News of several missing girls and women in Chicago has been circulating primarily on social media. Two victims, 15-year-old Sadaria Davis and 26-year-old Shantieya Smith, have been found dead. Why haven’t you heard of this? Well, every one of them is Black and, well, Black lives don’t matter. No Amber Alerts, no national headlines, just Black female lives gone forever and no one’s talking.
Nothing New Under the Sun
Unfortunately, this isn’t news to most of us. We’ve lived through similar tragedies before. We also know that, although more than 50% of all missing children are Black and Latino, those aren’t the faces we see on the news when the public is asked to help find them.
This seems to be the same story in Chicago right now. You’ll recall that, last year, this same deafening silence was all we had for DC when Black and Latina girls and women were missing there. Besides a social media hashtag, not much was said about them on the evening news or any other outlet. That is until “Black Twitter” raised a stink, got a few powerful female politicians to listen and the questions about why more attention wasn’t being given to these cases and others like it were amplified.
Black Women are Trafficked More and Searched For Less
We know that more than 50% of women trafficked domestically are Black women. Being that sex trafficking is more lucrative than selling drugs, pimps and others involved in trafficking crimes seem to know no one is looking for these women. Their faces are plastered nowhere.
Hood News
Friend to this blog, Opinionated Sister, lives in Chicago where she says no Amber Alerts are being issued for girls and women missing there and local media is barely paying attention. People, on the other hand, are frightened and unnerved. Were it not for the efforts of citizen journalists and others circulating updates on social media, those of us who live elsewhere wouldn’t even know this was happening right now.
We All We Got!
Just as I’ve been ranting about Puerto Rico recently, there seems to be a lack of concern about poor people of color. We care, though. As alone as we can feel, we have each other’s backs and I’m confident we will continue to share news that’s important to us and about us on whatever platforms we have. I’m also confident that someone soon will come forward and tell on whomever is taking these women and who has killed the two we know of.
Until then, we will pray and share this news within our own spheres of influence. We will sound our own alarms and we will continue to ask why no one else is joining us. As American as we all are, situations like these only serve to remind us that we are now and have always been on our own.
If you have any information whatsoever on the missing women and girls in Chicago or the murders of Shantieya Smith and Sadaria Davis, please immediately contact the Chicago PD.
