Racial "Profiling" in Missing Person Cases

Tonight's Dateline NBC is broaching a subject that has crossed my mind more than a few times in the past month: Why, oh why, is there so much dang TV news coverage on those missing women who happen to be young, white, middle-class, and cute? Up to 600 Mexican women have been abducted, murdered, and dumped in Ciudad Juarez in the past decade. I don't see them on the news much. But every single day, that ditz from Aruba is the sole topic of discussion on Nancy Grace and other "news" programs. Prostitutes disappear by the dozens from nearly every major Canadian city in any given year, but the cases that grab our attention usually involve just one woman. She is always beautiful and white, with a home in the 'burbs, an SUV, and the other accoutrements of middle-class Canadian/American life. We are somehow supposed to feel more sympathy for her family than for the impoverished families that lose their daughters to prostitution and drugs every day.

If a cheerleader is abducted because she was cow-dumb enough to hop into a car with a bunch of strangers in a foreign country where she went to party and sunbathe, should the world come to a halt while we all look for her? CNN seems to think so.

The same principles apply to missing children. This is much worse. If a white child vanishes, the world stops and the media raises its hackles. If a black child vanishes...wait, when was the last time you heard of a black child vanishing? Hmmm. Maybe three, four years ago. Yet black children are missing. Children of every ethnic background are missing. Check out the Center for Missing and Exploited Children website if you don't believe me.
This trend probably began with the advent of newspapers, but the mass media has made it a conspicuous problem. You simply can't turn on a TV or buy a magazine without seeing the face of one of the favoured women or children staring back at you.
It's entirely up to as media consumers to demand balanced news on missing persons. We have to change the channel or pass by the newsstand when sensationalized cases are being thrust in our faces. We can't humour this kind of behaviour anymore. While we're glued to newscasts about JonBenet Ramsey and Laci Peterson, women and children are disappearing from our very own streets.