A funny thing happened on the way to last week's panel discussion

on Injustice, Intolerance and Intersectional Identity, sponsored by the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund and the Black Graduate Students at Princeton University, among others. I had intended to go and be enriched by the discussion (and I was) but I also happened to end up on the panel! Steven Fullwood has a great recap of the discussion.

The specific occasion for the discussion had to do with the one-year anniversary of the murder of 19-year-old Rashawn Brazell, a black gay man whose dismembered corpse was found strewn across several locations in Brooklyn last year. His murder remains unsolved, but his case has became a focal point for anti-violence activists in New York last year. Working with Brazell's family, some of those activists have created the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund to provide scholarships, mentoring and fellowship opportunities for scholars, activists and young people concerned with social justice.

All of the panelists expressed disappointment that Brazell's murder and the issues and activism associated with it had not attracted more press attention. As I have done in the past in examining the murders of Sakia Gunn and Matthew Shepard, I queried the Lexis-Nexis database for stories on Rashawn Brazell. In the first year after their murders, the database returned 735 major newspaper articles on Shepard (and thousands more stories not included in my tally), and 28 total stories on Sakia Gunn. For Rashawn Brazell, the following eight headlines were listed, along with their word counts:


1. A Year After a Teenager Was Dismembered, Still No Answer , The New York Times, February 13, 2006 Monday, Late Edition - Final, Section B; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 6, 940 words, By KAREEM FAHIM and JOHN KOBLIN
2. A FRIEND KILLED MY SON: MOM. Case stumps cops, Daily News (New York), April 4, 2005 Monday, SPORTS FINAL EDITION, SUBURBAN; Pg. 1, 428 words, BY MELISSA GRACE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
3. SUBWAY CHOP-UP VICTIM ID'D, The New York Post, February 19, 2005 Saturday, All Editions; Pg. 14, 186 words, John Doyle
4. Man Sought in Killing and Dismemberment, The New York Times, February 19, 2005 Saturday, Late Edition - Final, Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 3, 678 words, By JENNIFER 8. LEE; William K. Rashbaum, Ann Farmer and Sewell Chan contributed reporting for this article.
5. Body Was Cut Up Expertly, Police Say, The New York Times, February 26, 2005 Saturday, Late Edition - Final, Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 3, 644 words, By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
6. CUT-UP MAN WAS ON WAY TO SEE BEAU, Daily News (New York), February 19, 2005 Saturday, SPORTS FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. 6, 283 words, BY KERRY BURKE and JONATHAN LEMIRE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
7. COPS LINK INTERNET DATE TO TEEN'S DISMEMBER-SLAY, Daily News (New York), February 25, 2005 Friday, CITY FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. 33, 133 words, BY Tony Sclafani
8. NEW BODY PART EYED IN KILLING, Daily News (New York), February 24, 2005 Thursday, SPORTS FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. 5, 181 words, By Deborah Kolben and Tony Sclafani

Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah contended that the sheer ghoulishness with which Brazell died should have attracted press and public compassion and concern -- because it's quite likely that whoever killed Rashawn is still walking the street. Clarence Patton of the New York Anti-Violence Project noted that several years ago, another young black gay man was hacked to death and that murder also went unsolved and garnered little press attention.