This systematic injustice has been brought to light by the recent missing person (turned murder) case of Gabby Petito. This case was widely broadcasted across various major media forums and essentially all everyone was talking about on social media for weeks. With the help of civilians and the FBI Ms. Petito’s body was found after she was missing for nearly a month. This case did make people upset though because it brought to light how many people of color missing persons cases do not get the same treatment Gabby’s did. The colored community feels ignored and hurt by the lack of care media outlets, the police and the general population have when it’s an African American, Hispanic, Asian etc. man or woman that goes missing. The colored community’s missing persons cases often go inactive and unsolved. This is a systemic injustice because the police and media outlets give more special treatment to the superior race of white people while yet again the colored community gets unequal opportunities and treatment.
The graph above is a summary from the FBI of all the active missing persons cases of 2020. The blue lines represent the percentage of missing people compared to the yellow bar which represents the percentage that race makes up of the total US population. This graph just proves even more that the undercoverage of people of color missing persons cases are systemic injustices. I think this because as you can see the African American community makes up nearly 1/3 of the missing people cases but only make up 13% of the total population. These missing persons do not get the same treatment that white missing people do. Cases like Gabby Petitio’s taught us that if we gave these people of color missing persons cases as much care and coverage there would be less and less.
The above image is of Jelani Day. This missing persons case was inactive for months until the Gabby Petito case came around and Jelani’s mother pleaded with the FBI to treat her sons case with the same urgency as they did Gabby’s. I have included a link to a video below to see his mother plead for the same treatment that is truly heartbreaking. We can relate this systemic injustice to the concept of “other” we have learned about this semester. I think that often the priority for the FBI in missing persons cases are white women, and the rest really are pushed back into the category of other. Othering is about how we categorize people and issues amongst other things into a separate category from the supreme white race. I think that to stop this systemic injustice we need to give the colored community the same treatment we give white missing persons. Jelani’s mothers plea made his case more widespread and in turn helped find his body. There are so many other cases out there like Jelani’s and we as a community need to bring more awareness to them. Unfourtanley as a society there are pre-dispositions made against the colored community (due to the idea that colored people are “other”) which make widespread media coverage of these cases not common. If we can all work together to hold our officials and community members accountable for their racial injustices we can help bring these missing persons cases to a closured end.
Links: https://abc7chicago.com/jelani-day-mother-update-investigation/11134742/
https://www.wcia.com/news/mother-of-missing-graduate-student-asks-for-communitys-support/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/us/families-missing-black-people/index.html
It’s really important to really think about your point about white supremacy and how institutional it is in America. I think it makes a lot of white people uncomfortable to think about the systems they protect that also uphold white supremacy. Like you mentioned with Gabby’s case— all of America from the fbi to web sleuths latched on to ways to search for her while people of color have inactive cases that sit for months. Jelani’s case just proves if law enforcement would bother putting forth the effort- they’re more than capable of finding missing persons. I think as a society we need to rectify our systems that are keeping barriers of “one” and “other” relevant.