Coverage on racial injustice and policing tends to focus on cisgender (non-trans) black men. Society's default to cis (non-trans) masculinity explains the constricting ways police brutality is discussed, and it is imperative we do better. #SayHerName brought glimpses of the experiences of cisgender (non-trans) women into conversations surrounding hyper-policing in black communities. However, the black trans experience interacting with police has continuously been an afterthought. The infamous cases of CeCe McDonald and Mya Hallalong with Laverne Cox's portrayal of an incarcerated black trans woman in the hit series "Orange is the New Black" brought the hyper-criminalization black trans women face at the hands of the police to national attention. Despite this, there was a collective failure to establish a communal literacy about how police violence impacts black trans life at large. Both transfeminine and transmasculine people were left without their needs met, and community learned visibility is not enough to spark understanding of black trans reality. It also can be argued that Black transmasculine and/or gender non-conforming people were largely missing from the national conversation of policing in black communities outside of Poussey's infamous death in the "Orange is the New Black" series.

 

Ky Peterson's case thrusted the black transmasculine experience of criminalization into the national scope. Ky, a black transman, was arrested and imprisoned after murdering his rapist. A rape kit performed on Ky tested positive , yet he was still unjustly incarcerated. Ky's case was riveting due to the combination of racial and gender-based violence he experienced. Activists had to sit with the reality that transmasculine people are sexually assaulted and slapped with serious jail time for defending themselves. In fact, transmasculine people tend to experience sexual and domestic violence at higher rates than their cis counterparts. This emphasized that the nuances surrounding black transmasculine identity are pivotal aspects that can no longer be swept under the rug. Although Ky's case briefly shook the nation, reports on police failing black transmasculine people went back into the shadows after the wave of sensationalism calmed. Fast forward to now, and it is clear the epidemic of police violence against black transmasculine people around the nation never ended. Kimberle Crenshaw's intersectionality framework can be utilized to explain the phenomenon, however, it is important to elaborate on what "intersectionality" is.

Crenshaw argued some members of society experience a multiplicity of oppressions simultaneously because of who they are, creating an entirely new oppressive experience because of systemic inability to effectively address the nuances that exist within marginalized groups. This is the case for transmasculine black people in the correctional system. The status of being black and transmasculine alone drastically increases the likelihood of police interaction in the lifetime as studies have shown the following: