Center for American Progress

It’s Time to End Profiling of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People of Color
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It’s Time to End Profiling of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People of Color

Benjamin Todd Jealous and Andrea Ritchie explore the profiling of LGBT people of color.

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 above excerpt was originally published in The Root. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Ben Jealous

Senior Fellow