recovering from her physical injuries. That’s the good news.
By Sunday evening, a Facebook page titled “Chrissy Lee Polis” with a picture of the McDonald’s arches had more than 800 people who “liked” the page. Many of the posters on the page pledged their support and provided words of comfort, and several identified themselves as transgender.
One poster, Robyn Webb, has a teleconferencing company, TG Works, that is collecting funds to help pay for Polis’ medical bills and help her relocate. Polis, who has not had a job or a stable place to stay for the past two years, has said she has been living with friends in the area.
Webb thought the incident should be prosecuted as a hate crime.
The police report does not provide a motive, but it quotes one of the suspects saying that the fight was “over using a bathroom.” In the report, officers said the teens accused Polis of going into the wrong one.
Many transgender individuals face public accommodation issues, Webb said.
I don’t want to make this a crime story post. I want this to be about what Chrissy and her community face daily. What specifically got me interested in writing about this attack was a thoughtful blog piece by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville as well as a promise I made to a reader who asked that we blog about the bullying of transgens specifically. It’s unfortunate that Chrissy’s attack is the reason for this discussion. I was not aware that some right wing blogs had been using the story as a way of attacking the black community. This is awful and Melissa takes the opportunity to rightly changes the frame.
I almost don’t know where to begin discussion of this incident. It’s so terrible—and yet to be shocked by a crime of this nature against a trans woman is a privilege. I am horrified and I am profoundly sad and I am angry—because this shit doesn’t happen in a void. I am relieved that Polis is physically okay, but my heart hurts for the lingering psychological effects she may experience. And I ache for members of the trans* community, and their loved ones, who have yet another pointed reminder of the hatred and fear felt by so many cis people, socialized in a trans*-hostile culture that rigidly forces people into a gender binary and lazily relies on gender essentialism and arbitrarily privileges cisgenderedness.
And I am depressed that, because Polis is white and her attackers are black, white racists are using this incident to engage in despicable racism—which is, whether effectively or intentionally, just a way of silencing discussion of cis privilege.
What is unusual about this crime is that it has made its way to the public arena, because hate crimes against transgender individuals tend to go unreported. Additionally, transgen violence is overrepresented in crime statistics given the number of transgen individuals. Crimes against this community occur frequently because there are several dynamics at play. Here are some statistics to think about.
Transgender people are often targeted for hate violence based on their non-conformity with gender norms and/or their perceived sexual orientation. Hate crimes against transgender people tend to be particularly violent. Our best estimates indicate that one out of every 1,000 homicides in the U.S. is an anti-transgender hate crime. This estimation is based on data collected by the national organizers of the Transgender Day of Remembrance and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Organizers of the Transgender Day of Remembrance track the number of transgender people killed each year in hate-based attacks using media articles, community reports and other publically available data. By this count, they estimate that at least 15 transgender people are killed each year in hate-based attacks, although we believe the number to be higher based on transgender people’s common fear of going to the police and widespread misreporting. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates approximately 14,000 homicides in the country each year. Based on these figures, we can estimate that approximately one out of every 1000 homicides in the U.S. is an anti-transgender hate-based crime.
Many victims of Transgender hate-based crime are blacks. The Southern Poverty Law Center has placed special emphasis on these hate crimes since 2003. This is one of the reasons that this is so important to take this dynamic back from right wing blogs that are perversely making this a racial issue. It is not. I want to quote from one of their articles written by Bob Moser called ‘Disposable People’ to make this point. This article starts with a narrative about one young victim named Stephanie Thomas who began life as Stephen Thomas.
In some cases, the details remain too murky to say for certain whether these murders were hate-motivated. But all 27 have at least one of the telltale signs of a hate crime — especially the sort of extreme brutality, or “overkill,” that was all too evident in the bullet-torn bodies of Stephanie Thomas and Ukea Davis.
“The overkill is certainly an indicator that hate was present,” says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University who has written several books about hate crimes and murder.
“When you see excessively brutal crimes, and you know the victim is gay or black or Latino or transgender, you have to suspect that hate was a motive. There’s a sense of outrage in these crimes that someone different is breathing or existing.”
One reason it’s so tough to prove that anti-transgender murders are hate crimes is that so few are ever solved. Of the 27 murders in 2002 and the first nine months of 2003, arrests had been made in only 7 — fewer than one-third — at press time. The general “clearance rate” for murders is almost twice as high, around 60%.
“The police are very slow in solving murders committed against marginalized Americans, whether they’re black, Latino, gay, prostitutes or transgender,” Levin says.
“When more than one of those characteristics is present in a victim” — usually the case in anti-transgender murders — “they really don’t act quickly. They’re much more likely to form a task force and offer a reward when the victim is a straight, middle-class college student.”
When it comes to hate crimes that stop short of murder — assaults, harassment — it’s virtually impossible to gauge the extent of the problem. The reason is simple: the victims of anti-transgender hate crimes almost never report them.
Here is a link to a 2007 study that compares hate crime rates against groups that are protected by hate crime legislation and those that are not. Violence against the transgen community is clearly a problem.
A close analysis of hate crime rates demonstrates that groups that are already covered by hate crime laws, such as African Americans, Muslims, and Jews, report similar rates of hate crime victimization as lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, who are not currently federally protected. On average:
• 8 in 100,000 African Americans report being the victim of hate crime
• 12 in 100,000 Muslims report being the victim of hate crime
• 15 in 100,000 Jews report the victim of hate crime
• 13 in 100,000 gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals report being the victim of hate crimeCurrently hate crimes based on gender expression are not covered in federal hate crime legislation. This omission persists despite evidence that transgender individuals experience a similar number of hate crimes as some other protected groups, with an average of 213 hate crimes per year.
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