saw a white woman refer to sam nordquist as "kid" - of course, little black boys are "young men" but grown black men are "kids." acknowledge him fully for what he was: a BLACK TRANSGENDER man. his blackness and transgender status in combination were what made him so vulnerable to this brutal abuse and murder. do not infantilize him. and furthermore do not erase his blackness to spotlight only his transness. this was a hate crime which shows yet again the compounding effects of transphobia and antiblack racism. it is not a coincidence that all five accused murderers are white, and can be linked to white nationalism on public social media profiles (such as emily motyka's confederate flag profile picture).
also, if you're going to share pictures of sam, show what he actually looked like as himself - not the pretansition photo picked by basically every fucking news outlet. pre-transition and non-op/non-medically transitioning transgender people are obviously still trans, but that was not his current situation at all, and it's so profoundly disrespectful to latch onto an outdated photo to represent him. here's what he looked like in actual recent pics he chose to share on his own social media: