When We Go Missing
Before the age of the internet & the ability to spread news around the globe in a few hours, we had to create ways of quickly getting the word out about a serious event. In 1985, the Missing Children Milk Carton Program in the United States of putting photos of missing children on milk cartons. While this E for effort attempt to find missing kids was deemed ineffective for various reasons, I guess it was better than nothing. The victims that were lucky enough to be circulated on milk cartons were majority white kids. But this program was laid to rest a few years later when the birth of the Amber Alert surfaced in 1996. Technology has given us a faster method of alerting the masses about a missing child but one thing that the milk carton approach have in common with the Amber Alert approach is this system still seems to only be concerned with notifying us about kids of a lighter shade.
TheAgeless Epidemic
Kids have been going missing since the early 1950’s so this is nothing new. This ageless epidemic just doesn’t get talked about enough. A gross amount of Black citizens vanish every year. By the end of 2018, 6400 Black women & children were missing & no one seemed to care. That not even including the Black men that disappeared as well. For a little perspective, the city of Brownsville TX has a population of 183,677. So how does a portion of our population that’s equivalent to a small town goes missing & no one blinks an eye? Just last year alone, 543,018 Americans vanished & 37% of the were from our community. That’s a jaw-dropping 185,000 minorities (not including hispanics)
The Lack of National Coverage
In my last post, I stated how the media uses its power to spread statistics to display Black Americans in a negative tone but that same media is rendered powerless when its time roll out our accomplishments or inform us on dangers that directly effect us. Correct me in the comment section if I’m wrong but out of the 185,000 Black people who went missing last year, I do not recall 1 gaining national coverage. Just this year alone, I can name one blonde haired girl who went missing & she received 24 hours of national coverage. So who decides what cases get the coverage? Who makes the rules?
The world seems to be unbothered when black people go missing. Men are often discounted to the crime culture while our babies are listed as possible run a ways instead of missing. Its sickening to imagine how people in the amount of entire cities can go missing & our government officials do not feel the need to address this. Once again, when a system is created against a certain group, they do give a care until that system turns on them
What Can Our Community Do To Save Our Families
visit BlackandMissingInc.com
Black & Missing foundation is a non profit organization that offers a platform for us to find us. It offers a portal where you can report a missing person, search for a missing person, find information & stats about this disturbing topic & also a tip line. I love & respect this site. If mainstream media will not get the word out about the disappearance of your babies, we must be proactive & develop our own methods of spreading the word & swiftly & safely locate our future Kings & Queens. I challenge each & everyone of the iLL Community to donate to Black & Missing. The more we support them, we better chance we have at getting a lost person home.
No other group seems to take interest in making sure our people get the things we need. All we have is us. Its totally up to us to educate, nurture, protect, police & govern our own if we plan to survive. I would like to grow my platform & start listing missing black citizens & give updates once someone is found. We need to create our own Amber Alert which is ran & monitored by people who actually care about us. There’s no way a few of us can oversee us. We need all eyes & hands on deck. If you know someone who is missing, reach out to Black & Missing or any of the other groups on Twitter that you can locate by simply conducting a search. Just because we are in this alone doees’t mean you have to face these types of tragedies alone.
🤎🖤Black Love ✊🏿 Black Power ☮️ Black Peace to my 🌡 Community.
