New racial profiling report highlights LGBT experiences with police profiling

split photo: top - Cece McDonald holding her hand out through the glass in prison; bottom - three people holding signgs saying LGBTQ New Yorkers say NO to NYPD profiling

Last week, the NAACP released Born Suspect, a report on racial profiling by the police and the continued fight to end it. The report includes information on the national impact of racial profiling as well as successful advocacy strategies to curb it.

Coming at a time when the national conversation on racial profiling and police violence has taken center stage after the murders of a number of black men at the hands of the police, the report provides much-needed analysis of these issues as they stand today across the nation. It is particularly refreshing to see the inclusion and highlighting of the distinct experiences of LGBT people with racial profiling, as well as LGBT communities’ participation in efforts to put an end to discriminatory policing. 

[The LGBT community] faces profiling based on actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or HIV status. This discrimination is often multi-layered when LGBT individuals are also people of color, youth, a different nationality or religion, or profiled based on their perceived immigration or socioeconomic status. As the above stories describe, the experience of this community with discriminatory policing tactics are devastating and the fight to end racial profiling must include a conscious effort to end profiling of LGBT communities.

Full disclosure: Streetwise and Safe, where I work, served on the advisory committee of this project (though mostly before I came on).

You can ready the full report here.

1bfea3e7449eff65a94e2e55a8b7acda-bpfullVerónica is here for queer & trans resistance of systems that were never meant to protect us.

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Verónica Bayetti Flores has spent the last years of her life living and breathing reproductive justice. She has led national policy and movement building work on the intersections of immigrants' rights, health care access, young parenthood, and LGBTQ liberation, and has worked to increase access to contraception and abortion, fought for paid sick leave, and demanded access to safe public space for queer youth of color. In 2008 Verónica obtained her Master’s degree in the Sexuality and Health program at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She loves cooking, making art, listening to music, and thinking about the ways art forms traditionally seen as feminine are valued and devalued. In addition to writing for Feministing, she is currently spending most of her time doing policy work to reduce the harms of LGBTQ youth of color's interactions with the police and making sure abortion care is accessible to all regardless of their income.

Verónica is a queer immigrant writer, activist, and rabble-rouser.

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