Disappearance draws media’s gaze
Judging by the mainstream media, only slim, attractive, young white women disappear. If you happen to not meet those qualifications, and you are unfortunate enough to drop off the face of the Earth, good luck attracting any attention. And if you’re African-American or Hispanic…well, could you possibly BE any more inconsequential??
Of course, stories of missing, attractive white women are sure to sell newspapers and drive up TV ratings, but why are women who do not meet these specifications any less worthy of notice? Do their friends and families care less than the families of attractive, slender White women? Of course not, but you’d never know that given the fawning wall-to-wall coverage deovted to Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway.
When Latoyia Figueroa, a young woman of Hispanic and African-American descent, disppeared in Philadelphia on July 18th, her friends and family probably didn’t have any realistic hope of garnering much in the way of media attention. Thankfully for Figueroa, a collection of Philadelphia-area bloggers decided that they were not about to take the lack of media attention to Figueroa’s disappearance lying down. It appears their efforts may be beginning to make a difference.
Internet bloggers appear to have played a role in pushing Figueroa’s case into the spotlight. Starting last Friday, Philadelphia-area writers of Internet weblogs, or blogs, organized an e-mail campaign and coordinated their blogging efforts.
Their message to the TV networks: Give Figueroa’s story the same sort of attention networks have given to Natalee Holloway, a white teen from Alabama who disappeared May 31 in Aruba, and Laci Peterson, the white, pregnant Californian who was murdered by her husband in 2002.
When the bloggers’ efforts began, Figueroa’s story had been reported briefly by Philadelphia radio and TV stations and once by the Philadelphia Daily News.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of race relations and social attitudes when it takes a concerted effort to drum up even a small amount of media attention. The fact that the life and safety of a non-white woman is clearly of less value to the mainstream media than that of a slender, attractive, White woman only points up just how truly unequal American society remains in this day and age.
If Figueroa were White, can there be any doubt that the Philadelphia, and by extension the national, media would have been all over this story in a heartbeat? So when you begin to think that perhaps we’ve finally begun to evolve, think about LaToyia Figueroa, whom you probably have never heard of, and will probably hear little more about. Then consider Natalee Holloway, the 18-year-old White girl from Alabama missing in Aruba since late May, whom we will continue to hear about on a daily basis and in excruciating until she is found alive or her body is found.
Perhaps we haven’t come nearly as far as we’s like to give ourselves credit for, eh?
I think it's worse that a single missing person makes national headlines at all... Not that they don't matter, but do I really need to hear about it? Halloway who?