Only white, blond girls?

[question everything]

There was a letter in the local paper, and I think a post here, claiming that only white blond girls who disappear get media attention. Perhaps, I don't know. I think that to substantiate such a claim one has to give an example of a black or a Latina girl who just disappeared while being in a safe place: vacation, back yard, visiting friends or relatives, etc.

[wakeme2008]

1. Where was the case of the black girl that was raped and

left in a dumpster a couple weeks ago. Lucky for her they found her quickly and alive. The media was just starting to hit her big time when they found her. But what got me, was they expanded the police from around 20 to near 100 within a couple HOURS.....

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Such a case MIGHT get the attention of the cops, and we all hope

it would, but it would NEVER get the attention of the media.

[question everything]

16. But it did, this one n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. Well, somehow I missed it.

But then, I've been avoiding the corporate media in my obsession to not hear anything about Michael Jackson.

[AutumnMist]

2. I would think that people

who make such claims are only repeating what the media has covered recently perhaps. But the person who made the claims needs to go to an amber alert page or pages that cover missing people. People of all ages and nationalities go missing every year. The last girl who went missing off a cruise ship near Aruba in the early 90's (late 80's?) was a brunette. Hope this helps. :)

[LaurenG]

3. Well people disappear everyday

Why is this case so "special"? Think about all the people that are missing and no mention of them (nationally) is ever made. A few have been over the last few years other than that. I don't think so.

[question everything]

6. I don't think it is about people

but rather about minors - boys and girls - who disappear from a safe, nurturing family. Not older who many have just left on their own

[LaurenG]

13. Like the runaway bride?

[ElectroPrincess]

46. The nation is now Hyper focusing on a WOMAN because they

can hype-the race angle. White, Blond and Pretty with one very important angle that rests my case: She is an ADULT!!! (18 y.o.)

She's of Legal Age. Responsible for herself.

Unless there's injustice, NO one can be sued because she was responsible for herself. Again, at the time of her abduction she was and ADULT!

Why are we "going nuts" over this one case save for the racism angle?

[carpe diem]

4. lacie petterson was a brunette...

..but I think the point was that only white women/girls are deemed important enough to create interest among the public/media...the recent case of the little black girl in Florida was the exception...and I think that was only because it was in Florida on the heels of several sad cases of abduction/murders of little white girls and they knew their would be criticism if they didn't handle it w/ the same level of police and media attention...

[xultar]

5. Think of Precious Doe. The toddler latina that is still missing in FL.

[acmejack]

7. A co-workers son disappeared nothing much on him

Patrick Welsh was missing for a month, it ended badly. Very limited coverage on disappearance, non-existent on conclusion.

[Dora]

8. Now, see, the problem with that is...

If the media ignores disappearing women of color, then how are we supposed to hold forth the examples of missing women of color?

The only way to do it is to cite PERSONAL examples. I, thank fortune, have never known a woman who disappeared.

[LSdemocrat]

9. I don't see why any missing person case gets vast national exposure

All of these cases are just another way for corporate media channels to avoid covering real news.

I'm not saying national exposure shouldn't be used to help find people, but there are far less intrusive methods, namely putting pictures of missing people in the corner of the screen or on screen before going to commercials.

[eternalburn]

10. The Bradley sisters ...(Chicago)

http://www.homestead.com/thebradleysisters/

~snip~

On July 6, 2001, ten-year-old Tionda Z. Bradley and her sister, three-year-old Diamond Yvette Bradley, were reported missing to the Chicago Police Department, Chicago, Illinois. According to their mother, a note written by Tionda was found, stating that the two girls were going to the store and to the school playground. An extensive search of the area and surrounding neighborhood met with negative results.

~click above to continue~


These girls are still missing.

[question everything]

19. Thank you, how sad

Would be interesting to know whether around the same time there was a media frenzy about a white woman.

I seem to remember that at the time Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered, there were two or three black women murdered in Los Angeles and someone mentioned that comparison.

[Jane Eyre]

11. 9 year old Asha Degree from Shelby, NC

http://www.rinokids.com/Children/Degree/

Asha Degree disappeared from her home in Shelby NC on Feb. 14, 2000. She was 9 years old at the time. Asha is a young black girl. While there is a good deal of local coverage about her case, I have seen very little about her on the national news.

[Neshanic]

12. MSM wants potential in the story. It has to have promise to give.

Pathological lying "med student", jilted ex-lovers, find myself love trips to Vegas, you name it. The potential to unravel into something really "interesting" means big money.

[rasputin1952]

14. Most of these stories are local, and nationwide media only picks

up on them when something seems extraordinary, and will grasp the public's imagination or play to fear.

One of the great horrors of this country is that a child, (or an adult), can be abducted at all.

Locally, when such things happen, often hundreds go out to search, and occasionally, the results are good and the person is found alive. We don't hear of the people that take the time to search and bring these situations to closure. Black and Hispanic children are portrayed, but not nationally as often as I'd like to see. Every child is precious and they need to be protected.

However, if every abduction case was in the media, that would be all that was on. One child missing is bad enough, thousands missing is a national disgrace.

Watch your children and teach them the basics of getting away from people who may do them harm. Watch out for the kids in the neighborhood, we can prevent this type of crime, we need to keep our kids and others safe.

[progressivebydesign]

20. But why was Elizabeth Smart more important than those children???

I understand why people are upset about this. Honestly, the media makes determinations on what would make a compelling story. Sadly, it is the Barbie factor.. As I read about these other missing children, I see that I knew nothing about them and their disappearance. When will people understand that the media is no longer there to inform, it is there to sell cars, or houses, or furniture, or cereal. It's there to allow space to sell for advertisers, thereby enriching the owners/stockholders. And that's all.

[question everything]

24. Yes, I think that the "criteria" is a child from a "safe" house

in a suburb with two parents, preferably active in the church, as opposed to a child of the inner city with a single mother.

Because when the child is white from the suburb the white audience which is the major consumer of main stream media, shudders thinking this could happen to my child, or my neighbor's child. While if the child is black from the inner city the reaction is that, well, this is a crime area..

About Elizabeth Smart - not much was made about why she did not make any attempts to flee, about whether there was something in the Mormon teaching that made her trust and accept her captor.

[Ilsa]

17. Several possibilities:

1) MSM terrorism: keep everyone afraid and paranoid and suspicious. Spin it either way: if it is in a foreign place (because Bushco keeps us safe here :sarcasm: ) or even if it is at home ("it could happen in your own backyard!")

2) MSM thinks we engage in religious judgmentalism. "Look what happened to that rich white chick out having fun. She must have been a slut, so she deserved what she got."

3) Her parents have money, like Jon Benet's family. Makes for more sensational press when they can put out big rewards.

[Orangepeel]

18. they don't have to be blond (n/t)

[question everything]

22. You are right. But white

and, as others pointed with a potential to become sensational. Husband- wife, like OJ Simpson, Scott Peterson, the guy in Utah and the runaway bride.

[BringEmOn]

23. More Willie Horton

Show pictures of black men in handcuffs...scare the shit outta racist right wing whites.

[SoCalDem]

25. "Cute" is the operative feature for mega-coverage

Blondes do seem to get more coverage, but if the missing person is a cute/pretty female of just about any age (being white and blonde helps). they will get massive coverage.

[AngryAmish]

26. Laci Peterson

Latina.

edited for spulling

[misanthrope]

27. I received the following...

...in e-mail today:

(White) Women We Love

By Eugene Robinson

Someday historians will look back at America in the decade bracketing the turn of the 21st century and identify the era's major themes: Religious fundamentalism. Terrorism. War in Iraq. Economic dislocation. Bioengineering. Information technology. Nuclear proliferation. Globalization. The rise of superpower China.

And, of course, Damsels in Distress.

Every few weeks, this stressed-out nation with more problems to worry about than hours in the day finds time to become obsessed with the saga -- it's always a "saga," never just a story -- of a damsel in distress. Natalee Holloway, the student who disappeared while on a class trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba, is the latest in what seems an endless series.

Holloway assumed the mantle from her predecessor, the Runaway Bride, who turned out not to have been in distress at all -- not physical distress, at least, though it's obvious that the prospect of her impending 600-guest wedding caused Jennifer Wilbanks an understandable measure of mental trauma.

Before the Runaway Bride, there were too many damsels to provide a full list, but surely you remember the damsel elite: Laci Peterson. Elizabeth Smart. Lori Hacking. Chandra Levy. JonBenet Ramsey. We even found, or created, a damsel amid the chaos of war in Iraq: Jessica Lynch.

The specifics of the story line vary from damsel to damsel. In some cases, the saga begins with the discovery of a corpse. In other cases, the damsel simply vanishes into thin air. Often, there is a suspect from the beginning -- an intruder, a husband, a father, a congressman, a stranger glimpsed lurking nearby.

Sometimes the tale ends well, or well enough, as in the cases of Smart and Lynch. Let's hope it ends well for Holloway. But more often, it ends badly. Once in a great while, a case like Runaway Bride comes along to provide comic relief.

But of course the damsels have much in common besides being female. You probably have some idea of where I'm headed here.

A damsel must be white. This requirement is nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions that breathless cable television reporters can credibly describe as "petite," and it also helps if she's the kind of woman who wouldn't really mind being called "petite," a woman with a good deal of princess in her personality. She must be attractive -- also nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle class or higher, but an exception can be made in the case of wartime (see: Lynch).

Put all this together, and you get 24-7 coverage. The disappearance of a man, or of a woman of color, can generate a brief flurry, but never the full damsel treatment. Since the Holloway story broke we've had more news reports from Aruba this past week, I'd wager, than in the preceding 10 years.

I have no idea whether the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida hung on every twist and turn of the Chandra Levy case; somehow, I doubt he did. But I suspect the apostle of "deconstructionism" would have analyzed the damsel-in-distress phenomenon by explaining that our society is imposing its own subconsciously chosen narrative on all these cases.

It's the meta-narrative of something seen as precious and delicate being snatched away, defiled, destroyed by evil forces that lurk in the shadows, just outside the bedroom window. It's whiteness under siege. It's innocence and optimism crushed by cruel reality. It's a flower smashed by a rock.

Or maybe (since Derrida believed in multiple readings of a single text) the damsel thing is just a guaranteed cure for a slow news day. The cable news channels, after all, have lots of airtime to fill.

This is not to mock any one of these cases (except Runaway Bride) or to diminish the genuine tragedy experienced by family and friends. I can imagine the helplessness I'd feel if a child of mine disappeared from a remote beach in the Caribbean. But I can also be fairly confident that neither of my sons would provoke so many headlines.

Whatever our ultimate reason for singling out these few unfortunate victims, among the thousands of Americans who are murdered or who vanish each year, the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women for the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance.

What it says is that we haven't. What it says is that those stubborn issues are still very much alive and that they remain at the heart of the nation's deepest fears.

[bloom]

35. The "fairy tale" deal

That actually sums it up.

It's like a movie plot, also - who is the lead victim?

I think there is some resentment by some that men don't get to be the victim - at least the victim splashed all over the pages of magazines and on TV.

But that's nots how the fairy tale goes - is it.

The men are supposed to be the saviors - like the Lynch story. Or the villains - like the Peterson / Hacking / Smart and I don't know about Levy & Ramsey - but it probably was the case of male villains with them, also.

Movies like "Monster" are unusual - they depart from the script. I'm not thrilled seeing women as the villain. It's not something I like to see.

I don't blame the men who don't like seeing men always as villain/never as victim either.

[spinbaby]

28. Missing men are mostly ignored

Here's a story of a district attorney who's been missing for a couple of months. The story did make it to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette this morning but I haven't noticed any national coverage.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05161/519562.stm

[SmokingJacket]

29. That's true.

Several men have gone missing from my area over the last few years, but they just barely make local news.

One in particular is extremely baffling...

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bejammin075]

31. it's white attractive women

no blacks, hispanics, asian, etc.
no fat people, no old people.

only young attractive white women.
it's about the 15% profit margin.

[slackmaster]

32. Laci Peterson was Hispanic

n/t

[Jane Eyre]

33. Laci Peterson was attractive

She was very attractive, married to a very attractive white man and certainly would have had a very attractive white child. Laci Peterson's Hispanic heritage has never been mentioned, and she looked caucasian. Plus, she had a WASP-y name - Peterson is not evocative of a Hispanic heritage.

[slackmaster]

34. It's all irrelevant to me

The media put out content that they feel will raise their ratings without much regard for real-life importance.

Plus, she had a WASP-y name - Peterson is not evocative of a Hispanic heritage.

Only because she married a man with a WASP-y name. Laci was clearly Latina.

[misanthrope]

36. Well the litmus test...

...in the Jim Crow South was, "Would she be able to take advantage of the privileges afforded whites?" The answer to that is, "yes."

[slackmaster]

38. I'm quite sure the media's first and primary concern is market share

If they thought images of missing non-white-looking people made for good ratings the airwaves would be saturated with them. There is surely no shortage of candidates.

[misanthrope]

41. Granted...

...but there are underlying themes and prejudices that are factors in such decisions, whether they are realized by the broadcasters and viewers or not.

[slackmaster]

43. That's exactly my point

The media reflect prejudices and biases held by their audiences.

[ElectroPrincess]

47. But she married a White Man which made here honorary White.

Just like good old Jebbie's wife new class status upon marriage.

[MidnightWind]

39. She was also upper-middle class

or even affluent by some standards. It DOES make a difference in terms of media coverage, for sure. Wasn't there an Hispanic woman who disappeared before Lacey who was also pregnant in the same area and it go virtually no media coverage? Of course, this other woman was poor, unwed, and not "glamorous" enough to warrant media coverage.

[semass]

48. Laci Peterson was not Hispanic, she was Portuguese!

[deadparrot]

37. We never hear about them...

because there's no national news coverage of such crimes.

But a quick Google turns up some results:
http://www.blacknews.com/pr/runaway101.html
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91531&page=1
http://www.sandiego-online.com/issues/march04/featureb0304.asp

That's just one page of results. How many of these people are nationally known names?


Here's a link to a Jim Leher transcript on this subject. It's from a few years ago, but it's relevent, I guess.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec02/missing_7-12.html

[Pikku]

40. Ni Una Más

More than 400 young women have been abducted, raped and murdered in Cd. Juarez in the last 20 years. The murders have received a bit of media attention, but nothing close to that given to Laci Peterson.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/04/09/juarez/

No, Juárez is not in the U.S, but it's across the border from El Paso, and a lot of the girls had family ties on both sides of the border. And, do we really need to limit our concern to U.S. citizens?

[Chovexani]

42. Because women of color are worth less than nothing

Here in Amerikkka. :puke:

[sbj405]

44. Lots - FBI's link

http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/kidnap/kidmiss.htm

All sexes, all shapes, all colors. Plenty taken from relatively safe surroundings. I am actually surprised by the number in my area that I haven't heard about via local news. They usually seem to be a bit better about reporting equally.

[ElectroPrincess]

45. Not "all over" ... and the "white girl" missing is an ADULT (18 y.o.)