Back in late 2016 and early 2017, the media was in crisis mode– no I’m not talking about Trump. I am talking about the missing girls of color. Every single celebrity was tweeting or Instagramming about it. “Find our girls”, they would post. Everyone was also talking about it. Sharing photos of the young girls who have gone missing. People were outraged that this was happening.
Throughout the year, there were fewer and fewer posts about this. Not that many articles and facts about it either. Nobody talked about the lost girls. They just stopped and moved on to a new crisis.
On the twenty-ninth of October 2017, Scandal had an episode entitled “Lost Girls”. So much went on in that episode, but a topic they did bring up was the missing girls of color. Quinn and her associates got this out in the media and every news person did a segment about it. The former president was helping out too. A mother of one of the missing girls was there to show people how real it was. As this was happening in the episode, another national event over-shadowed it. The mother of the missing girl was angry and confused. She was saying that no one seems to care. It was just not important anymore.
This is a national crisis. These missing girls are being ignored, especially by the justice system…and we all know why. These girls are seen as insignificant problems. Where is the attention?
I searched on Google “missing girls of color 2018”. So many articles from March and April of 2017 came up. I also searched up “what can I do to help find minority girls?” I found a page that would allow me to help, but it was last updated in 2013. I then found one article from August about a foundation that received recognition from Black Girls Rock. This foundation is Black and Missing Inc. They found 200 girls last year and are continuing to do so. Though it states black girls, they are committed to finding women from the following backgrounds: Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. So many of them are missing.
According to the FBI, 262,957 minorities were reported missing in 2016. We have to spread more awareness about this. If you want to help out and be involved visit http://www.missingkids.com/Missing and http://www.blackandmissinginc.com/cdad/
To support you can follow them @blackandmissing on Twitter, @blackandmissingfdn on Instagram, and Black and Missing, Inc. on Facebook
Stay aware. Help out. These girls are valuable.
