Louis Mitchell, driving while black and transgendered (photo by Kara Delahunt for ColorLines Magazine).

Yesterday, the nation remembered the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and much of the focus of that commemoration has been, as in past years, on his enormous contribution in advancing the civil rights of African Americans. To his credit, Barack Obama recognized at least that gay and lesbian African Americans deserve recognition and acceptance by the mainstream African American community. “If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community hasnot always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community,” Obama declared in his speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church — Dr. King’s home church in Atlanta. “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them,” he continued.

While I wish Obama had included his bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters in his speech, I appreciate his at least addressing the issue of homophobia within the African American community, and it was certainly more than what Hillary Clinton was willing to do in her own speech on King Day at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

Then again, Hillary has rarely if ever been willing to address homophobia except to exclusively gay audiences, and she has never been willing to address transgenderphobia in any forum or context. And as for transgendered people of color, neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton have anything to say or anything to offer.

And yet, there are few people who are more often subjected to discrimination, harassment, abuse, or violence than transgendered people of color. In her article for ColorLines magazine, Becoming a Black Man, Daisy Hernandez documents the life stories of a number of such transgendered people of color (including, briefly, me). The lack of reference to transgendered people of color in Hillary Clinton’s calculated and colorless King Day speech in Harlem and even in Barack Obama’s stirring oration in Atlanta shows how far we still have to go in order to realize Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community.