Ten Teens Have Went Missing In D.C.

March 23, 2017- Almost a dozen Black and Latinx teens have been missing in the Washington, D.C. area, but the media coverage for this epidemic has been very minimal. All the teens are women except one. This story first surfaced on social media early two weeks ago, but hasn’t gained much attention outside of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The only other outlets that have mentioned their disappearance have been select websites including the Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, and The Root.

Washington D.C. police department’s twitter account has also issued a series of tweets covering the disappearance of these teens. However, these tweets weren’t very helpful or insightful. According to citizens in the D.C. area, local news stations on television and radio as well as newspaper, have somewhat covered this tragedy but not to the extent that it should be. Despite the lack of coverage by major television and print media outlets, people on social media have taken the initiative to educate others about the sudden disappearance of black and brown people near our nation’s capital

Twitter user @BlackGirlMarvel was one of the catalysts in spreading the news of the missing Black and Brown children via social media. When @BlackGirlMarvel tweeted on March 12th that eight black girls had been missing, her posts accumulated over 35,000 retweets in 12 hours. She wrote, “It takes 3.2 seconds to retweet and help find these 8 BLACK GIRLS reported missing in Washington D.C. during the past 3 days”.

The age difference ranges between 13 and 16 years old for the individuals who are missing. Fortunately, two teens, Taylor Innis and Antwan Jordan, have been found safe and in good health. Also, this isn’t the first time the city has experienced this. Back in January, the city had a similar issue when there were 15 open cases of missing girls at once. It is believed that sex-trafficking may be the bigger issue that’s plaguing D.C. Sex trafficking is the second fastest growing criminal industry in the country, according to The U.S. Department of Justice, with children making up about half of the victims.

What’s puzzling about this situation is the lack of mainstream coverage. Where is CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC and any other major news channels? Without social media, no one would be advocating for these Black and Latinx teens. It raises the idea of how the phenomenon “missing white woman syndrome” comes to play in these instances. This phenomenon, which was coined by PBS reporter Gwen Ifill, is a common term used by some African-American households. It states that the media has a fascination with young, attractive white women who go missing- especially if they’re from an upper or middle class background. Versus women of color or anyone else who doesn’t fit that description. One infamous case was in 2005 when Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba and there was non-stop media coverage of her case.

When ten teenagers are missing within a matter of weeks in a particular city, that should make the front page of newspapers- regardless of their ethnic background or socio-economic class. Now, as this story is spreading through social media, a few celebrities have posted things are their pages to give these women of color a voice. There is still hardly any information about the disappearance of whereabouts of the individuals. People have used the hashtag #bringbackourgirls to bring awareness of what’s going on. Hopefully as this story spreads across social media, it’ll draw the attention of other mainstream media outlets and pressure them to talk about the missing children in D.C.