When Black Women Go Missing

When our animals disappeared in heat or nature, the adults stiffened to a knowing hush the more we children cried. According to grownups, he (or she) was always “gonna come back.”

The big guard dogs disappeared the most. They were loved in our homes. But we always kept them intact, unneutered and unspayed, to stay fierce in our yards. Unscientific faith in their inevitable returns made our lost pets eerily present, almost never gone at all. Our town was smaller than small, given the limited parts welcoming to my Black families. In ten minutes on my bike, I could travel those parts East to West, or North to South. A most average animal’s senses could certainly keep up with such small territory.

But Illinois winters are unforgiving. And often, my parents or somebody else’s parents paused the cars—a reflexive moment of silence—if we felt a sudden roll, quiver or thump. We knew a cat or small dog, possibly rabbit, was unable to make it across the street in time. Nothing could be done after the fact. So in my mind, when my dogs were not home, they were in danger.

It was actually more dangerous for me to be a girl out alone, walking miles beyond our subdivision in zero or 100-degree weather. Yet I did this daily during a few particularly lengthy escapes of my family’s German shepherd Cameo, named so after my father’s favorite funk band. His impressive body was equipped for long sojourns; mine struggled in the weather, puberty and anguish. I listened to what adults told me, but I also heard what they told each other: Some animals, and people, did not come back.

For days, I stared off into blinding and grim horizons. My hoarse voice echoed down streets of ranch homes distinguishable only by color and car out front. I strained to spot a bobbing speck emerge in the distance and come to me. Neighbors peered outside and drivers stopped. They listened intently to my description. Some already knew the dog. Just in case, they noted our family name to look up in the phone book, perhaps, if they saw him. Then off I went, back to my yard and home myself, lest I miss curfew and scramble folks into calling after me.

The dog did come back, of course. He received a punishing half-hour wait outside before he was let in to his food bowl, and stern talking-to for a few hours after. Then, a few relatives and family friends got a call to close the matter. By the time we all settled into bed, the ephemeral loss was forgotten. Inside or perhaps to myself, I boasted I had something to do with lost animals coming home, as if God needed me that much and my voice wielded that much power. From this guarantee—that any loved thing will be expected and searched for after too long—I formed the gall to wander as far as I wanted to go in life.

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Then I turned 18, left the small town for college in a big city and merged into the general population of Black women in America. We are a segment who disappears and stays that way in astonishing, disproportionate numbers. Black female missing person cases are more likely than our White counterparts’ to jam up and smother in a smog of biased law enforcement and low media coverage. Those central, strongest resources can have more indifference to our safe returns than the adults of my childhood had about disappeared cats and dogs.

For a few nice years I nestled in a university environment where dorm “Mothers” and deans were held to high account if I did not appear for days, let alone weeks. Meanwhile, the Black families broken and strong adjusted to the highly stigmatized crack epidemic: its Black American mascot was a dirty and frightening devil, shown far less sympathy and intervention than today’s largely Whitefaced opioid crisis symbol. My father’s twin sister, one of my many second mothers, was one such Black addict who could have been saved if today’s opioid brand of empathy and explanation had applied to her back then. Naturally, all fell into turmoil when these loved ones like her vanished. We lit up the phone lines and ran out the gas. Unexpected knocks splattered many doors.

But after so many times of this pattern, we accustomed to accepting collect charges for the rare sporadic calls. We did not fight, or insist, for more than that. We all had our own struggles and issues. Other burdened families allowed the churches, community centers and local businesses to disconnect from an unnatural disaster much stronger than our voices calling out to the horizons and heavens. Neglect and blame placed on Black people for the crack emergency set us up for our own compassion fatigue and resource depletion. Our muted energy joined the mainstream’s quick, easy excuse-making that kicked our missing women when they were down.

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This perfect storm persists unto today. The most tragic outcome of the now-shuttered, veiled prostitution site Backpage.com is largely unknown: In 2014 a young woman was found dead in an Indiana motel, a pimp and a john became linked to her reasons for entering it, and the john confessed to her murder plus those of six more women. The woman’s pimp arranged trysts through Backpage. The all-Black cast of this narrative includes a 40-something villain, Darren D. Vann, who pled guilty in 2018 to avoid the death penalty. However, the tragedy fluttered from the public eye after a brief media hype. That news depicted a gruesome tour Vann led law enforcement on through abandoned buildings around East Chicago and Gary, Indiana, to point out where he hid his other victims’ bodies, some decreased to their bones. Out of all six bodies, only one had a missing person’s report filed.

Most TV news, print media and online coverage focused on the Black female victims as prostitutes or drug users. The infamous “Crack Whore” trope tempered what should have been mass outcry. Even in The New York Times breaking news report of Vann’s May 2018 guilty plea and life sentence, drugs and prostitution formed the center of discussion on these Black women. These facts vexed the public consciousness. The stigma let the victims’ communities off the hook for the pileup of disappearances that, if given attention, could have stopped Vann before the number of deaths climbed. The reason few cared to look for them translated perfectly to the reason Vann preyed on them. These kind of women get lost. These stereotypes do not accompany White women and more economically viable populations. The absence of easy explanation for their absences grants automatic panic to every second their whereabouts are unknown.

These stereotypes come after the overwhelmingly negative experiences Black Americans have with law enforcement to further delay or prevent reporting of Black women and girls who do not come to class, show up for work, answer their phones nor just walk out the door anymore. Soon after I left college dorms behind (to leave front desk clerks and paid employees on standby for my emergencies and fears), I realized why my people rarely called police when they should have when I was young. My new adult experiences in the exercise tarred my psyche in haunting episodes. The first time, university police arrived to my calls about strange men blocking my entrance to my own apartment. The police just told me I was one block past campus jurisdiction.

A more bizarre episode involved learning what handcuffs feel like because I was “upset,” like most women are if they call 911. Later, I struggled in a Mametesque dialogue with a detective who was supposedly investigating my report on the attempted assault I called to report, not wind up defending my own self with police for. The conversation between us was not adding up because, somewhere along the chain of responding officers to victim interview, the opinion was formed that I was a prostitute. I also gathered police felt I may not have even been in my correct apartment, since prostitutes are not known for wall-to-wall bookshelves and art on the spaces in between.

This personification of my youth’s Public Enemy anthem “911 Is a Joke” is not the least bit funny. It is even less humorous when the coin flipped to the other side and I became the reason someone called the police. Only in those cases, always started by White people with suspicions or offenses I was unaware of, I witnessed the police conduct I expected to see when I called them. Police officers—most times male and many times Black—were insurgent in their goals to control me or fix the situation to the plaintiff’s satisfaction. So I do not need viral videos to know the confrontational expectation that leaves Blacks in America effectively without any sense of law enforcement for us. This frontline of defense—for our bodies and loved ones—is off limits for most of us willing to leave fate in charge.

Away from the peaceful sanctuary of my birthplace and out on my own, with an “African American” name rhyming with ‘Keisha’, my first bulky impression of police officers kept coming to life: Horrifying Black History Month footage and photographs, where the same kinds of dogs I saw as pets were employed to wrestle people who looked like me to the ground. These men in uniform were not our friends. My Midwest hillbilly instinct to nod and smile, even to strangers I must pass on the street or wriggle through on the subway, ends with police officers. Automatically, even if the officers are other women or of color, I want no contact or attention.

How does this reality for a fairly articulate and empowered Black adult woman square as anything but scary among Black women and girls in varying lifestyles, identities and abilities? Pretty much the same. We may be in danger, hostile circumstances and even life-threatening conditions but fear of police keeps us from doing a basic thing to get back-up and save our lives. This backwards outlook combines with the exhaustion and distraction racism brings, stereotypes in the mainstream culture and wealth gap financial deficiencies. Altogether, they magnify a mythology—When Black women and girls disappear, we must be hiding, not taken or lost.

The mainstream rule is to wait 24 hours and go to police when a loved one is not where she should be. But Black people feel safer skipping that. We avoid 911. We call everyone we know first. We pass police precincts to reconnoiter on foot and discreetly retrace her possible steps. I have done the same for curious events, when a loved one did not show up and if violence or disaster overtook her last known location. And my drawback to police contact is not even the main one stopping many other Black people from being able to take strong action in concerning cases: Trumped-up warrants, prior arrests and even unpaid traffic tickets can keep Black crime victims far from police stations. It is easier to scour the alleys, fields and cemeteries for the lost guard dogs than to create an uproar about a Black woman and girl who is not coming home.

Pet chips were not widespread back when I was young, before I knew the road ahead led to blocks set down just because of how I looked or how raced my name was. Had only they been installed in all the cats and dogs, I would have saved a lot of time and sick worry. As technology races forward to become as common as bread, such a chip is not too far from imagination for human beings. We could locate our squirrely children, rebellious black sheep and kidnapped sisters in no time. I would love to have hope this would scale down the hundreds of thousands of unreported, unmentioned and undocumented Black women and girls only a few look for. But I know the equation and slope of history and change. Those of us who are least likely to be looked for are the ones who would be least likely to afford the lifesaving resource. The dollars and dimes of those who love the lost like us go down the drain, to outdated copies of Missing flyers.

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