It’s Time to End Profiling of LGBT People of Color (2014)
This article first appeared in The Root.
A few years ago in New York City, a 17-year-old black transgender girl named Trina was walking down the street when she was stopped by police officers and frisked. When a warrant check came up clean, the officer looked in her purse, found condoms and then arrested her for loitering with the purposes of prostitution—the type of arrest that would be unthinkable had she been a cisgender, heterosexual boy.
Yet it’s the type of arrest that happens to gay men and women of color—as well as transgender women of color and homeless LGBT youths of color—on an all-too-frequent basis during encounters with police, and it represents a hidden but devastating form of profiling.
The fight against profiling by law enforcement is at a critical moment. Last week U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to collect hard data on stops, searches and arrests by federal law-enforcement officials, just weeks after proposing a new ban on profiling—one that includes profiling based on sexual orientation and gender identity. These are important steps toward a fairer criminal-justice system. Still, there is more to be done to make sure that the national conversation around profiling deals with the crisis of profiling against LGBT people and LGBT people of color, specifically.
Last week a diverse group led by the Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, the Center for American Progress, the Center for HIV Law and Policy and Streetwise and Safe released a federal-policy road map to address the continuing and pervasive profiling, policing and punishment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans—many of whom are young men and women of color and young transgender people of color. This road map offers critical guidance to the federal government in its efforts to stamp out injustice in the legal system.
Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are significantly overrepresented in all aspects of the penal system. In one national survey, 73 percent of LGBT individuals reported an encounter with a law-enforcement officer over the preceding year. According to data collected by anti-violence programs, 48 percent of LGBT people seeking protection from police reported instances of police misconduct. Researchers have also documented higher levels of verbal, physical and sexual abuse from law enforcement against LGBT youths.
The problems are compounded for LGBT people of color, who deal with discrimination on multiple fronts, including homophobia and transphobia, in addition to racial bias. More than a third of LGBT people of color reported experiencing verbal or physical abuse in encounters with law enforcement.
Combating this pattern are a number of grassroots organizations working in their communities at the intersections of racial justice, criminal justice and LGBT rights. In New Orleans, BreakOUT! played a pivotal role in securing comprehensive protections for LGBT people after the New Orleans Police Department came under fire. In New York City, Streetwise and Safe helped pass the stop-and-frisk bill that outlawed profiling against LGBT people as well as people of color. The crisis, however, demands a response from the highest levels of government.
With his recent announcements, Holder began to address a number of concerns raised in the road map. Here are some next steps that he and President Barack Obama can take:
* Ensure that protections against all forms of profiling—including profiling based on sexual orientation and gender identity—extend across the country by making federal funding to local law-enforcement agencies conditional on their adoption of strong and enforceable bans on profiling.
* Encourage prosecutors and police to stop confiscating and citing possession of condoms as evidence.
* End immigration-enforcement programs that encourage and drastically expand the consequences of discriminatory profiling by local law-enforcement agencies.
Justice continues to be elusive and conditional for LGBT people, particularly LGBT people of color, homeless and low-income LGBT people, and LGBT youths of color. But just as the principles that define our nation’s character leave no room for racial bias, they also leave no room for bias against members of any community.
We need to end institutionalized homophobia and transphobia, just as we need to end institutionalized racism. Let us be sure to leave no one behind.
Benjamin Todd Jealous is the former president and CEO of the NAACP. He is currently a partner at Kapor Capital and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Andrea Ritchie is coordinator of New York City-based advocacy organization Streetwise and Safe and co-author of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States.