So Barack barraged the nation with a $680 billion defense act, bundled so tightly some are complaining about the inclusion of significantly comprehensive anti-bias legislation—since the measure wasn’t brought up as a stand-alone bill, it was hard to veto. What it means for the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act—a piece of legislation which marks the first time federal law specifically addresses protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, as well as those targeted for bias due to faith, disability, gender, race, or nationality—to be included as part of a massive defense act, is still up for speculation.

What we do know is that the combination of the two names in the title of the bill is causing an immediate divide—as anyone with a bit of historical political savvy might have expected—within certain communities of color. Shouts out to Eisa Ulen for her thoughtfully written article on this topic, in The Grio.

That fundamentalist Christians are storming over their perception of a loss of rights, due to the passage of this legislation, is beginning to stain the nation.

Similarly, our own debates are easily tracked, disclosed, monitored.

I’m reaching out for a ceasefire on that bickering, for a minute. Yes, seriously.

Here’s why: divide and conquer is how they do, and we know that all too well.

Bear with me . . .

We do well, as a nation, to honor the memory of James Byrd, Jr., with the passage of this new federal protection act. There are few names that stand out for many of us as quickly recognizable, with such chilling emotional impact.

The lived reality of bias crimes continues to reveal an overwhelming anti-Black prejudice: 69.3% of all bias crimes committed in 2007, the most recent data available from the FBI Hate Crimes Statistics, were against Blacks.

The murders James Byrd, Jr. and of Matthew Shepard should have stunned us all. There are few immune to the revolting anger and mocking indifference with which hatred can wrangle a rope or drag a human form. Shepard and Byrd deserve more than we living can now ever give them.

Hatred is not, still not, delimited to a struggle between “black and white”: when hate crimes were directed toward those who were willing and able to report victimization based on national origin, 61.6% reporting were Latinos (FBI Hate Crimes Statistics, 2007). And yes, ‘man@s, I’m alive to the fact that “Latino” is not a national origin. You know what they say: statistics are like a bikini—what they reveal is important, but what they conceal is vital. I didn’t put together the FBI categories. If you look at the discussion of the FBI stats, what’s said is that most of the violence occurs in the Southwestern U.S., and is targeted against Mexicanos. Oh, and their term is (tú sabes) “Hispanic.”

We know our peoples are routinely victimized. We know our men “fit the description.” As mothers, sisters, wives, lovers, friends, we say: You know better than to go out there like that—you fit the description.This is not a conversation people outside our communities tender with one another.

Bias, however, is not the province of male victims. Let us remember that, on Mother’s Day, 2004, Sakia Gunn, too, was brutally murdered. She was Black. She was female. She was lesbian. She was 15 years old. A Black man beat her, then stabbed her to death, after Sakia (known to her friends as “T”) fended off sexual advances, by explaining she was gay. Her killer left the scene, while Sakia died in the arms of her best friend, also just a teen.

While Sakia’s family and community mourned her loss, Professor Kim Pearson at the College of New Jersey set out to discover why there so little expression of outrage or concern, in major media sources. Pearson’s research of news coverage for Sakia Gunn’s murder, compared to the publicity received for the murder of Matthew Shepard in a remote area of Wyoming, five years earlier, brought astonishing results. For the two months after Shepard was killed in 1998, Pearson discovered 507 stories in the major newspapers and broadcast outlets. In the same time span after Sakia’s death, she found only 11 stories.

Three months after Sakia’s death, her favorite teacher, Shani Baraka, was also murdered in New Jersey. That case received slightly more publicity, in view of the fact that this time, loss had touched a more visible, if more volatile, community: Shani was the daughter of poet and playwright Amiri Baraka—the highly politicized, vocal, rebel leader, who had earlier that year been “deposed” as New Jersey’s Poet Laureate, after authoring a poem, in which he inferred what was understood to be an anti-Semitic connection between Israel and the 9/11 attacks. During the murder of Shani Baraka, another Black woman, Rayshon Holmes, was also killed—both by the estranged husband of Shani’s sister. Much of the press on these events are found in the form of personal blogs, by members of the arts and activists communities.

We are, as a nation, in perpetual amnesia, when asked to recall victims of bias crimes who are woman, lesbian, Latin@, trans, intersexed, Asian, mixed-race, mestiz@, bisexual, gender-queer, indigenous, Pacific Islander—any victim of a hate crime who is not white or male.

The lived realities of our communities, our worlds, do not support this willful ignorance: if we continue to refuse those we’ve lost their rightful places in our collective histories and in our memories, the danger for our loved ones sharpens, every day.

In the first hours of  press, after the signing of this year’s anti-bias legislation, USA Today trumpeted the hate crimes prevention act in a headline redefining history: Obama signs hate-crimes law rooted in crimes of 1998. The paper’s cover story leads with an evolving story, reconstructed from the title of the legislation—a history which belies the very struggles the bill is meant to encompass.

The title of the bill 13 years in the making, developed to embrace and support us all, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, has already begun to divide us.

When we are working to end oppression for all, however, the last action we want to take is the attachment of specific names to the splendor of hope. The moment we have done so, we create an act of exclusion; we begin to construct a stumped history of our momentous tasks; we build a single face and a body for the collective labor we have undertaken. Recognizing there is no equality and no equity in this recognition of our achievements, we begin to suffer—and, worse, to blame.

Let’s not give away another decade, another presidency, yet another generation’s well-being, because we allowed a governmental misstep (and let’s work on the premise that’s what it is) to put us each at odds with one another, yet again. Think about how many times our various, complex needs have been divided, to the point we don’t know where to turn, when we feel our multi-faceted selves: as people of color; as queers; immigrants; people living with disabilities; as survivors of random assaults; masters of daily assaults; transpersons; parents and friends of individuals who are facing situations we may or may not understand.

In healing the bias divide, the first steps—and there are still first steps to be taken—will still be to eradicate racism and white privilege, within the LGBTIQ communities; in other quarters, to eliminate homophobia amongst our communities of color (Christian fellowships, put down those swords: let us remember Mark 12:28-31).

There comes a new generation. They learn to lead, as we attempt to role model.

How, indeed, to keep in mind the meaning of “defense acts.”

C/S,

Canela A. Jaramillo