The Missing White Woman Syndrome: What the Gabby Petito story reveals about U.S. Systemic Racism

By Kim Harris, M.Ed.

Distinctive Voice Consulting

October 2021

 

I watched the news over the past few weeks and became upset about this beautiful young woman who was missing. I became addicted to the story each day as new information was revealed. Despite this woman being from New York, the story made national headline news and dominated media coverage. Then my equity lens began to focus as I asked myself how many other people were missing. Surely this woman wasn’t the only person who did not make it home to her family. Why did this case get so much air time? So I did some research and what I found should not have surprised me, but it did. Racial disparity in the United States is something I teach about and racial disparity exists in every aspect of American life: education, employment, housing, health care, and the criminal justice system to name a few examples.

 

Now add to this list the search for missing BIPOC people. My heart breaks. Every family should have equal resources assigned for the search and rescue of their loved ones but here again, this is not the case. And hence the coined term “missing white woman syndrome” in 2004 by the late news anchor Gwen Ifill. According to Zach Sommers, a criminologist who specializes in missing person cases, “‘Missing white women syndrome’ is the idea that young white girls and white women often get much more news coverage than other folks of different demographics when they go missing.” This isn’t race baiting or imagined. The statistics bear this out and this is systemic racism.

 

According to the Black and Missing Foundation there were 543,018 people who went missing in 2020. Based on race and age under 18 years of age, 57% of those who went missing were white and 39% of missing folks were racial minorities (3% were listed as an unknown race). Among the 39% minorities missing, 36% were African-American and 3% were of Asian and Indian descent. The United States census reports that 61.6% of the United States population identifies as white, 12.4% identify as African-American and 7.1% identify as Asian and Indian or Native American. While I am comparing overall U.S. demographics to missing folks demographics under 18 years of age, let’s assume the racial breakdown for the overall population and the under 18 population are relatively the same. In a perfect world, folks would be missing in direct proportion to their racial demographic, but as we can see by these numbers, the only demographic that is over-represented as missing persons in the U.S. is the African-American community who make up 12.4% of the United States population but 36% of folks reported missing.

 

The Black and Missing Foundation named three reasons for the disparity in media coverage for BIPOC people including: that minority children are classified as run-ways so an Amber alert is not issued and runaways are not treated as missing, missing minority adults are labeled as associated with criminal involvement, gangs and drugs so they are not prioritized, and the desensitization of feelings that exist for BIPOC people due to the belief that BIPOC folks live in impoverished areas where crime is common place. These factors use a system to lump BIPOC folks into a category where their cases won’t matter and this needs to change.

 

The foundation lists four interventions for vigilance to promote the fair treatment of all missing people including: more diversity in the newsroom which would bring in diverse perspectives on story coverage, having a non-biased approach to news coverage by being intentional about reporting on missing folks equally, vigilance in our communities to help find all missing people, and changing the American outlook so that Black and Brown lives matter.

 

On this last point my business, Distinctive Voice Consulting, can help. I specialize in diversity, equity and bias-awareness training and consulting to help increase the cultural competencies and development of individuals and organizations. If you belong to a group seeking equity, diversity and inclusivity self-development or an organization that wants a diversity audit to look at the structure, policies and practices of your organization through an equity and inclusion lens to divest yourself of complicity in systemic racism, please visit www.DistinctiveVoiceConsulting.com. Through education and analysis we can create a world where equity and inclusiveness exists for all.