Awareness for missing Native American women and girls
It seems everything in America nowadays gets politicized, from the food we eat to the movies we watch to our responses to a worldwide pandemic. So perhaps it’s not too surprising that the case of formerly missing travel blogger Gabrielle Petito, whose body has been found in what the FBI calls a homicide, has become politicized too. Specifically, after weeks of intense media coverage, including frequent discussion and wild speculation in social media, about the blonde, blue-eyed 22 year old Petito, some folks began mentioning that there are a lot of people of color also missing, who are not receiving a modicum of media coverage in comparison. For example, here’s Joy Reid of MSNBC talking about this yesterday:
“No one is looking for us.” With all the coverage on the Gabby Petito case, Joy Reid calls out the media’s obsession with missing white women, and calls it “missing white woman syndrome”. pic.twitter.com/FPbA3bHjNq
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) September 21, 2021
Other examples of this media phenomenon include the following:
“In the same area that Gabby Petito disappeared, 710 indigenous people— mostly girls—disappeared between the years of 2011 and 2020 but their stories didn’t lead news cycles …” https://t.co/HJ01B6CsRK
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) September 21, 2021
https://twitter.com/hjelle_brian/status/1440381994475552781
I'm shaking reading about the discovery of Gabby Petito's body in Wyoming. While we're watching this case unfold, please take 5 seconds to read about Daniel Robinson, a geologist who went missing in the desert outside Buckeye three months ago. His father is still looking for him. pic.twitter.com/5RWrcMpMng
— Shayla Davis (@JournalistShay) September 20, 2021
The people making this comparison between the widespread media coverage of Gabby Petito and the lack of coverage of many other missing people are, in many cases, on the liberal side of the political spectrum. Once such comparisons recently began to be made, however, a backlash ensued, largely from the conservative side of the aisle. Here are a couple of examples:
https://twitter.com/Talkmaster/status/1440321517242310673
BREAKING: FOX News is LIVID over MSNBC’s @JoyAnnReid pointing out the media’s double standard and “missing white woman syndrome,”comparing the incessant coverage of Gabby Petito’s story to the slim coverage of countless missing Black and Indigenous women. RT IF YOU SUPPORT JOY!
— Occupy Democrats (@OccupyDemocrats) September 21, 2021
The argument over coverage of the Gabby Petito case is sort of like the “Black Lives Matter”/“All Lives Matter” situation. You may recall that the “Black Lives Matter” protest movement began in the wake of a seemingly endless string of police killings of black suspects and civilians, such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown, Jr. The point of such protests, of course, was not that black lives matter more than white lives, but that they should matter just as much. In response, however, conservatives started saying “All Lives Matter,” which contains the preposterous implication that somehow white lives did not already matter when it comes to treatment by the police or otherwise. In the case of Gabby Petito, likewise, it is being noted that white blonde Gabby is getting nearly 24/7 media coverage in some quarters (conspicuously, it seems, at Fox “News”), while missing persons of color often get no coverage, even if they are subsequently found murdered. Again, however, folks are merely asking for non-whites to be treated the same as, not better or different than, whites.
Indeed, the media coverage of Gabby Petito and her fiancée Brian Laundrie (who is missing and presumed to be on the run from the law) occurs not in a vacuum, but rather after a long history of similar stories. For instance, Nancy Grace hosted several cable TV programs over the past couple of decades where she devoted entire nightly programs seemingly to missing young blonde females. Likewise, when young white Capitol Hill intern Chandra Levy went missing (she was eventually found dead, presumably from murder), the outsized media coverage included CNN‘s Larry King, who appeared to begin his show every night with a variation on “Chandra Levy is still missing.” Before that, there were Elizabeth Smart, Natalee Holloway, Madeleine McCann, and other young white missing females who captured enormous media attention.
The apparent difference in media coverage of these young white females versus missing young females of color, or people of color generally, in the U.S. and other western countries, raises some questions and begs further discussion: Is this disparate treatment a result of racism deeply ingrained in such countries? Do the missing persons whose loved ones have the most media access and know-how simply receive the most media coverage? Or are these two elements are intertwined? In the meantime, it only seems fair, responsible and human for those of us with access at least to social media to raise awareness of the tragedy of these many missing people of all kinds.
Photo by Seattle City Council, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/4LwgUO
