Microsoft Word - Lamble_trans_remembrance_Sept07a.doc


 

 

Retelling Racialized Violence, Remaking White Innocence: 

The Politics of Interlocking Oppressions in Transgender Day of Remembrance 

Sarah Lamble 

 

--DRAFT VERSION— 

September 2007 

(Forthcoming in Sexuality Research & Social Policy, March 2008) 

 

 

Abstract: Transgender Day of Remembrance has become a significant political event 

among those resisting violence against gender variant persons. Commemorated in more 

than 250 locations worldwide, this day honors individuals who were killed due to 

antitransgender hatred or prejudice. However, by focusing on transphobia as the 

definitive cause of violence, this ritual potentially obscures the ways in which hierarchies 

of race, class, and sexuality constitute such acts. Taking the Transgender Day of 

Remembrance / Remembering Our Dead project as a case study for considering 

memorialization politics, and tracing the narrative history of the Fred F.C. Martinez 

murder case in Colorado, I argue that deracialized accounts of violence produce 

seemingly innocent white witnesses who can consume these spectacles of domination 

without confronting their own complicity in such acts. I suggest remembrance practices 

require critical rethinking if we are to confront violence in more effective ways.  

 

Key words: gender; identity; racism; transphobia; memorialization; narrative; activism; 

queer politics 

 

 

 



 
 

 

2 

 

In the last eight years, Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) has become a 

significant political event among those resisting violence against gender variant persons. 

Commemorated in more than 250 locations predominately throughout North America, 

but also in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America and Southeast Asia, this day 

honors individuals who were killed due to antitransgender hatred or prejudice (TDOR, 

2005a, 2006a).  While various memorial activities are organized at the grassroots level, 

most events are linked through two sister websites, the Remembering Our Dead project, 

which records transgender deaths, and the official Transgender Day of Remembrance 

site, which provides educational resources and publicizes transgender vigils around the 

world.  Projects of the non-profit organization Gender Education and Advocacy, both 

websites provide vital tools for local community mobilization, and play an influential role 

in shaping transgender remembrance practices worldwide (Gender Education and 

Advocacy, 2003a).1  Indeed, these projects have played a crucial role in raising public 

awareness about the extreme violence regularly perpetrated against gender variant 

persons.  Despite their importance as resources for activism, the Transgender Day of 

Remembrance website and Remembering Our Dead project are nonetheless limited in the 

scope of analysis around causes of, and potential responses to, violence.  By focusing on 

transphobia as the definitive cause of violence, the websites do not fully contextualize 

incidents of violence within their specific time and place, and obscure the ways in which 

hierarchies of race, class, and sexuality situate and constitute such acts. In the process, 

transgender bodies are universalized along a singular identity plane of victimhood and 

rendered visible primarily through the violence that is acted upon them.  Taking the 

Transgender Day of Remembrance / Remembering Our Dead project as a case study for 

                                                
1 While some websites include independent information about Transgender Day of Remembrance, most 
provide a direct link to either the Remembering Our Dead project or Transgender Day of Remembrance 
website. See for example, Day of Silence (2007); National Organization for Women (2004); Gay Straight 
Alliance Network (2006); GLAAD (2003); Press for Change (2007); Vancouver Transgender Day of 
Remembrance (2006); Crisalide Azione Trans Nazionale (2002a); Support Transgenre Strasbourg (2005). 
Because the TDOR website posts more than 25 educational resources, including sample flyers, press 
releases, banners, and instructions for organizing remembrance vigils in schools and communities at the 
local level, its influence is evident in memorialization efforts elsewhere. A recent posting on YouTube 
(2006), for example, entitled “Transgender Day of Remembrance Tribute – Part 1 & 2”, relies exclusively 
on the TDOR website’s resources for its content, taking language verbatim from the website.  See also, 



 
 

 

3 

considering memorialization politics, and tracing the narrative history of the Fred F.C. 

Martinez murder case in Colorado, I demonstrate how deracialized accounts of violence 

produce seemingly innocent white witnesses who can consume these spectacles of 

domination without confronting their own complicity in such acts. Without addressing 

violence as a systemic effect of power, I argue that current manifestations of Transgender 

Day of Remembrance potentially limit the possibilities for resisting racialized gender 

violence in meaningful and effective ways.  

This article is not written to denigrate the important work of activists who 

struggle against violence.2 Nor is it to suggest that we should abandon remembrance 

practices that honor those who have suffered from violence.  Such practices serve 

multiple purposes, and mark important forms of collective healing, community gathering 

and public denunciations of violence.  Rather, this article critically questions the politics 

of who and how we remember, it interrogates the implications of speaking on behalf of 

the dead and it examines what is at stake in taking up particular kinds of remembrance 

practices. I argue that if we3 are to engage in effective struggle against violence, we must 

resist remembrance practices which rely on reductionist identity politics; we must pay 

attention to the specific relations of power that give rise to acts of violence; we must 

confront violence in its structural, systemic, and everyday forms. 

Narratives of remembrance are not merely problems of representation. The stories 

we take up in remembrance are constituent practices: They tell us who we are and how 

we know the world. As Roger Simon (2005) noted, “Practices of remembrance are 

questions of and for history as a force of inhabitation, as the way we live with images and 

stories that intertwine with our sense of limits and possibilities, hopes and fears, identities 

                                                                                                                                            
Houston Transgender Day of Remembrance (2006); Groupe Activiste Trans (2006); Trans Alliance Society 
(2003); Crisalide Azione Trans Nazionale (2002b). 
2 This article arose from my own involvement in Transgender Day of Remembrance and my participation 
as a nontrans person in ongoing struggles against trans-related oppression. I wrote this piece cautiously; I 
do not wish to replicate the history of nontrans persons who have critiqued, demonized, and pathologized 
trans struggles. At the same time, I take seriously the call for self-reflexivity within activism and my 
analysis emerges from concerns raised within my local trans and genderqueer communities about the 
overall effectiveness and broader implications of current manifestations of Transgender Day of 
Remembrance. 
3 I recognize that some readers may feel excluded from, or wish to remain outside, the various 
significations of the word we as I use it in this article. Although my use of we does presume readers’ 
general interest in working to end oppressive violence, I do not intend the term to denote inclusion or 



 
 

 

4 

and distinctions” (p. 3). In other words, narratives practices of remembrance have 

material effects on the social ordering of relations of power and the ways in which we 

come to know ourselves in relation to the dead. These effects are neither politically 

neutral nor socially inconsequential: “In these practices of remembrance, there is a 

prospective orientation that seeks to legitimate and secure particular social relations, 

making normative claims on the conduct of human behaviour’” (Simon, p. 4). At stake in 

this article is not simply a debate about what version of a story is told, how particular 

persons are presented, or who is included and excluded. Underlying this article is a 

broader concern about what kind of spaces for resistance are created through narratives of 

remembrance and how those narratives determine the boundaries and possibilities for 

enacting change.  

 

Decontextualized Violence: Deracing Transgender Bodies 

The Remembering Our Dead project was founded by trans activist Gwendolyn 

Ann Smith in response to the death of Rita Hester, an African-American transwoman 

who murdered in her Massachusetts apartment in November 1998.  Concerned that 

deaths of transgender persons were poorly documented and quickly forgotten, Smith 

began gathering and publicizing information about transgender deaths so trans 

communities would better know their own histories (Smith, 2000, ¶ ; 2001, ¶ 3-6; 2003, ¶ 

2 ).  In November 1999, Smith organized the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, a 

candlelight vigil in San Francisco.  Now an annual event, Transgender Day of 

Remembrance has become “the largest multi-venue transgender event in the world” 

(Smith, 2003, ¶ 3). 

As part of the ongoing Remembering Our Dead project, a small group of 

volunteers compile and record the name, date, location, and cause of death for trans-

related murders worldwide. As of November 2006, the list included 363 individuals 

(TDOR, 2006f).4 The comprehensiveness of the list is no doubt limited by an 

unavoidable reliance on mainstream media sources, which consistently fail to report 

                                                                                                                                            
exclusion of any specific community. Rather, I invite readers to participate in the process of self-reflexive 
questioning of remembrance practices. 
4 Several lists of transgender murders are available online. However, the most comprehensive and widely 
cited list is maintained on the Remembering Our Dead (2006c) and TDOR (2006f) websites. 



 
 

 

5 

thoroughly on transgender deaths, and reports from law enforcement officers, which 

often reflect inadequate responses to violence against transgender persons (Moran & 

Sharpe, 2004, 396). Indeed, as Smith noted, “the media’s reluctance to cover our deaths 

lies near the heart of this project” (Smith, 2000, ¶ 3). Chronic under-funding and limited 

resources within transgender communities poses further challenges to the project, and the 

emotional burden of collecting this information can be high (Smith, 2001, ¶ 9).  

Nevertheless, the project is a collaborative one, with international appeals for reports and 

strong links with a range of gender-related social justice organizations (Remembering 

Our Dead, 2006a; 2006b; 2006d).  Likewise, many of the resources posted on the 

Transgender Day of Remembrance website are produced by other allied groups in the 

United States, such as the Day of Silence Project, the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, and 

the Transgender Law Centre (TDOR, 2005b, 2006b). 

The Transgender Day of Remembrance website acknowledges that “not every 

person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgendered—

that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant—[but] each was a 

victim of violence based on bias against transgendered people” (TDOR 2004a, ¶ 2; 

2005a, ¶ 2). Both the TDOR website and Remembering Our Dead project are thereby 

explicit in privileging transphobia as the exclusive motivation for violence: “Over the last 

decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or 

prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives [italics added]” (TDOR 2005a, ¶ 

3, 2006a, ¶ 3; Smith, 2000, ¶ 5). Evident here is a deliberate effort to isolate transphobia 

from any other form of prejudice or cause of violence. From this vantage point, other 

factors are deemed not only to complicate our understanding of violence, but pose a 

threat to the legitimacy of the project’s political goals. The authenticity of the cause is 

secured through the authority of a particular community: The murder list includes “only 

those deaths that are known to the transgender community or that have been reported in 

the media” (TDOR, 2004a, ¶ 1). But who is this community that determines who will be 

remembered? Who is the subject that we are asked to remember? 

The answers to these questions are not simple. First, there is no clear consensus 

on what constitutes transgender, let alone transgender community. Emerging in the early 

1990s as an umbrella term to include a multiplicity of gender experiences and practices 



 
 

 

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that transgress dominant norms of gender expression (including trans-identified persons 

who use medical interventions to express their gender and those who do not, cross-

dressers, pan-gendered, intersex persons,5 two-spirited, etc), transgender has been 

broadly used as an identity around which gender-variant individuals could gather and 

organize political strategies.6 The term also emerged in resistance to pathologizing labels 

imposed by the medical establishment and in contestation of the trivialization of gender-

variant behavior in popular culture. However, fierce debates persist on how the term 

should be used, whom it includes—and what proximity it has to queer, gay, lesbian and 

bisexual organizing (Califia, 1997; Currah, 2006; Feinberg, 1996; Moran & Sharpe, 

2004; Namaste, 2005; Phelan, 2001; Valerio, 2002). These debates go beyond simple 

semantics and strike at the root of political struggles around citizenship rights and 

protection from harm. For individuals whose membership in a particular group can 

greatly affect their claims to medical care, protection from violence, and legal recognition 

of identity, the stakes are high.7   

These divisions over who is included in the community resurface within projects 

such as Transgender Day of Remembrance, where belonging through victimhood is the 

platform for political agency. For example, the 1993 high-profile murder of Brandon 

Teena8 sparked fierce sectarian battles among transgender, transsexual, and lesbian and 

                                                
5 Although intersex persons are often included within the scope of “transgender” struggles, there is an 
emerging consensus among gender activists that intersex issues and transgender issues, though related, 
should not be conflated (Currah, Juang & Minter, 2006, p. xv; Intersex Society, 2006, ¶ 4-5 ). 
6 Leslie Feinberg (1996) attributed the first use of transgender to Virginia Prince, who coined the term in 
the late 1980s as both a self-description and a way of describing people who “trans the gender barrier [but] 
not the sex barrier” (Feinberg, p. x). Prince was attempting to find a name for people who live in a gender 
that is not traditionally associated with their assigned gender at birth, yet differ from transsexuals by not 
seeking anatomical changes through surgery or hormones. The term is sometimes still used to differentiate 
between those who use medical interventions and those who don’t, but is now used more widely as an 
umbrella term.  
7 For example, when legal definitions of transgender identity require surgery or hormones as proof of 
transition, individuals who are unable, or choose not, to access those medical interventions may be denied 
gender-appropriate identification on key documents, such as passports, drivers licenses, birth certificates 
and health cards.  When a person’s identification papers conflict with their self-expressed gender 
presentation, such individuals may then be denied vital social services, and can be at higher risk for state 
based harassment and violence.  Similarly, if a state has human rights protections based on sexual 
orientation, but not gender identity or vice versa, the decision to claim one particular identity over another 
can affect whether a person is eligible for legal remedy against discrimination. 
8 I use the name Brandon Teena here because it is the name that is most commonly recognized. However, 
as Jacob Hale (1998) carefully documented, the identity of the individual who is popularly known as 
Brandon Teena was far more complicated than most accounts convey. It is not clear that this individual 
used the name Brandon Teena or firmly identified within any singular identity category. 



 
 

 

7 

gay activists, who each wanted to claim this murder as an attack against their own kind 

(Halberstam, 2005; Hale, 1998). A similar example can be found in the 1996 murder of 

three sex workers in Toronto who were shot within hours of each other by Marcello 

Palma. Two of the victims, Deanna/Thomas Wilkinson, and Shawn Keagan, were 

identified as cross-dressers and are listed on the Remembering Our Dead website as 

victims of transphobic violence. Yet they are also included in Douglas Janoff’s (2005) 

recent inventory of homophobic violence in Canada. From a third camp, Mirha-Soliel 

Ross and Viviane Namaste argued that these deaths arose from antiprostitute and class-

based discrimination, because the perpetrator described street people and prostitutes as 

scum and demonstrated no clear evidence of transphobia (Namaste, 2005).9 Similarly, 

Ross and Namaste noted that Grace Baxter, a fully passable, postoperative transsexual 

sex worker who is also listed on the Transgender Remembrance website, was killed by a 

john who was unaware of her trans status. Ross thus denounced Transgender 

Remembrance Day as “a big, bold and sickening political fraud” (quoted in Namaste, p. 

92). 

Within this political framework of claiming victims, activists—whose struggles 

are ultimately linked—can become pitted in a battle of what Razack and Fellows (1998) 

described as competing marginalities. In this model, justice claims rest not only upon 

proof that one group is most oppressed, but also most innocent; that is, the group in 

question must convey itself as bearing no responsibility in the oppression of others 

(Razack & Fellows). Identities are thus marked as constituting so-called good and bad 

victims, and these categories tend to fall along particular class, gender, and racial lines. 

The so-called perfect victim is the one who is believed to be most pure, innocent, and 

helpless—typically the white, middle-class girl child. It is not surprising then, that 

Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena, both marked as young, white, barely masculine 

(and, in Shepard’s case, also middle class), have become the poster children for resisting 

homophobic and transphobic violence. In contrast, cases involving victims of color, 

                                                
9 I would argue that this case is more complicated than what is presented by any of the above-noted 
accounts; the evidence suggests that class, race, gender, and sexuality were all factors in the murder. 
Though one might assume that race is only in operation when the victim or perpetrator is non-white, such a 
view fails to understand the logic of racial oppression. As many critical race scholars have demonstrated, 
whiteness is not simply the absence of race, but the site of a racial identity that renders itself invisible 



 
 

 

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prostitutes, and street people are rarely noticed, particularly by mainstream media, 

politicians and service organizations (Ott & Aoki, 2002). When less ideal victims are 

taken up by the media or championed by political groups, undesirable facts or complex 

dimensions of identity are often omitted from the story so as to produce a good victim 

narrative. By predicating political strategies upon innocent victimhood, violence against 

individuals who deviate from the ideal becomes less visible and more tolerable.  

Consequently, “those who are the most severely affected victims of sexism and racism 

(e.g. prostitutes or teenaged black males in the juvenile justice system) qualify least as 

‘genuine’ victims of crime” (Simon, 2000, p. 1132). Hence, the claims of the most 

privileged groups are advanced through the disavowal of other groups’ claims.  

There are, no doubt, strategic reasons why this tactic continues to be employed. 

As Razack and Fellows (1998) noted, “One reason we feel compelled to secure our own 

place on the margin as the most oppressed is that not to do so is to risk erasure” (p. 339). 

This is a vital concern for trans people, whose invisibility—induced by dominant power 

relations of sex and gender norms—makes it difficult to secure such basic rights and 

services as heath care and shelter access. Historically treated as freaks of science, sources 

of entertainment, or fodder for academic theorizing, trans people struggle to define 

visibility on their own terms (Namaste, 2000). Even among groups who claim solidarity 

with transpeople, tokenism and exclusionary practices persist (Namaste, 2005; Phelan, 

2001). Within this context, there is “much pressure to conform to the totalizing and 

essentializing dimensions of identity if claims of access to resources and demands for 

recognition of citizenship of transgender people are to have the gloss of legitimacy” 

(Moran & Sharpe, 2004, p. 412). Moreover, when the urgency of addressing violence is 

coupled with limited resources, time-pressures, and media demands for sound-byte 

politics, the more simple rhetorical strategies can easily win out over complex and 

nuanced analysis.  

It is not surprising, then, that the political narrative of Transgender Remembrance 

Day is reduced to a singular cause (transphobia) and singular identity (victim of 

transphobic violence). This narrative is achieved not only through the website’s self-

                                                                                                                                            
through its status as the norm (see for example, Delgado & Stefancic, 1997; Dyer, 1997; Frankenberg, 
1993; hooks, 1992; Leonardo, 2004). 



 
 

 

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description, but also through the remembrance archive itself. The list of murder victims, 

includes no information on the age, race, class, ability or particular circumstances of each 

individual who was murdered. While a handful of victim profiles include a photo of the 

person, most include only a generic silhouette image (2005d; 2006d).10  Nor is any such 

information provided about the persons who committed each crime, even when the 

perpetrators are known. Each case is abstracted from its history and context. Each murder 

is decontextualized and reabsorbed within a unified narrative and a universalized body of 

the dead trans subject. The narrative encoding of gender violence dovetails with a 

narrative decoding of racial violence, class violence, and sexual violence. Within this 

framing, each individual death can stand in and be substituted for another; difference is 

subsumed within sameness.  

Because we know so few details about each case, the cause of death becomes the 

most powerful marker of inclusion within the community of remembrance. The gruesome 

details of violence, which are repeated at vigils and reiterated through the remembrance 

archive, have strong visceral impact; we do not remember the names of the victims so 

much as we remember the violence that was done to them. Just as Western feminism’s 

reliance on a universal female victim has tended to define gender as what is done to 

women, the gender identity of trans people is signified by what is done to their bodies 

(Razack, 2001). Deliberately unmarked by race, class, age, ability, sexuality, and history, 

these individuals—otherwise unknown—are rendered visible solely through the violence 

that is enacted upon their bodies. The very existence of trans people is verified by their 

death. Violence thus marks the body as belonging to the trans community. In this way, 

violence simultaneously obliterates and produces a particular trans subject—both 

materially (in the act of killing) and symbolically (in the subsequent narration).  

Defined by the details of brutality, violence is reduced to the snapshot of a crime 

scene, a momentary fragment in time between perpetrator and victim. Without history or 

context, the systemic roots of violence are rendered invisible; violence is comprehensible 

only at the microlevel whereby individual transphobia becomes the only viable 

explanation. This picture is not only incomplete, but it undermines the scope of 

                                                
10 Drawing attention to the prevalence of silhouette images is not meant as a critique of the project 
organizers, who, as noted above, do not have the resources to find photographs of every victim listed on the 



 
 

 

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antiviolence efforts. Several scholars have illustrated the problem of using phobias as a 

primary explanation for violence (Spade & Willse, 2000). As Gary Kinsman (1996) noted 

of homophobia, “it individualizes and privatizes gay and lesbian oppression and obscures 

the social relations that organize it” (p. 33). Hence, the trans murder victim emerges as 

the product of an individual hatred or fear, rather than the accumulative effect of social 

institutions (such as legal, economic and political systems) which are founded on, and 

perpetuate, complex hierarchies of power and violence (such as white supremacy, 

patriarchy, heteronormativity). 

By accumulating a collective list of murder victims, the TDOR website does 

make efforts to demonstrate that acts of violence against trans people are not isolated 

events. One of the educational handouts, titled “Anti-Trans Murder: Over One A Month,” 

(TDOR, 2002) conveys the frequency at which such violence occurs. Yet the prevalence 

of murders is provided as further evidence of widespread transphobia, which invariably 

returns to individual perpetrators as the root cause of violence. This analysis is confirmed 

by the handout’s conflation of justice with individual punishment and retribution. As the 

handout states, “Those who are caught seldom receive sentences commensurate with their 

crimes. In over 200 cases, only one such murderer is currently on death row, and just two 

others are serving life sentences” (TDOR, ¶ 4). The wording suggests that justice would 

be better fulfilled if more perpetrators were given life—or death—sentences. Indeed, the 

Remembering Our Dead project actively supports harsher penalties for transgender 

related hate crimes (Gender Education and Advocacy, 2003b). Such so-called solutions, 

however, fail to confront systemic causes of violence (such as the criminal justice system 

itself) and ignore state complicity in authorizing violence (Spade & Willse, 2000). As 

Wendy Brown (1995) aptly demonstrated, the call for such judicial responses “casts the 

law in particular and the state more generally as neutral arbiters of injury rather than as 

themselves invested with the power to injure” (p. 27). Moreover, because hate crime 

claims require the entrenchment of a fixed identity in order to prove disadvantaged status, 

identities are reduced to stereotypical categories, which appear natural and immutable 

rather than effects of power relations (Brown). In other words, as Jonathan Simon (2000) 

put it, “the satisfaction that comes from avenging oppression caries the price of 

                                                                                                                                            
site.  Rather, the emphasis here is on the narrative effects of such images. 



 
 

 

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reinforcing the very categories of the original victimization” (p. 11). Therefore, the 

website’s efforts to illustrate the rifeness of violence are undermined by its singular focus 

on transphobia. 

The overarching political narrative of transphobia, however, is not absolute; it is 

destabilized by the highly racialized visual imagery that is conveyed through photos on 

the website. Educational handouts and other resources include photos of selected murder 

victims, a majority of which depict non-white faces. Of the names listed, many are non-

Anglo, and several are accompanied by a parenthetical pronunciation key (e.g., “Julio 

Argueta [HOO-lee-o ar-GET-tah]” [TDOR, 2005e, p. 3]), which speaks to a white-Anglo 

audience presumed to be unfamiliar with such names. Marked as racialized others, these 

names and faces both reinforce the website’s narrative norm of whiteness and contest its 

totality. Against the political narrative that denies racialized violence, these photographic 

images suggest that race cannot be ignored.11  

Hence, two overlapping discourses are at work: the narrative voice of the activist 

cause, which refuses to formally acknowledge race, and the visual messages—captured 

by the names and photos of racialized others—which explicitly call upon race as a marker 

of victimhood. Yet these discourses do not operate with equal cognitive effect. The 

activist narrative, which arguably saturates the entire site, is overtly teleological, relying 

on a coherent story line of cause (transphobia) and effect (violence), where death marks 

the moment of truth at the end of the story. By contrast, the racialized images, which are 

scattered randomly throughout the site, operate at a more subconscious, yet nonetheless 

vivid, level; they hover as a ghostly reminder of the dead, a lingering specter of race.  

Because these images are few in number, their visual force is particularly striking against 

a text-heavy website, further highlighting the significance of race, even as race is 

formally written out of the official activist narrative. These seemingly conflicting 

                                                
11 A few online lists of transgender deaths explicitly note the racial identity of victims, highlighting the 
significance of race. For example, of the 51 persons included on GenderPAC’s list of murder victims, 37 
are identified as persons of color, the vast majority of which are African-American and Latina transwomen 
(GenderPAC 2007).  In its (2006) report on killings of transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 30, 
GenderPAC explicitly notes that 91% of the victims were people of color and the majority were 
economically poor (p. 4). However, by claiming that “if federal law mandated the FBI to track gender-
based hate crimes, they would outweigh every other category except race,” (and providing a graphic which 
compares hate crime murders based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and 



 
 

 

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messages work symbiotically to produce both a naturalized white subject and a brutalized 

body of color. The website’s photos depicting activists—seen at vigil ceremonies, 

marches, and speech-making events—predominantly comprise white faces, whereas the 

victim profiles depict predominantly people of color (TDOR, 2005a, 2005a, 2006f). 

When these images are juxtaposed, white activists are positioned as saviors of victims of 

color. In this way, the brutalized body of color is called upon to advance a political 

agenda that reinforces racial hierarchies while simultaneously disavowing the 

significance of race (Razack, 2001).  

Although the deracialized narratives of the TDOR / Remembering Our Dead 

project emerge from a particular political strategy, they are also the product of a broader 

social context which promotes individually-focused and legally-oriented responses to 

violence.  In particular, because corporate media is the primary source of reporting on 

violence and law enforcement is the primary mechanism for redressing violence, these 

institutions play a significant role in setting the stage for activism. For example, although 

anti-discrimination and hate crime law in the U.S. and Canada has been strongly critiqued 

for its repeated failure to address multiple, intersectional and structural forms of 

oppression (see Crenshaw, 1989; Spade & Willse, 2000; Ehrenreich, 2002; Grabham 

2006), legal responses are still treated as a key remedy for violence. Because raising 

public consciousness is a key activist strategy, the “naming power” of hate crime 

legislation (i.e., identifying violence as perpetrated against specifically oppressed groups) 

remains politically appealing (Spade and Willse, 2000).  In seeking such recognition, 

however, activists must adhere to the state’s limited criteria and logic for identifying and 

prosecuting hate crimes. Similarly, because corporate media is often the first source of 

reporting about violence, such sensationalized accounts can set the tone for subsequent 

narratives. Turning to the example of Fred Martinez murder case, we can see how law 

enforcement agencies and mainstream media shape the terms by which activists respond 

to and recount incidents of violence. Tracing these narratives, one can begin to see the 

depth to which deracialized accounts of violence are socially embedded and collectively 

authorized. 

                                                                                                                                            
disability), the report nevertheless divides race from other dimensions of identity, and risks succumbing to 
the politics of competing marginalities (2007, p. 2). 



 
 

 

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The Erasure of Race in the Fred Martinez Murder 

On June 21, 2001, the brutalized and decomposing body of 16-year-old Fred 

(F.C.) Martinez was found in a shallow canyon on the outskirts of Cortez, Colorado. 

Martinez, a Navajo high school student who identified as openly gay and transgender, 

suffered blunt-force trauma to the head, as well as cuts to his abdomen and wrists. It was 

reported that on the night of June 16, 2001, Martinez had been chased by his attacker to a 

desolate, rocky area known as the pits, run into a barbed wire fence, struck in the head 

with a rock, and left to die (Quittner, 2001). Shaun Murphy, a white 19-year-old from 

Farmington, New Mexico, subsequently pleaded guilty to second degree murder, after 

witnesses reported him bragging that he had “bug smashed a joto” (Spanish derogatory 

slang for a gay or effeminate male; Emmett, 2001i, ¶ 11).  

At the onset of investigation, Montezuma County Sheriff Joey Chavez stated that 

detectives were “looking at the boy’s sexuality, as well as the fact that he was Native 

American, as possible motives in the crime” (Emmett, 2001b, ¶ 13). But race quickly 

disappeared as a relevant factor. District attorney Joe Olt refused to prosecute the murder 

as a hate crime, treating the case as though the severity of the physical violence was all 

that mattered. As Olt explained to the local press: “We’re looking at it as a murder that is 

heinous enough...To me, a murder is a hate crime.” (GenderPAC, 2001a, ¶ 3). The failure 

to treat the crime as legally hate motivated was widely attributed to the fact that 

Colorado’s crime bias legislation (the 1988 Ethnic Intimidation Act) did not include 

sexual orientation or gender identity as grounds for special prosecution (Colorado State 

General Assembly, 2005, p. 3). The fact that the legislation included race, color, and 

ancestry was considered—by both news reporters and victim-advocacy groups—

irrelevant (Emmett, 2001e; GenderPAC, 2001a). Some news reports even implied that 

Colorado had no hate crime legislation at all (Colorado Anti-Violence Program, 2001b; 

GenderPAC, 2002; Heidelberg, 2002).12 The outrage over the Martinez murder was 

subsequently channeled into lobbying efforts to reform Colorado’s bias-crime statutes to 

include sexual orientation, changes that were successfully adopted in 2005 (Colorado 



 
 

 

14 

State General Assembly, 2005; Lambda Legal, 2001).13 When the Martinez case received 

brief national attention, it was attributed to the antigay and anti-transgender dimensions 

of the crime, and not at all to factors of race (Colorado Anti-Violence Program, 2001a; 

Mimiaga, 2002). When the story hit national news feeders via the Associated Press, 

Martinez’s Navajo identity was not even acknowledged (Gay and Lesbian Alliance 

Against Defamation [GLAAD], 2001). The farther the story traveled, the more race 

disappeared.  

While most regional press stories tacitly noted Martinez’s Navajo identity, few 

articles considered it more than a supplementary detail. The controversy instead focused 

on whether or not the case constituted a hate crime and if so, whether it was motivated by 

homophobia or transphobia; either way, race was deemed largely inconsequential. 

Although Martinez’s mother, Pauline Mitchell, repeatedly described racism as a factor in 

her son’s death and the subsequent legal proceedings, this perspective was largely absent 

from the press coverage. Aside from public statements made by the Two Spirit Society of 

Colorado (which were largely ignored in mainstream press), even victim advocacy 

groups did not specifically discuss race.14 In almost all accounts, sexuality and gender 

consistently eclipsed race as an important factor in the crime. By the time the Martinez 

case reached the TDOR website, race disappeared altogether. The case is currently 

memorialized as: “Fred Martinez, Jr. (aka Fredericka, F.C.). Cortez, Colorado. 16-Jun-01. 

Bludgeoned to the head” (TDOR, 2006f, p. 25, ¶ 9).15  

A careful examination of the case, however, clearly demonstrates that racialized 

hierarchies of power were in operation before, during, and after the murder. Martinez’s 

mother, Pauline Mitchell, described numerous incidents that she attributed to racism, 

many of which began long before her son’s death. Noting that Martinez was often a target 

                                                                                                                                            
12 Technically, the Ethnic Intimidation Act did not, at that time, include the term hate crime, but it 
effectively served the same purpose. Where crimes were shown to be motivated by particular forms of bias 
(noted above), stiffer criminal penalties could be applied (Ethnic Intimidation Act, 1988). 
13 In every annual legislative session since 1994, lobbyists had introduced legislation that would enhance 
penalties for violence motivated by prejudice against the victim’s sexual orientation, but each time the bills 
were defeated (TG Crossroads, 2002). 
14 Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a media advocacy group that assessed press 
coverage of the case, did criticize news media that did not include Martinez’s Navajo identity in their 
coverage. However, the organization nonetheless did not make race a central point of analysis. 



 
 

 

15 

for harassment and violence at school, Mitchell felt that school officials not only failed to 

protect her son, but frequently blamed Martinez and subjected him to regular discipline 

(Quittner, 2001; TG Crossroads, 2002). As Mitchell described, 

He was sent home often. I would have to leave work to go pick him up because 

they sent him home so much. The principle and vice-principle made so many 

complaints. Too many Native American kids are sent home from school. 

(GenderPAC, 2001b, ¶ 13) 

Mitchell recalled several occasions in which Martinez was sent home from school for 

wearing what school officials called gender-inappropriate clothing, incidents she felt 

were also racialized: 

One time, Fred went in wearing the same shoes this other girl was wearing. They 

were sandals. Nike. She didn’t get sent home, but Fred did. I complained to the 

school, but of course they aren’t going to listen to me because I’m Native 

American. (GenderPAC, 2001b, ¶ 14)  

Racial discrimination continued in the aftermath of Martinez’s death. Although 

Mitchell reported that her son was missing on June 18, the police did not notify her when 

the (unidentified) body was first discovered on June 23.16 Nor did the police inform 

Mitchell of the arrest and arraignment of Shaun Murphy; she learned of both, after the 

fact, from a newspaper (GenderPAC, 2001b; Lambda Legal, 2001).17 When she 

complained to the district attorney (DA) that it was her right to bear witness for her son at 

the court proceedings, he claimed that there had been insufficient time to contact her 

(Emmett, 2001g). Apparently, however, there was ample time to notify Murphy’s family 

                                                                                                                                            
15 Although this description is consistent with that of the other deaths listed on the website (i.e., racial 
identity is generally excluded for all murders noted on the list) it remains an important fact in tracing how 
this narrative of violence become deraced as it circulated in various media networks. 
16 According to Mitchell, she reported her son missing on June 18, 2001, phoned in to follow up 2 days 
later, and then again on June 23 when she read in the newspaper that a body had been found near her home. 
The sheriff’s office denied Mitchell’s claims, saying that she only filed a missing person’s report on June 
23, 2001 (Emmett, 2001g). 
17 According to the sheriff’s office, when the body was first found, its decomposed state made it difficult to 
determine how the individual had died, how long the body had been there, or “even the ethnicity of the 
man” (Emmett, 2001a, ¶ 4). Despite the state of the body, the sheriff’s office nonetheless concluded that the 
body did not match any missing person reports from the area. According to Detective Kalvin Boogs: 
“Every one (missing-persons report) that we have received in the last year we’ve already ruled out” 
(Emmett, ¶ 6). Given the lack of clear identifying evidence, it seems odd that the police would rule out so 
quickly a missing-persons report that had been made only a few days prior. The fact that there was no 



 
 

 

16 

since his mother, grandmother, girlfriend, and daughter were present at the arraignment 

(Lambda Legal). Requesting that she be kept informed of any details of her son’s death, 

Mitchell was subsequently assured by the DA that she would be notified when the 

autopsy was complete. However, the police released the autopsy results to the media 

without informing Mitchell; she learned of the gruesome details of her son’s murder from 

a newspaper (Emmett; GenderPAC; Human Rights Campaign, 2001). Mitchell also 

expressed concerns that the police had not investigated the crime scene adequately. When 

she examined the site herself, Mitchell found evidence that police had not removed, 

including some of her son’s hair, which was matted with blood (Human Rights 

Campaign). For Mitchell, the disrespectful treatment by police was symptomatic of 

racism (GenderPAC). Describing another indignity, she noted:  

When they had Fred’s body bagged, I wanted to look at his body, to make 

sure. When they showed it to me, they had left a bunch of blood and 

rubber gloves with him. It hurt and it made me mad. They were willing to 

leave these gloves and blood like this with my baby. They treat me this 

way because I’m an Indian. (GenderPAC, 2001b, ¶ 23) 

Later, when she was at the police station, she noted that “all the Native Americans 

have handcuffs on them, even leg-cuffs. But white kids and Shaun, they have nothing on 

them. They can move around freely. It’s just not right” (GenderPAC, 2001b, ¶ 23). 

Mitchell subsequently filed a formal complaint with the governor’s office that her 

rights had been violated under Colorado’s constitutional law. Under the state’s Victims 

Rights Act, the surviving family of a deceased victim has the right “to be informed of and 

present for all ‘critical stages’ of the criminal justice process” and “to be treated with 

fairness, respect and dignity” (Colorado Department of Safety, 1993, ¶ 2; Lambda Legal, 

2001, ¶ 3). Shunning Mitchell’s allegations that the violation of her rights had anything to 

do with her son’s sexuality or ethnicity, the DA stated glibly: “If you’re thinking that [it 

was intentional]—don’t” (Emmett, 2001h, ¶ 13). Although Pauline Mitchell described 

these experiences as specifically related to her Navajo identity, the racial dimension of 

her grievances were absent from news reports. Even the advocacy organizations that 

                                                                                                                                            
mention of a missing youth at the time suggests that Mitchell’s report of her missing son was not on the 
minds of police, or had been ignored. 



 
 

 

17 

supported Mitchell’s formal complaint nonetheless treated race as a secondary factor; her 

son’s sexuality and gender identity was consistently highlighted as the key issue in the 

case (Emmett, 2001g; GenderPAC, 2001b; Lambda Legal).18  

Against the media narratives, Mitchell refused to reduce her son’s death to a 

single cause. When asked why her son was killed, she stated repeatedly that it was 

because he was different (Emmett, 2001f; GenderPAC 2001b; Quittner, 2001). 

According to Mitchell (2002): 

F.C. [Martinez’s nickname] had many difficult times in his short life. 

Much of this was related to the fact that he was Navajo living in a world 

that does not honor and respect different ways, and also that he was 

Nadleeh--Two-Spirit--and he could comfortably walk the path of both 

male and female, that he would love differently from most. F.C. also felt 

the pain of what comes when your family is poor, but very proud. It is not 

easy to grow up as Navajo, Nadleeh and poor. (¶ 4) 

Mitchell’s statement describes how race, gender, sexuality, and class hierarchies 

collectively constituted the circumstances of her son’s death. At the same time, Mitchell 

(2002) refused to reduce these factors to simple identity labels.  For Mitchell “labels 

mean nothing—and they meant nothing to F.C. He used these terms to make other people 

comfortable, not himself” (¶ 1). By rejecting these labels, Mitchell eschewed a logic that 

would reduce difference to an inherent quality about her son. As Razack (2001) argued, 

“When difference is thought to reside in the person rather than in the social context, we 

are able to ignore our role in producing it” (p. 21). In no way did Mitchell deny the 

factors that marked her son as different, but she recognized that such differences are 

always relational; otherness can only be understood against its norm. In this way, 

Mitchell insisted on situating her son’s death within its broader social context and thereby 

called upon collective responsibility for such oppression.  

 The differences that marked Martinez as other cannot be understood 

independently from each other. As Iris Marion Young (1997) pointed out, “The absurdity 

                                                
18 Unlike most reports, GenderPAC did make explicit reference to “reports of racism” as a “persistent 
theme” in the police treatment of Martinez’s mother, and noted intersecting identities as factors in the 
murder (GenderPAC 2001a, ¶ 1-2, 2001b, ¶ 2) However, it still reported that “the dominant theme 
surrounding Fred's murder has been his gender and sexuality” (GenderPAC 2001b, ¶ 2).  



 
 

 

18 

of trying to isolate gender identity from race or class identity becomes apparent if you ask 

of any individual woman whether she can distinguish the ‘woman part’ of herself from 

the ‘white part’ or the ‘Jewish part’ (p. 13). Likewise, when a boy is accused of being a 

fag it is not simply his sexuality that is in question, but also his masculinity; he is not man 

enough. As Viviane Namaste (2000) argued, “Gender is a cue used to locate lesbians and 

gay men” (p. 141). But gender is not simply mistaken for sexuality or vice versa; the two 

are read through one another and constitute each other’s logic. Even the most 

hypermasculine man will be accused of failing to be a real man if he is gay, just as an 

assuredly heterosexual male will be accused of not being straight enough if he is in any 

way effeminate.  

 In the same way that gender and sexuality are produced symbiotically by and 

through each other, so is race constituted by the logic of gender, sexuality, and class 

(Ehrenreich, 2002). Martinez was attacked not simply because he failed to embody 

proper masculinity and heterosexuality; Martinez did not conform to a certain kind of 

heterosexual masculinity—namely, white, middle-class, able-bodied heterosexual 

masculinity. Masculine heterosexuality is not a universal, abstract hegemonic ideal; it is 

contextually bound, ordered by time and place. Black masculinity, for example, is not 

governed by the same standards as white masculinity. Just as gender is a cue for 

sexuality, so is race a cue for sexuality, gender, and class. As Gail Mason (2002) argued, 

“Categories of gender, race and/or sexuality do not just intersect with each other in 

incidents of inter-personal violence. Rather, they are the ‘vehicles of articulation’ for 

each other” (p. 61).  For these reasons, we cannot say that Martinez was killed primarily 

because he was gay and transgender, but also because he was Navajo and poor; this 

additive approach fails to account for the ways the racial and class dimensions of identity 

are produced by and through the other. Race and class do not simply complicate violence, 

but enable it (Razack & Fellows, 1998). Indeed, race and class, like gender and sexuality, 

are also constituted through violence (Smith, 2005).  

The interlocking nature of oppression can be understood in the particular context 

that situated the relationship between Martinez and Murphy. In an earlier encounter on 

the night of June 18, 2001, Murphy and a friend, Clint Sanchez, picked up Martinez after 

seeing him at a party and went for pizza. After they had dropped off Martinez, Sanchez 



 
 

 

19 

asked Murphy whether he thought Martinez had assumed they were gay (Emmett, 2001d; 

Quittner, 2001). This question, unremarked upon by the media, is significant; it speaks to 

the economy of desire that arose in that encounter. The question verbalizes a possibility 

that Murphy and Sanchez might have been thought to be gay. In this way, the question 

speaks to a forbidden desire not only between men, but between white and racialized 

other. In this moment, Murphy’s heterosexuality, masculinity, and whiteness are 

simultaneously threatened—with serious consequence. To be misread as gay is not a 

trivial mislabeling of identity, but a significant disruption of the dividing line between 

self and other. Indeed, false accusations of homosexuality are not only considered 

slanderous enough to spark civil litigation cases, but also have been used successfully as 

a defense (known as the gay-panic defense) in several murder trials (Ott & Aoki, 2002). 

Because sexuality cannot be dislodged from racial and gender identity, this moment of 

desire threatens to undo the racial, gendered, and sexual ordering of Murphy’s social 

identity. In a context where white, heterosexual masculinity is dominant, the proximity of 

desire that arises in this encounter with the other strikes at the heart of the straight white 

male’s sense of self. Murphy must disavow this desire; he accomplishes this through 

violence (Pinar, 2003).  

The role of violence in securing a sense of self was confirmed by Murphy’s 

actions following his attack on Martinez. In returning to his friend’s apartment and 

proclaiming that he had “bug smashed a joto” (Emmett, 2001i, ¶ 11), Murphy declared 

neither shame nor remorse, but pride. His statement was a way of recording what he had 

done. It was not enough to simply do the violence; he had to claim it as his. To brutalize 

another and to recount it with pride is an exercise in identity formation; it reaffirms 

Murphy’s sense of self as dominant and superior. Violence radically re-marked the 

boundary between himself and the other; no longer could the other threaten to engulf him 

by desire. He reaffirmed who he was: masculine, dominant, white, whole. 

Murphy’s reassertion of identity through violence was not simply a moment of 

individual psychological crisis, but was also rooted in broader social forces. Both the 

instability of identity itself, which drives the incessant need for its reassertion, and the 

impetus to secure a privileged position through violence, are consequences of hierarchical 

power relations. Murphy’s own history, for example, was marked by previous acts of 



 
 

 

20 

violence, repeated conflicts with the law and difficulties in educations (TG Crossroads, 

2002; Emmett 2001c). First expelled from school in the 6th grade, and subsequently 

ousted from two high schools, Murphy was labeled a “troublemaker” from a young age.  

According to the principal of one school, Murphy “was considered by state law as a 

habitually disruptive student. He was one of those kids you just don’t know about” 

(Emmett, ¶ 11). In a context where educational and legal systems respond to problem 

behavior through labeling, expulsion, and punishment, it is not surprising that Murphy 

projected these experiences onto others; institutionalized social exclusion arguably breeds 

further acts of marginalization. Indeed, Murphy’s behavior extends a pattern of 

oppression whereby attempts by one group to overcome social exclusion are channeled 

through subjugation of another.19 

Further evidence suggests that the encounter between Murphy and Martinez was a 

colonial one. That Murphy chased Martinez into an isolated area known as the pits is not 

insignificant.20 A place where teenagers go to party and smoke marijuana, this zone is 

marked outside the boundaries of the civilized city; it is a space of social, economic and 

legal abandonment.  As Razack (2001) noted, “The city belongs to the settlers and the 

sullying of civilized society through the pretence of the racial Other in white space gives 

rise to a careful management of boundaries within urban space” (p. 129). Indeed, the 

location of Martinez’ murder outside the city proper reflects this colonial ordering of 

space; such violence further constitutes the wilderness as a place of savagery.  Known as 

a tiny frontier town, Cortez is not only characterized by deep racial divisions, but by its 

                                                
19 Murphy’s last name, which marks him as bearing Irish heritage, signals a much longer history of 
struggle for racial belonging. As Noel Ignatief  (1996) argued, when Irish Catholic immigrants first came to 
the US, their attempts to shed oppressed status in Ireland and attain white privilege in America meant 
racially distinguishing themselves from non-whites. “Having fair skin made the Irish eligible to be white, 
but it didn't guarantee their admission. They had to earn it”  (Ignatief, 1997, ¶ 21). Irish-Catholic 
immigrants collectively earned this white (working class) status, argued Ignatief, by disavowing the 
struggles of Blacks in the US, and by participating in the oppression of non-whites. 
20 The evidence is not entirely clear on this point, in part because Murphy recounted three different versions 
of what happened that night (Heidelberg, 2002). Murphy claimed that Martinez attacked him, so he struck 
Martinez with the rock in self-defense, and in one version of this story he claimed that Martinez chased him 
to the pits, not the other way around. In another version, Murphy claimed that the two had met in the pits, at 
which point a fight ensued. However, the evidence from the autopsy—namely the type of cuts on 
Martinez’s body—suggested that in the darkness he had run into a barbed wire fence while being chased 
(Quittner, 2001). Moreover, there was no evidence to demonstrate that the fight was mutual, because 
Murphy suffered no injuries. By contrast, the autopsy noted extreme blood loss and a fractured skull as 
among the causes of Martinez’s death (Emmett, 2002). 



 
 

 

21 

boundary line against the half-million inhabitants of the neighboring Navajo territory 

(Quittner, 2001). As Murphy chased Martinez to the outskirts of town, he literally drove 

an Indian outside the bounds of civilization and closer to the reservation. Against a long 

history of white Americans forcing the Diné people from their land, when a young 

Navajo is chased to the edges of the frontier, brutally beaten and left to die by a white 

man, how can we not see this as a colonial encounter?21  

Indeed, this is how Mitchell understood her son’s death: not as a singular attack 

by one individual against her son, but as part of a long history of colonial oppression. The 

sexualized, racialized, and gendered dimensions of the violence that Martinez 

experienced are certainly consistent with the legacy of colonization. As Andrea Smith 

(2005) powerfully demonstrated, sexualized violence is deeply imbedded within, and 

constitutive of, colonial relationships.  Colonization required careful management of 

gender and sexual relations, which was largely achieved through institutionalized 

violence. Reflecting this legacy, the Two Spirit Society of Colorado released a formal 

statement acknowledging that Martinez’s murder was not an isolated incident, but part of 

the historic violence against Native Americans. Mitchell concurred: “I will tell you here 

in Cortez, too many Indians die. They just let it go and nothing is done about it” 

(GenderPAC, 2001b, ¶ 31).  

Mitchell’s statement suggests not only that the deaths of Indians are common (and 

therefore not isolated incidents), but also that such deaths are socially authorized and 

                                                
21 Navajo history is characterized by government-inflicted displacement, abuse, and environmental racism. 
Most notably, in 1864, the Navajo were interned by Colonel Christopher Carson at Fort Defiance, Arizona, 
and then force-marched, in what is known as the Long Walk, 300 miles in mid-winter to Bosque Redondo, 
New Mexico (Churchill, 1998; Iverson, 2002). Confined there for 4 years, the Navajo endured substandard 
living conditions, abject poverty, and starvation. By conservative estimates, the Diné lost half of their 
population during this ordeal (Churchill, 1998). Though the Navajo people eventually were permitted to 
return to a reduced area of their territory, the United States government continued to exercise colonial 
control over the territory through economic exploitation. In the 1940s, discovery of uranium deposits in the 
Navajo territory led to a massive mining project in support of nuclear testing. Between 1946 and 1968, 
more than 13 million tons of uranium ore were mined on Navajo territory, resulting in radioactive 
contamination of the local water supply. In the 1980s, the Navajo Health Authority documented unusually 
high rates of birth defects among babies born in mine-adjacent areas, and other studies found higher rates 
of miscarriages, infant deaths, birth defects, and learning disabilities (Churchill). Under the Navajo-Hopi 
Relocation Act of 1974, the United States sought to remove 13,000 Diné from the Big Mountain region in 
Arizona to turn the land over to the Peabody Coal Company. The history of the Navajo reservation was also 
scarred by forced sterilization and residential schools characterized by widespread sexual abuse (Churchill; 
Smith, 2005) 
 



 
 

 

22 

enabled by the community, the law, and the state. In this light, we cannot isolate 

Martinez’s death from the harassment and violence that he experienced on a daily basis—

acts that were endorsed by school authorities (through their disciplining of Martinez) and 

permitted by members of the community (who did nothing about the harassment). 

Martinez’s death can be seen as an extension of that everyday violence. Alan Cook, an 

openly gay psychotherapist who assisted Martinez following a suicide attempt 6 months 

prior to the murder, noted: “I did not understand the gravity of [Martinez’s] sense of 

malaise about his safety. I am a middle-class white male, and I didn’t have insight into 

the part of the community that is young and Navajo and gay” (quoted in Quittner, 2001, ¶ 

5). 

Although some would argue that the 40-year jail term to which Shaun Murphy 

was eventually sentenced is evidence that Martinez’s death did not go unnoticed, the 

media coverage suggests that this response was largely owing to the public outrage over 

what they saw as a homophobic attack, rather than a case of racialized violence. More 

importantly, however, the sentence does not call into question the structures of power that 

enabled the murder in the first place. As the sole bearer of responsibility, Shaun Murphy 

becomes the scapegoat that allows others to deny complicity. By assigning blame to an 

individual, the social hierarchies of power that give rise to such violence are left fully and 

forcefully intact. The sentencing process gives the state an opportunity to confirm the 

official story: that violence is an exceptional moment, not an everyday one. Doing justice 

reinstalled the narrative that violence is the act of a lone killer, not the consequence of a 

system of racial, gender, class, and sexual hierarchies. When responsibility belongs to a 

singular perpetrator, the rest of us are positioned as innocent bystanders. 

 

Producing Innocent Onlookers: Spectacle and Witness as Complicity 

So long as violence is attributed to the singular act of an individual, the role of the 

witness—the one who is left to remember—is rendered innocent. At most, our duty as 

witnesses is to spread awareness. This orientation is reflected in the George Santayana 

quote that prefaces the Remembering Our Dead website 

(http://www.gender.org/remember/): Those who cannot remember the past, are doomed 

to repeat it. But as Simon and Rosenberg (2005) argued, memorialization practices that 



 
 

 

23 

function as warnings or simple object lessons are insufficient to dislodge our own 

complicity in deep seated patterns of violence: 

On such terms, initiating and participating in remembrance defines one’s own 

responsibility as one of educating others (since one already knows about the 

events in question), a practice that too often and too easily slides into a 

postponement of what one needs to do oneself. (pp. 84–85) 

Without critical reflexivity, the exercise of educating others serves to entrench a 

sense of self that is beyond reproach. Those who know and educate are positioned as 

morally superior to those who are ignorant; we congratulate ourselves for our political 

awareness without moving outside the comfort zone of moral authority and self-knowing. 

Such positions of moral superiority are usually classed and raced; the well-educated, 

“enlightened” white subject is juxtaposed against the ignorant redneck, the high school 

dropout, the “backwards” ethnic other (Ott & Aoki, 2002). 

Our innocence as witnesses is also secured through outpourings of public 

sympathy. Particularly when we are called to remember those who we did not know 

personally, we are invited into a community of shared grief; we are called upon to 

experience a sense of collective sympathy. But, as Susan Sontag (2003) argued, “So far 

as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our 

sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence” (p. 102). In this way, 

sympathy is seductive. By recognizing the pain of others, we tell ourselves, we engage in 

a shared sense of humanity. We identify with the other through the recognition of our 

own pain. But in doing so, we risk appropriating another’s pain for our own purposes—

or, as Razack (2007) called it, stealing the pain of others.  

When the deracialized narrative of Fred Martinez’s murder is held up to further 

the transgender cause, it is not simply that the pain of colonial violence is erased and 

usurped; by obscuring the racialized nature of oppression, the witness denies the ways in 

which hegemonic whiteness is enacted and sustained through violence. In other words, 

the witness upholds the myth of white innocence.  Perpetuating this narrative of power, 

the witness is also constituted by it; in this sense, the witness becomes white. This 

process of white witnessing is, of course, never stable or absolute, particularly for 

racialized witnesses who are already constituted as not white, even as they are 



 
 

 

24 

simultaneously ushered into a white narrative.  Indeed, the social and political effects of a 

racialized witness engaging in a white discourse (which ultimately marks the further pain 

of silencing, erasure and assimilation), is different from a subject whose whiteness is 

being reaffirmed and reprivileged through that discourse. Yet the overall effect is one that 

enables white complicity; 22 the narrative allows whites to deny the ways in which 

we/they enable and benefit from the ongoing legacy of colonial and racialized violence. 

White witnesses do not have to consider the ways in which our/their daily practices 

contribute to, authorize, or uphold racialized power relations which enable violence. Such 

witnessing thereby uses the pain of others to reaffirm a sense of self.  

This process of witnessing is evident in a remembrance ritual whereby the living 

speak for the dead. Among the resources provided by the TDOR website is a set of first-

person narratives. For example: 

My name is China Zainal (CHI-na zy-NALL), and I was a forty-six year 

old Indonesian-born sex worker living in Sydney, Australia. On November 

thirtieth of two thousand and three, two witnesses saw me staggering 

down one street before collapsing in another. They called an ambulance, 

which took me to St Vincent’s Hospital. I died at the hospital from nine 

stab wounds to the neck and upper torso. (TDOR, 2004b, p.1) 

 

I’m Mylène [mee-LEN], a 38 year old transsexual born in Ecuador, and 

living in France. On March 26th, my body was discovered in a room in a 

hotel near the center of Marseilles [mar-SAY]. My throat was cut -- as 

were my genitals. (TDOR, 2005e, p. 2) 

 

My name is unknown, but I was Chinese or East Malaysian, and living in 

Kuala Lumpur. On the 11th of November, my body was found head-first 

                                                
22 By complicity, I do not mean to suggest direct involvement or intentional collaboration with acts of 
violence; rather, I refer to less visible and more mundane actions that nonetheless contribute to structural 
injustice or perpetuate social processes that enable violence. If violence is socially produced, than 
responsibility must be socially enacted. This is not to say that responsibility is equally shared, but to 
suggest that it cannot be reduced to individual accountability or simple questions of moral obligation. 
Rather, responsibility must be structurally-oriented, socially-connected and collectively-enacted (Young, 
2006; Veitch, 2007).  



 
 

 

25 

in a garbage bin, wearing a dark T-shirt, white shorts and padded bra. 

Police revealed that there was a single slash wound on the neck and 

numerous bruises on my body. (TDOR, 2005e, p.4) 

Presumably, these biographies are designed to be read at vigils in order to make 

individual deaths more real to those bearing witness. But what does it mean to speak for 

the dead in this way? Is this how each individual would want to be memorialized, by the 

gruesome details of their death? In taking the voice of the other as our own, we colonize 

the bodies of the dead. These narratives speak not to the honoring of life, but the 

fetishizing of death. Once again the violent act itself—and not the social conditions that 

facilitate violence—takes center stage. The details of these killings pander to an 

imagination that is enticed by images of shock and suffering. Death becomes spectacle 

and the horror of violence eclipses the humanity of those who have died.  

The spectacle of violence undermines the antiviolence cause by sensationalizing 

brutality, objectifying the dead, and exploiting raw emotion. This is not to minimize the 

importance of mourning and grief, particularly for those who have lost a loved one. 

Rituals of remembrance can be important practices of healing and support. However, the 

closeness of pain that arises from personal grief cannot be confused with the distanced 

emotions that are generated through the consumption of spectacles of violence. As 

Simon, Di Paolantonio, and Clamen (2005) noted, spectacle “is not a thing, it is not an 

event or even a particular representation of an event…Rather spectacle is a particular 

mode of attentiveness…It is a way of entering the significations of social” (p. 143). It is 

through this mode of attentiveness that we experience the narrative of violence while still 

maintaining a position of exteriority: 

The projections and identifications made within spectacle, and the 

consequent defences it elicits, both require and enact leaving ourselves 

intact, at a distance, protected from being called into question and altered 

through our engagement with the stories of others…Our attentiveness 

while not “inactive,” is compliant; it does not engage in the praxis of 

making and re-making our historical consciousness. (Simon et al., p.144) 

As Martinot and Sexton (2003) argued, “Spectacle is a form of camouflage. It 

                                                                                                                                            
 



 
 

 

26 

does not conceal anything; it simply renders it unrecognizable. One looks at it and does 

not see it” (p. 174). One might look at Martinez as Navajo, but not see the way in which 

his murder is racialized. In this way, spectacle invites us to read particular narratives “on 

the terms of the moral certainties we hold dear, allow[ing] us to disavow any requirement 

that the terms on which we are moved might throw ourselves into question, into 

destabilization” (Simon et al., 2005, p. 144). This process constructs the gaze as innocent, 

one that is fascinated, pleasured; the onlooker is overcome by both grief and gratification, 

but either way, the witness bears no responsibility.   

In this context, evoking sympathy serves to advance the agenda of a privileged 

few at the expense of others. As Ross described Transgender Remembrance Day,  

It sure makes for a powerful street performance: candles, tears, hugs, and 

snuggles over cardboard pictures of butchered members of a marginalized 

minority produces emotionally charged images. But it functions, both 

theatrically and politically, to benefit a privileged subsection of the trans 

community. (quoted in Namaste, 2005, pp. 92–93) 

The consequences of such practices have concrete material affects. As Jacob Hale 

(1998) argued, “When a border zone denizen’s corpse is claimed by those with firmer 

categorical location, border zones become less habitable for those who are trying to live 

in the nearly unspeakable spaces created by overlapping margins of distinct categories” 

(p. 319).  In other words, when the complexity of identity is denied or ignored for 

political gain, those whose lives do not conform to easily politicizable identities have 

even less space in which to express themselves, make political claims and confront 

oppression.   

Remembrance practices also inform the political priorities of social movements, 

generating further material consequences. Because remembrance narratives define 

problems of violence on certain terms, they directly influence the kinds of solutions 

proposed in response. For example, when the bulk of an advocacy group’s funds are used 

to lobby for hate crime legislation rather than advocacy for transgender prisoners, or for 

increased “community” policing rather than decriminalization of sex work, or for 

corporate employee benefits rather than universal health care, it is often low-income 

people of color who lose out.  For this reason, activists have an obligation to continuously 



 
 

 

27 

examine how their political strategies affect those who are most disenfranchised. If the 

most privileged within the community benefit at the expense of the most marginalized, 

such strategies are not worth pursuing.  

 

Conclusion: Remembering Otherwise 

 The narrative erasure of racialized violence in the Transgender Day of 

Remembrance / Remembering Our Dead project is arguably not isolated, but 

symptomatic of broader racial hierarchies within transgender politics. The first National 

Survey of Transgender Violence in the United States, for example, failed to adequately 

discuss race. Although the racial identity of victims and perpetrators was included in the 

data collection, this information is obscured by the paper’s overall analysis, which 

isolates transphobia from other factors (Moran & Sharpe, 2004; Wilchins, Lombardi, 

Priesing, & Malour, 1997). Likewise, the story line of Boys Don’t Cry, the award-

winning film about Brandon Teena, was deliberately deracialized; one of the murder 

victims—Philip DeVine, a disabled African American—was purposefully left out of the 

narrative.23 The fact that DeVine was dating the sister of Brandon’s lover, Lana—a white 

woman—and the fact that one of the murderers had affiliations with white supremacist 

military groups, were deemed irrelevant to the larger context of the triple murder 

(Halberstam, 2005). When questioned on her decision to excise DeVine from the 

screenplay, filmmaker Kimberly Pierce suggested that the racial dimension would have 

overcomplicated the plotline. In doing so, as Judith Halberstam pointed out, Pierce not 

only denies DeVine’s racially charged death, but also fails to recognize how race was key 

factor in Brandon’s death as well. The denial of racialized violence dovetails with the 

deracing of mainstream transgender history. The famous Stonewall Riots were led by 

Black and Latina drag queens, yet popular representations of this history are frequently 

deraced (Feinberg, 1996). Similarly, some of the most well-known and popular heroes of 

the transgender movement—Leslie Feinberg, Kate Bornstein, Pat Califia, Riki Ann 

Wilchins, and Brandon Teena—are read as white.  

                                                
23 DeVine was removed not only from the narrative itself but also from the film’s original dedication, 
which read, “To Brandon Teena and Lisa Lambert.” Because the dedication references actual facts more 
directly than the narrative itself, this decision to leave out DeVine selectively presents a true-life tale as 
though DeVine did not exist at all (Halberstam, 2005). 



 
 

 

28 

The pervasive denial of race within some trans activism calls into question current 

conceptions of trans identity categories, particularly in struggles against violence. As 

Moran and Sharpe (2004) noted, 

The use of the term ‘transgender’…needs to be treated with some caution, having 

the potential to reduce our understanding of the nature of the violence and the 

experience of those who are the target of this violence to a uniform phenomenon. 

(p. 401) 

 If the political usage of trans identity requires that race, class, ability, and 

sexuality be subordinated or displaced by gender, its deployment will inevitably fail as a 

political strategy because it denies the interlocking character of hierarchical systems of 

oppression (Razack & Fellows, 1998). This is not to say that trans identity should be 

abandoned as a basis for political organizing, but its usage must be recuperated from a 

deracializing logic. Given propensities among trans activists to contest binaries between 

masculinity and femininity, surely there is ample room to rethink experiences of violence 

beyond either-or categories. 

Although this paper traced a single murder case to show how its inclusion within 

Transgender Day of Remembrance was predicated upon a deracialized narrative, I would 

argue that the same process of tracing race can be undertaken for each case. By reducing 

violence to a single cause, the Transgender Day of Remembrance / Remembering Our 

Day project not only obscures the social, political, and historical context of violence, but 

forecloses upon the possibilities for resistance. When justice is reduced to simple 

awareness campaigns on the one hand, or calls for stiffer sentences on the other, we fail 

to address the structures of power that enable violence in its everyday and mundane 

forms. Underlying these responses is a liberal plea for tolerance—a plea that locates 

violence in the sphere of individual attitudes. Not only do these strategies create an 

environment of competing marginalities, but they limit the possibilities for meaningful 

political solidarity. When violence is reduced to transphobia alone, only those who 

identify as trans can have a real stake in trans politics; others who take up the cause can 

only do so from the position of charity or from the basis of sympathy rather than shared 

struggle and collective responsibility. This limits the possibility for political affinities that 

are grounded in an understanding that oppressions are inextricably linked. 



 
 

 

29 

These critiques are not to suggest that we should cease remembering those who 

are commemorated by the Remembering Our Dead project. As Simon (2005) noted, “the 

task of working for social transformation is not to forget the past, but to remember it 

otherwise” (p. 9). The question, then, is how do we remember otherwise? What would it 

mean to remember in such a way that confronts structural violence  (i.e., processes of 

domination that are socially, politically and economically instituted over time) and 

requires examination of our own complicity? Simon provided a useful starting point: 

Remembering otherwise will proceed from those practices of remembrance whose 

over-riding consideration is the question of what it might mean to take the 

memories of other (memories formed in other times and spaces) into our lives and 

so live as though the lives of others mattered. (p. 9) 

Such a response demands “an attentiveness to an otherness that resists being 

reduced to a version of our own stories” (Simon et al., 2005, p.135).   

Remembering otherwise may require a rethinking of the political uses of narrative 

itself.  While narrative can play a vital role in giving voice to those who are marginalized, 

perhaps its deployment in particular contexts comes at too high a cost. Perhaps activists 

and academics must further interrogate the political logic of narrative itself, which 

organizes time, place and identity in particular ways, thereby opening up some political 

possibilities, but foreclosing on others (White, 1980, 1984). In some circumstances, we 

might seek out narrative forms that are more open, flexible and fluid—drawing on 

narrative expressions that resist totalizing messages or reductionist identity claims. In 

others, we might reject narrative altogether and choose alternative modes of 

communication from which to launch our political demands. Either way, we must be 

attentive not only to the content of our political claims, but also to their form. 

There are signs of hope. Organizers of a recent Transgender Remembrance Vigil, 

at the 519 Community Centre in Toronto, made explicit efforts to address violence 

against trans people within its broader context of oppressions. Flyers that were circulated 

to promote the event read:  

The Trans Day or Remembrance ceremony at The 519 provides an 

opportunity for trans/two-spirit/gender-queer people and their allies to 

gather together to gain strength, to educated, and to perform an act of 



 
 

 

30 

resistance. While most “Transgender Day of Remembrance” events 

internationally focus on “anti-transgender violence” we here at Trans 

Programmes at The 519 are choosing to acknowledge not only transphobia 

as a root cause of violence in our community, but also to specifically mark 

the various forms of oppression in our culture that increase violence and 

limit protections for many members of the trans community. These 

include racism, ageism, ableism, stigma against sex-workers, classism and 

homophobia.  

Although the language could go further in acknowledging the interlocking nature 

of oppression, the flyer nonetheless demonstrates a move in the right direction. Similarly, 

the ceremony itself made efforts to celebrate the lives of transgender people, rather than 

sensationalize their deaths. Our task, then, is to push these efforts further—not only with 

respect to Transgender Remembrance Day, but in the many ways we recount and 

confront violence. None of us are innocent. We must envision practices of remembrance 

that situate our own positions within structures of power that authorize violence in the 

first place. Our task is to move from sympathy to responsibility, from complicity to 

reflexivity, from witnessing to action. It is not enough to simply honor the memory of the 

dead; we must transform the practices of the living. 

 

Acknowledgments 

Many thanks to Sherene Razack and my fellow students in the graduate research seminar 

on Race, Violence and Law, at the University of Toronto, 2006, whose rigorous 

discussions contributed enormously to this article. Thanks also to Transgender Day of 

Remembrance organizers in Toronto and Peterborough whose knowledge and 

experiences inspired my analysis. Dean Spade, Davina Cooper, Niiti Simmonds, Toni 

Johnson, and five anonymous reviewers provided very helpful feedback on earlier drafts. 

Research for this article was made possible by funding from the Social Sciences & 

Research Council of Canada and the UK Commonwealth Scholarships Commission. 



 
 

 

31 

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Author Note 

Address correspondence concerning this article to Sarah Lamble, AHRC Research Centre 

for Law, Gender & Sexuality, Kent Law School, Eliot College University of Kent 

Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NS, United Kingdom. E-mail: SL231@kent.ac.uk