Another missing white woman is the featured story on the FOX News Network. The network spent a good twenty minutes giving a bunch of details about the disappearance of Jessie Marie Davis, a pregnant single mother with a two year old son, who was having an affair with a married man. FOX pulled out all the stops for this latest distraction. FOX broadcasted the sheriff’s press conference where he spilled all of the details. Missing mother with one son, asking everyone for their help, call this number if you know anything, blond hair (although she was a brunette in the picture they showed), seventy volunteers participating in the search, and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I guess this was the only woman to come up missing in America for the past few days.
I hope they find Ms. Davis. But I have to wonder what factors went into FOX selecting this woman for national attention out of the throngs of women who turn up missing every year. It would be no surprise to discover that top priority of all the factors in the decision making process is skin color. I can’t recall a missing person case featuring an African American that garnered national attention like the Laci Peterson case, her husband Scott Peterson was eventually charged and convicted of her murder and now waits on California’s death row. Ms. Peterson is now the poster child of the white woman getting the seriously disproportionate attention of the media phenomenon.
There’s the story of Kelsey Smith, the white, eighteen year old Overland Park, Kansas girl who was abducted on June 2nd and whose strangled body was found in Grandview, Missouri on June 6th. Her parents were the featured guest on Larry King Live. There’s the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith, I’m surprised her story hasn’t been released as a major motion picture featuring some top rated movie star. People clamor over themselves trying to get as much information as they can about white female celebrities. In fact, the story of Stepha Henry, the twenty two year old, black woman and college graduate who went missing May 29th in Miami, Florida, was put preempted on MSNBC so they could report on the where about of Paris Hilton. People would be more interested in Ms. Hilton’s missing Chihuahua than with the welfare of Ms. Henry.
All a white woman has to do is shed some tears and cry for help and the public stands ready to call the local National Guard. The case of Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride who decided she didn’t want to get married but didn’t have the balls to tell her fiancé so she decided to make a run for the border, called the fiancé, and told some cockamamie story about how some Hispanic man kidnapped her. Ms. Wilbanks had two hundred fifty volunteers combing the woods while she faked her abduction. Even crazy assed Susan Smith got national sympathy, tearfully claiming that a black man kidnapped her children and stole her car which prompted a national manhunt, when all the while she had murdered her boys and knew exactly where to find their drowned bodies.
When Jessica Lynch turned up missing in Iraq with the rest of her group global attention focused on her story. When she was rescued along with five other soldiers from her company she was hailed as some kind of hero for getting caught. But what about Shoshana Johnson, the black woman who was also part of Ms. Lynch’s group and later rescued? Ms. Johnson was the first black female prisoner of war in American history. She was shot in both of her ankles and walked with great difficulty in Ms. Lynch’s shadow. But it appears that outside of her family no one gave a rat’s ass about her story. What the hell does a black woman have to do to get somebody to care?
Pretty white women like Natalie Holloway can go on vacations in the Bahamas or on Carnival cruises to exotic locations, act like a tramp all night long, get drunk in a debauchery of blatant sexual innuendoes, wander off, turn up missing, and gain the sympathy of the world. The family of these girls may curse their bad luck, but the woman willfully participated in the creation of the circumstances that led to their situation. If a black woman was caught in the same scenario media pundits would dismiss her problems as the result of her own irresponsible behavior. Indeed, if past experience with black women gaining national attention is any indication then it’s probably a sure bet that white talk show commentators wouldn’t hesitate to claim that the nappy, headed whore only got what she deserved. But we will cry a river for the poor white woman who made that appearance in the latest copy of Girls Gone Wild.
It would be easy to blame the media for such obvious white women favoritism. But the real problem is our culture that places such emphasis on looks, youth, sex, race, money, and other features and factors people use to compensate for the shortcomings of their character. Media is only a hapless pawn serving to feed the insatiable hunger of its master the character weak, wealth exchanging, public so tremendously concentrated in the white community. Until we have a more even distribution of wealth among all racial communities and/or a realignment of people’s priorities away from the secular and more towards a true all encompassing community oriented spirit, be prepared to hear more stories in the news from the undiscovered Susan Smiths and Natalie Holloways that are destined to become pawn in society’s perpetual endeavor to make pretty white women the focus of our attention.
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I can’t recall a missing person case featuring an African American that garnered national attention like the Laci Peterson case, her husband Scott Peterson was eventually charged and convicted of her murder and now waits on California’s death row. Ms. Peterson is now the poster child of the white woman getting the seriously disproportionate attention of the media phenomenon.
It’s worse than you think. In the same city, Modesto, the same prosecutors were handed the case of Gilbert Cano who murdered his pregnant girlfriend Martha Moreno. He stabbed her in the womb to kill his child and then strangled their home. They had the body with clear signs of cause of death, the weapon, abundant forensics and, when caught, Cano made a full confession. The same prosecutors who convicted Scott Peterson with no evidence at all said that there wasn’t enough to be sure of a conviction in this case and pled it down to 2nd degree murder. Cano got 17 years max. One hardly needs to be even slightly cynical to believe that the total lack of attention to two Hispanics by even the local media was the major factor in this decision. Other cases in Modesto also were ignored or poorly treated while these prosecutors grandstanded for the press in the Peterson case – a case where the evidence of Peterson’s innocence was overwhelming.
Quote: “In any trial, there’s always a risk, and there were elements in this case that we needed to take into consideration,” Fladager said.
Cano’s sentence breaks down to 15 years to life for second-degree murder and two years for the use of a knife and ligature, used in strangulation.
Some of my best friends are white but I am so sick & damned tired of reading about missing white women & girls! Why is it national news that some chick got got by her man???
And why is N Holloway still in the news? Why do Americans care about some missing little British girl who got offed by one of her triflin parents in Portugal?
I mean are white women the new Messiah?
I am not sure if minorities will ever get equal coverage in the media & we may just have to deal with the fact that we are just not as sexy, juicy & special as others.
This is why the Blogosphere/Afrosphere/Afrospear are so important!
Bygbaby
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The racism you point out is quite right, and the reaction of the media you predict seems likely. But just because the media would likely call a missing/murdered black woman a “whore” and blame her for her own circumstances, doesn’t mean its fair to say that about the obsessed-over white women. Its misogynist.
Drinking and sexual innuendo is not an invitation to murder. Thats insane.
I don’t understand why much of the media gets fixated on certain cases and disregards others. It especially saddens me that some murder cases or missing person cases get daily coverage, but most are almost instantly forgotten about.
I would be just as concerned about an African American woman being a victim as I would if the victim was a White woman.
Don’t confuse “public infatuation” with “media infatuation.” I am white and I have no more control over what stories the media decides to sensationalize than anyone else on this board.