As long as we live in a ratio in which wealth accumulation far out-measures our understanding of what it means to value livability, then we will constantly be in a kind of compounding structure of dispossession and death. I wanted to point to what is the underbelly of a kind of rush to a statistical calculation in order to talk about what I think are much more intimate, material conditions that have to be addressed.

Historian C. Riley Snorton explores the political dimensions of Black and trans identity - as twin subjects to the violence and dispossession of capitalism, as an intersecting lens to see beyond the rigid social hierarchies of White supremacy, and as a challenge to the way we understand ourselves, our genders, and one another.

Riley is author of the book Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity from University of Minnesota Press.