Black children go missing at alarmingly high rates. Here’s why you don’t hear about it
San Francisco Chronicle (archive.ph)
By Justin Phillips
2023-04-16 11:01:09GMT
Students Timia Brown (left), Lon’Ja Mustafa and Davina Stubblefield meet during lunch at Skyline High School in Oakland. They are a part of the Black Girls Group, where they talk about issues facing Black women. During a recent meeting, they discussed state legislation that would allow law enforcement to request an Ebony Alert when searching for a Black person age 12-25. Juliana Yamada/The Chronicle
Within the last few years, Timia Brown, 14; Lon’Ja Mustafa, 16; and Davina Stubblefield, 17, have all had friends go missing. Some were found within a few weeks, while others have yet to be located.
The Oakland Skyline High School students told me they never saw their friends’ names in Amber Alerts or news coverage while they were missing.
“I couldn’t help but think about why it was only on social media among my friends that we were talking about them being missing,” Brown said. “I wasn’t seeing it being mentioned anywhere else.”
Their friends weren’t white.
Researchers at the Columbia Journalism Review, in collaboration with advertising agency TBWA/Chiat/Day out of New York, studied 3,600 news articles about missing people in the U.S. in 2021. They used the findings — which showed missing Black people receive far less coverage than missing white people — to launch the website Are You Press Worthy, which allows users to see how much press they would receive if they went missing.
I tried it out. A 16-year-old California girl like Lon’Ja is “worth” seven news stories, while a 16-year-old white girl in California would be covered in 17.
“If you’re a Black woman or even a Black male, nobody talks about you being missing,” Lon’Ja said.
A California bill aims to change this, but it doesn’t go far enough.
State Sen. Steven Bradford introduced SB673 to create a statewide Ebony Alert system, addressing the lack of attention given to Black children and young adults who go missing. Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press
State Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena, Los Angeles County) introduced SB673 last month. If approved, the legislation would allow law enforcement to request an Ebony Alert in cases where they’re searching for a Black person age 12-25. The alert would also nudge media outlets to help spread important details about the missing person.
But the bill doesn’t propose much more than a symbolic improvement on the state’s Amber Alert system, which took effect in 2002 and is used by law enforcement to publicize their searches of missing or abducted children who are 17 years of age or younger.
Unfortunately, authorities are more likely to classify Black youth as “runaways” than their white counterparts, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, a Maryland-based nonprofit that speaks with the families of missing persons and works with law enforcement agencies to elevate their cases, and therefore less likely to be featured in Amber Alerts. SB673 doesn’t propose anything that would prevent the same omissions in an Ebony Alert system.
That’s why Derrica Wilson, who co-founded the Black and Missing Foundation with her sister, is pushing for mandated anti-bias training to be written into the bill.
“Law enforcement has too much discretion in this bill in determining when to issue an alert. And they’ve shown they don’t prioritize these alerts for Black people,” said Wilson, a former officer at the Falls Church Police Department in Virginia. “Law enforcement must have the necessary training to handle these cases the right way for this to work.”
In SB673, Bradford cites troubling data from the Black and Missing Foundation and the National Crime Information Center: 38% of missing persons cases are Black youth under the age of 18, while Black people represent less than 14% of the population. And Black children make up about 33% of all missing child cases, the bill states.
It isn’t just Black teens and young adults who go missing in California, either. More than half (26 out of 50) of the missing Black Californians in the Black and Missing Foundation’s database were over the age of 25 when they disappeared.
As SB673 is currently written, they wouldn’t have been eligible for an Ebony Alert, nor would missing Black children under the age of 12, although they could still be eligible for an Amber Alert.
An age-limit free alert isn’t unprecedented in the state. California’s much-needed Feather Alert system, which was enacted in January and is designed to help find Indigenous people who have “gone missing under unexplainable or suspicious circumstances,” does not have age limits.
SB673 needs to be more than a half measure. The safety of many Black Californians — of all ages and genders — relies on it.
Justin Phillips joined The San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 2019, Justin also began writing a weekly column for The Chronicle’s Datebook section that focused on Black culture in the Bay Area. In 2020, Justin helped launch Extra Spicy, a food and culture podcast he co-hosts with restaurant critic Soleil Ho. Following its first season, the podcast was named one of the best podcasts in America by the Atlantic. In February, Justin left the food team to become a full-time columnist for The Chronicle. His columns focus on race and inequality in the Bay Area, while also placing a spotlight on the experiences of marginalized communities in the region.
San Francisco Chronicle (archive.ph)
By Justin Phillips
2023-04-16 11:01:09GMT
Students Timia Brown (left), Lon’Ja Mustafa and Davina Stubblefield meet during lunch at Skyline High School in Oakland. They are a part of the Black Girls Group, where they talk about issues facing Black women. During a recent meeting, they discussed state legislation that would allow law enforcement to request an Ebony Alert when searching for a Black person age 12-25. Juliana Yamada/The Chronicle
Within the last few years, Timia Brown, 14; Lon’Ja Mustafa, 16; and Davina Stubblefield, 17, have all had friends go missing. Some were found within a few weeks, while others have yet to be located.
The Oakland Skyline High School students told me they never saw their friends’ names in Amber Alerts or news coverage while they were missing.
“I couldn’t help but think about why it was only on social media among my friends that we were talking about them being missing,” Brown said. “I wasn’t seeing it being mentioned anywhere else.”
Their friends weren’t white.
Researchers at the Columbia Journalism Review, in collaboration with advertising agency TBWA/Chiat/Day out of New York, studied 3,600 news articles about missing people in the U.S. in 2021. They used the findings — which showed missing Black people receive far less coverage than missing white people — to launch the website Are You Press Worthy, which allows users to see how much press they would receive if they went missing.
I tried it out. A 16-year-old California girl like Lon’Ja is “worth” seven news stories, while a 16-year-old white girl in California would be covered in 17.
“If you’re a Black woman or even a Black male, nobody talks about you being missing,” Lon’Ja said.
A California bill aims to change this, but it doesn’t go far enough.
State Sen. Steven Bradford introduced SB673 to create a statewide Ebony Alert system, addressing the lack of attention given to Black children and young adults who go missing. Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press
State Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena, Los Angeles County) introduced SB673 last month. If approved, the legislation would allow law enforcement to request an Ebony Alert in cases where they’re searching for a Black person age 12-25. The alert would also nudge media outlets to help spread important details about the missing person.
But the bill doesn’t propose much more than a symbolic improvement on the state’s Amber Alert system, which took effect in 2002 and is used by law enforcement to publicize their searches of missing or abducted children who are 17 years of age or younger.
Unfortunately, authorities are more likely to classify Black youth as “runaways” than their white counterparts, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, a Maryland-based nonprofit that speaks with the families of missing persons and works with law enforcement agencies to elevate their cases, and therefore less likely to be featured in Amber Alerts. SB673 doesn’t propose anything that would prevent the same omissions in an Ebony Alert system.
That’s why Derrica Wilson, who co-founded the Black and Missing Foundation with her sister, is pushing for mandated anti-bias training to be written into the bill.
“Law enforcement has too much discretion in this bill in determining when to issue an alert. And they’ve shown they don’t prioritize these alerts for Black people,” said Wilson, a former officer at the Falls Church Police Department in Virginia. “Law enforcement must have the necessary training to handle these cases the right way for this to work.”
In SB673, Bradford cites troubling data from the Black and Missing Foundation and the National Crime Information Center: 38% of missing persons cases are Black youth under the age of 18, while Black people represent less than 14% of the population. And Black children make up about 33% of all missing child cases, the bill states.
It isn’t just Black teens and young adults who go missing in California, either. More than half (26 out of 50) of the missing Black Californians in the Black and Missing Foundation’s database were over the age of 25 when they disappeared.
As SB673 is currently written, they wouldn’t have been eligible for an Ebony Alert, nor would missing Black children under the age of 12, although they could still be eligible for an Amber Alert.
An age-limit free alert isn’t unprecedented in the state. California’s much-needed Feather Alert system, which was enacted in January and is designed to help find Indigenous people who have “gone missing under unexplainable or suspicious circumstances,” does not have age limits.
SB673 needs to be more than a half measure. The safety of many Black Californians — of all ages and genders — relies on it.
Justin Phillips joined The San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 2019, Justin also began writing a weekly column for The Chronicle’s Datebook section that focused on Black culture in the Bay Area. In 2020, Justin helped launch Extra Spicy, a food and culture podcast he co-hosts with restaurant critic Soleil Ho. Following its first season, the podcast was named one of the best podcasts in America by the Atlantic. In February, Justin left the food team to become a full-time columnist for The Chronicle. His columns focus on race and inequality in the Bay Area, while also placing a spotlight on the experiences of marginalized communities in the region.
