April 29, 2005
The Color of Abduction
Laci Peterson. Jon Benet Ramsey. Elizabeth Smart. Now it’s Jennifer Wilbanks.
I am referring to this hour’s headline on www.cnn.com.
It is scary that a young Atlanta woman is missing and I hope that she is found, alive and unharmed. But I cannot understand why reports such as this that make headlines consistently seem to feature only white girls and women.
I feel it is safe to say that somewhere, right now in this country, there are a significant number of African-American and other minority girls and women missing. In fact, I can prove it. So why aren't they making CNN's main page?
I am not arguing that police do not take cases of missing women of color seriously. I am strictly making the point that the major media outlets choose time and time again to ignore their cases.
But why?
I found an article about this very subject that attempts to explain the issue. The writer begins: “You probably know who Elizabeth Smart is: a pretty, blond 14-year-old who was kidnapped from her home in a wealthy Salt Lake City neighborhood in early June. You probably don't know the name of Alexis Patterson, an attractive 7-year-old African-American girl from a working-class Milwaukee neighborhood who vanished on her way to school in May.”
The article in no way gets to the bottom of this issue, but it at least acknowledges the glaring discrepancy.
John Walsh, host of “America’s Most Wanted,” claims that the level of interest in the Elizabeth Smart case “doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that this girl lived in a million-dollar house. It has to do with the fact that she was taken out of her house in the middle of the night. That's what scares people."
I don’t buy that. Mr. Walsh may be correct in pointing out that the circumstances surrounding Elizabeth Smart’s abduction were unusual. They were indeed. But he, nor anyone else, is ever going to convince me that odd circumstances don’t surround many cases where a child of color is abducted as well.
I am relieved that this young woman was found alive and was returned to her family. But I don’t think we can ignore the fact that Elizabeth Smart’s story was on every front page of every newspaper, every day for weeks while Alexis Patterson’s was not.
There may be one positive result here. According to the article, this very debate finally brought Alexis Patterson into the media spotlight. Apparently, “CNN, National Public Radio, ``The Today Show,'' ABC, CBS, NBC and a number of major newspapers all did stories on the missing Milwaukee girl -- almost two months after she never got to school.” Better late than never, I suppose.
But that was in 2002. Today, Alexis Patterson is still missing.
We may pretend that we’ve come a long way on issues of race. But then a CNN headline smacks me back to reality and I see just how far we have to go.
Posted by kristin at 13:30 | Comments (2)
Laci Peterson, I believe is half-hispanic.
While it would be naive to dismiss race entirely as the reason why some abductions get coverage and others don't, I don't believe it is the deciding factor. Take this case in Atlanta. What got me interested was the "bride-to-be" aspect. She was supposed to be married Saturday? That's interesting. If she were to be married in August, I don't think it would have gotten nearly the attention it is getting. So not only do you have to be white, but you have to be taken in an odd way, or at an odd time.
If I were to rank reasons why missing person cases get coverage, I'd put race 4th behind Fame, Unique Circumstances, and Wealth. Timing might fit into this somewhere If another woman goes missing while jogging in the Atlanta area, her case regardless of any of the above characteristics, will certainly be covered. Then Apperance.
http://lethargicmind.com//59
That had everything to do with circumstance. The Laci Peterson case sounded like it was taken straight from a prime time crime series, while Dena Raley had nothing out of the ordinary (if a missing person case could possibly be described as ordinary)
The common theme to these stories, and to other stories I referenced was that they were young, attractive, white women. Laci Peterson definitely fell under the Unique Circumstances category, which pushed Dena Raley out of the papers.
