Racial disparities often occur in how the authorities and media handle missing person cases. Missing minority women often go unnoticed but when a white woman goes missing, the various media suddenly get a big case of the Missing White Woman Syndrome (MWWS).

Blue & white Flash

Vickey Williams

MWWS also relates to how pretty the missing woman is and her age.

CNN correspondent Tom Foreman wrote on Anderson Cooper's blog in 2006: "When pretty, young women -- especially white ones -- are killed or disappear, media storms often follow. There is no polite way to say it, and it is a fact of television news. Media and social critics call the wall-to-wall coverage that seems to swirl around these events, Missing White Woman Syndrome."

It also seems that the news reports focus primarily on "damsels in distress". This is typically the well-off young white women and teenagers that come from nice middle-class families. 'Damsel' cases tend to be treated with the highest priority.

 It shouldn't matter if the person that is missing comes from a broken home, is a minority, has a history of drug use, is a prostitute, a runaway, a foster child or if the person is not a woman at all.

What should be the determining factor is that the person is missing.

There are so many examples of bias in media coverage when it comes to missing persons cases. Here are a few:

Romona Moore, a 21-year-old black female college student from New York City, went missing and was later found raped, tortured and murdered. Her family had a hard time getting NYPD to actively pursue the case. Two months earlier, a white woman named Svetlana Aronov went missing and the NYPD aggressively investigated the case. Moore's family is currently suing NYPD because of this.

Latoyia Figueroa, a 25-year-old biracial woman, was reported missing and later found strangled to death with almost no media coverage. Meanwhile, Natalee Holloway, a young white girl, went missing and her case was all over the media for months. News channels such as CNN, MSNBC and FOX News covered this case and yet they neglected to cover Figueroa's case with the same aggressiveness and passion.

And recently, in the case of Michelle McMullen, the 27-year-old college student at Grambling State University who went missing after dropping her son off with family after a trip home, what did the police and media do? Well, the police first had the family wait the requisite 72 hours to file the missing person's report, which was on a Tuesday. They didn't do anything until the following Saturday and later apologized to the family saying that they had been busy and the person who handles missing persons cases was on vacation.

McMullen was listed in the missing persons database briefly before her status was changed to wanted after it was discovered that there was a warrant for her arrest. Never mind that her car was found abandoned with cell phone and wallet inside and no sign of her anywhere. The police would rather look for her as a criminal than look for her as a missing person.

What person would give up their life and child and just disappear because they owe somebody $2,000. Heck, I owe the hospital more than that and I'm not running away. It's not like she was going to jail for $2,000; the most she could get is a fine and probation. I don't believe a mother would leave her child without telling someone. She would take the child with her.

What about these families that are wondering if their relative is alive, suffering or if they are dead? They deserve some sort of closure, just as other families do.

To assume that because someone is a minority, no one will feel that their story is important enough is unfair and just wrong.

The media makes the upper-class family seem like the model family that everyone can relate to and for that reason they feel the audience will sympathize with that particular family more, but the average family is a working class family. Is my life not worth more than ratings on a television show? Because I'm not the typical "damsel," do I not deserve to be found?

These disparities have got to change and we have to protest to ensure that they do.

Vickey Williams writes for The Blue & White Flash, the Jackson State University student newspaper, which originally published this article.

Articles in the Voices section represent the opinions of the individual writers and do not reflect the views of Black College Wire.