If Gabby Petito were black, she wouldn't be all over the news. At any given time, there are tens of thousands of Americans categorized as “missing” by law enforcement. However, only a fraction of those individuals receive news coverage, leading some commentators to hypothesize that missing persons with certain characteristics are more likely to garner media attention than others: namely, white women and girls.
There is very little awareness or concern over the pervasiveness of missing Black women and girls. Especially, when compared to white women and girls. Some have argued that mainstream media appears overly fascinated with covering endangered or missing white women and girls such as Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, and Laci Peterson – but conversely, seems disinterested in cases involving Black women.
Among the tens of thousands of Black women and girls who are missing many of them are also runaways and victims of sex trafficking. Almost half of U.S. sex trafficking victims are Black girls. In many cases girls are taken against their will; however, it is not uncommon for young Black girls to runaway due to economic deprivation or sexual and/or physical abuse. It is reported that approximately 60% of Black girls are sexually assaulted before they turn 18, which makes it easier for sexual predators to capitalize on their vulnerabilities. Because Amber Alerts are exclusively reserved for abductees, runaways aren’t privileged with texts or sirens that blare out over cell phones — alerting the public of their disappearance. Making matters worse, research suggests that some law enforcement tend to inaccurately categorize cases of missing Black girls as runaways, which decreases the intensity and urgency given to those who have been abducted or who are otherwise endangered.
The term Missing White Woman Syndrome describes the fact that Western media will focus on the murder, kidnapping, or disappearance of Caucasian females — usually pretty, young, and middle- or upper-class — to the exclusion of male, minority, poor, or disabled missing persons. Unbalanced news reporting sends a message that these victims are more important and deserve more consideration than others.
In December 2018, as one of his last presidential moves of the year, Trump signed the Ashanti Alert Act into federal law. The new nationwide system dispatches notifications about missing people between the ages of 18 and 64 — too old for an Amber Alert, designed to make the public aware of child abductions, and too young for a Silver Alert, which similarly dispenses information about missing seniors. It is the legislative namesake of Ashanti Billie, a young, Black woman and aspiring chef who moved from Maryland to Virginia Beach to study culinary arts. On September 3, 2017, Ashanti was kidnapped on her way to work. Because she was 19, no be-on-the-lookout alerts went out about her abduction. Then 11 days later, her body was discovered near a church in Charlotte. Her parents, Meltony and Brandy Billie, and lawmakers pushed the act to help expedite searches for missing and endangered adults so Ashanti’s senseless death could save another life.
Despite an omnipresent temptation to harangue "the media" for their sensationalist reporting, and having long tired of the recursive "ratings-determined programming" argument in which readers and journalists chase each other along the downward spiral with no sense of who's leading, I must say that in this case, as in many cases, race is circumstantial. The damsel-in-distress fable has always drawn attention--but let's have a look at what makes a damsel. It's not race, but context and juxtaposition. The lack of connection to any criminal element, the unexpectedness of the tragedy, the disjunction between the victim's life and the crime--these make the story "special." Present us a story of a young woman of any race--a college student, a wife, mother, professional, what have you--who has no connections to anything that might suggest the predictability of the crime, or the likeliness of its having occurred, and you'll get your media storm. If you want it. Drama--melodrama, really, which is what this is--derives from the extent to which the narrative elements are fantastic. Give us a dramatic death, give us a tropical island, give us the seamy side of the average America we rarely think about in specific terms, and you'll secure your ratings.
Pretty is better than not pretty, or course, if that's your business; rich is better than poor, young is better than old. If you're going to present these cases like so many episodes of primetime TV, we shall treat them as such. If there's a lack of black, Latino, Asian, people finding themselves in circumstances extraordinary enough to warrant the media attenion that women such as those you've listed get, then the problem of race we need to address as a nation is larger than the individual case reporting.
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