After years of complaints in African-American circles about the lack of attention paid to missing black women in this country, a U.S. cable network dedicated to black programming begins a revolutionary series this week.
The program, called " Find Our Missing," is scheduled to begin airing tonight on TV One, a black cable network available in 56 million homes.
The network is working with the Black and Missing Foundation, a group of black professionals who keep track of missing black Americans - cases that are often ignored or unreported. The sheer number of faces that peer back from its website is startling. Most of the missing are from New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland and Florida.
According to FBI figures, nearly 40 percent of all missing persons are people of color, but critics say that the most media attention is reserved for white women.
Craig Henry, executive in charge or production at TV One, says the presumption in this country is that "black people live in impoverished conditions, so there's not the same sense of outrage" when black Americans disappear.
"We are also accustomed to seeing stories and news reports of black people involved in criminal activity, and not very often the victims of crimes," he said.
They're not getting the point of why it's only pretty young white girls who get face time on the teevee. It's all about sex.. as weird as that sounds. Nobody wants to have sex with a black kid.. so they don't get the endless discussion.
If Jon Benet Ramsey had been a black kid instead of a white children's beauty pageant contestant, nobody would have heard about her murder.
Somebody should start an organization promoting the value of missing ugly white kids, because they get ignored as much as the black kids.
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Amusing this came up a few days after it popped into my head that we haven't had a missing white girl story in a while.
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