And not only in the media, but also in the police, according to critics, there is no urgency when it comes to a black woman. “These things are just taken less seriously,” says Derrica Wilson of the organization Black and Missing, where they have been focusing on missing persons cases in black families for 13 years. “How often do we see the family first being told that their loved one must have run away.”
For example, there is no Amber Alert, and the precious first 24 or 48 hours of a missing person slip away, Wilson says. “Can you imagine a white family being told this when they report to the police in a panic?” When a black man or woman goes missing, criminals are automatically thought of first, she says. “As if the lives of these people matter less. They are being dehumanized.”
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In the United States, the debate about the Missing White Woman Syndrome has often raged in the media and the police. But Derrica Wilson’s organization notices a difference this time: several media have already turned to Black and Missing for advice. “I’ll be in a panel discussion next week at one of the biggest newspapers in the country. That’s really new.”
And according to Wilson, that media attention is the most important link in the solution of a case. “The public then knows about a missing person, they know the name and help them search.” But that’s not even the gist, she says. “Media attention puts pressure on the police and FBI to put money and men into a case. It can really ensure that a missing person is taken seriously.”
Keeshae Jacobs’s room looks like she can come home tonight. With cuddly toys on the bed and cheerful pictures from the past on the wall. Her mother Toni believes she is still alive and will come home one day. “I know that in my heart. And she needs to know that I keep fighting to find her.”
Because it was a kidnapping, says Jacobs. One that, according to her, could take place precisely because the media and police have a blind spot when it comes to black women. “If you were going to rob someone, you would do it in a place where no one is paying attention,” she says, “so if you want to kidnap a woman, you pick one that the media and the police don’t pay attention to. you just go ahead.”
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