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News > World

Why Don’t White People Care About Missing Black Girls?

  • Participants at the town hall meeting in Washington, D.C. about missing Black girls.

    Participants at the town hall meeting in Washington, D.C. about missing Black girls. | Photo: @JohnHenryWUSA

Published 25 March 2017
Opinion

Wednesday’s town hall meeting served as a reminder to all that much more needs to be done to defend and uplift the lives of Black girls and women.

By now, you’ve probably heard the news. The Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. announced that since the beginning of 2017, over 500 children and teenagers have been reported missing. Most of them, according to police, are Black girls. And since Wednesday, 22 cases remain unsolved.

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State Surveillance of Black Social Movements Lives on in 2017

The announcement sparked immediate nationwide concern, prompting activists and politicians of diverse racial backgrounds to demand federal action.

But once a widely-publicized D.C. town hall meeting was called on Wednesday to address the situation, only Black people showed up, with the exception of a handful of white people. Emotions ran high after photos of the town hall surfaced. And rightly so.

The photos demonstrated the lack of concern for Black girls and women in the U.S. from non-Black communities, especially from white people. They also demonstrated the urgent need for the multinational women’s movement in the U.S. to make violence against Black girls and women central to their struggle.

As Clutch magazine pointed out, participants from the 5-million-strong Women’s March on Washington were nowhere in sight.

Black Twitter agreed.

“Why does stuff just have to happen to us?” a young Black girl at Wednesday’s meeting asked, according to Mic. “Why do people have to be so horrible to us? Why can't we just get more respect? Why can't we all just be family, get together and help each other? Why do they just gotta hurt us so bad?”

Wednesday’s town hall meeting served as a reminder to all that much more needs to be done to defend and uplift the lives of Black girls and women.

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