The American LGBT Civil Rights Movement has often been paralleled to the African American Civil Rights Movement. Like most children growing up in the American public school system, I learned about the history of African American civil rights from textbooks and teachers who presented it as one nice, pre-package story wrapped up neatly in a pretty red, white and blue bow.
This story begins with the American slave trade. Then, it transitions into the American Civil War and the ending of African American slavery. Next, students learn about separate but equal policy, Jim Crow laws, Rosa Parks and Montgomery, Alabama. This leads into a brief, watered down version of the 1950-60s Civil Rights Movement.
Finally, the story ends – as it always does – with a huge emphasis on Martin Luther King’s 1963 I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial, where a quarter of a million civil rights supporters gathered in the fight to end racism. And as the story fades to black, the message is clear. Students are taught to believe that the fight for civil rights is over, everyone is now equal and America’s crippling struggle with racial hatred and discrimination is over.
Today, nine caskets in Charleston, South Carolina would beg to differ with that message.
I’m referring to the Charleston Black church massacre committed by a white supremacy terrorist who, on June 17th, 2015, killed Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd (54), Susie Jackson (87), Ethel Lee Lance (70), Depayne Middleton-Doctor (49), Clementa C. Pinckney (41), Tywanza Sanders (26), Daniel Simmons (74), Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (45) and Myra Thompson (59).
I write their names to honor them and all victims of hate crimes. Combine this with the 6 Black churches that have been set afire across the south – 4 confirmed arsons – less than a week after the massacre in Charleston, and we see that America still has a long way to go in reckoning with its racial past.
Yet, at a young age we are taught that the fight is over, that African American civil rights are an issue of a previous era. This causes a failure in acknowledging that there is more work that needs to be done. As a result, the majority of American society feels comfortable excusing itself from any further responsibility to answer to its own social and institutional racism against black bodies. Racism that, in 2015, continues to instill itself in the forms of hate crimes, police killings and brutality, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement and negative media bias, among many others.
That is why, on the morning of June 26th, when I heard of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality for couples all over the country I celebrated the decision, but not without fear. This ruling is an important step in reinforcing the 14th amendment and ensuring greater equality for LGBT identified persons in the eyes of the law. It would be dangerous, however, to celebrate this achievement as the end of the LGBT civil rights struggle. I fear that America will prematurely wrap up this moment in history as a one, joyous fade to black moment. Unfortunately, like the African American civil rights movement, we are nowhere near that point.
This ruling, for example, does nothing to address the disproportionate incarceration rates of trans* women of color. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, 21% of transgender women have been incarcerated at some point in their lives, but almost 50% of all Black trans* women have been incarcerated at least once. This ruling also does nothing to address the safety of trans* women once they get to prison, 59% of which report having been sexually assault by an inmate, according to a California study of male prisons. Outside of prison, the situation is just as scary. For the first 2 months of 2015, trans* women of color were murdered at a rate of nearly one homicide per week. It is hard to pat the American government on the back for a job well done when I know there are still members of the LGBT community who are suffering at the hands of its very inaction.
On June 26th, the Supreme Court acted on marriage equality, but there are so many other LGBT human rights issues that need just as much of our attention. Let’s not let the victory of one battle turn into the illusion that we have won the whole war.