Living Out Loud with Darian

by Rev. Irene Monroe
via Bilerco Project

By now many in the LGBTQ community have heard of the news about the cop beat down of Duanna Johnson in a Memphis booking room that was captured on a surveillance video. Those of us of African descent, who don't know or haven't seen a photo of Johnson, might pick up on a cultural marker, her name, assuming correctly she's an African American sister.



While police brutality is both unbridled and rampant in the African American community, hitting an African American woman several times with handcuffs wrapped around the officer's knuckles while an African American nurse goes directly to the offending white officer to see if he's okay is another cultural marker - Johnson's a transwoman.

Monica Roberts, founder of the African American transpeople online group Transsistahs-Transbrothas, in her post "Yo NAACP, NBJC...Where Y'all At?" wrote:


"While I applaud you [NAACP] for declaring a state of emergency over the treatment of African-Americans by the police, I have yet to hear any NAACP local, state or the national chapter speak up not only about this case, but about the verbal and physical hate attacks on African-American transpeople in general. As Duanna Johnson's case graphically points out, some of the problems we transpeople of African descent face are at the hands of the people who are supposed to protect and serve us," wrote

But the appalling silence Roberts experienced from major African American organizations in this country that vow to protect and serve its community was also experienced from black media.

The Duanna Johnson story will not be featured in Jet, Ebony nor Essence.

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