Missing Black and Indigenous people don’t get the same attention as missing white women

The disappearance of Gabby Petito has captivated the country for weeks, but the widespread concern and fascination with her case outshines that of countless Black and Indigenous women who are missing today.

Petito, a 22-year-old white woman, went missing during a cross-country road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. The online frenzy to discuss her disappearance may have contributed to the FBI investigation that eventually led to her remains, which were found near Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming on Sunday, and confirmed on Tuesday to be those of Petito. Her death was ruled a homicide.

Updates on Petito’s case have been widely covered by news outlets, as well as thoroughly discussed online by true crime enthusiasts. The couple had been traveling in a white camper van, which belonged to Petito, and documenting their trip on social media. Laundrie returned to his home in Florida earlier this month without Petito, and refused to speak to both investigators and his fiancée’s family. Amateur sleuths tried to piece together a timeline of her disappearance. Petito’s name was trending on Twitter for days, and TikTok tags related to her racked up millions of views.

Unfortunately, the public is far less likely to apply that same energy and outpouring of support when Black and Indigenous people go missing.

Jolie Varela, a Nüümü land protector who runs the Instagram account Indigenous Women Hike, expressed her condolences for the Petito family on Monday, and asked followers to share the same care for missing people who aren’t white.

“It wasn’t the outcome that anyone had hoped for, and I hope that her family receives justice,” Valera wrote in the post. “For everyone that followed and became invested in this devastating story, I ask that you put that same energy into caring and amplifying the story of the many…who do not receive national attention and resources to aid in their recovery.”

Though numerous followers shared her sentiment, Valera still received messages from “angry white people” who were offended by her request.

“It’s pretty telling that when we ask for the same energy and care for our missing and murdered sisters and relatives that we’re met with such fragility,” Valera responded in an Instagram story. “This country does not value or care for Black and/or Indigenous, Trans, or WoC bodies the same way that it does a thin/pretty/white woman’s.”

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Others shared the same opinion.

During ReidOut on Monday, host Joy Reid questioned whether people would be as interested in Petito’s case if she was a woman of color.

The way this story has captivated the nation has many wondering: Why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?

“The way this story has captivated the nation has many wondering: Why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?” Reid mused on-air. “Well, the answer actually has a name: Missing White Woman Syndrome, the term coined by the late and great Gwen Ifill to describe the media and public fascination with missing white women…while ignoring cases involving people of color.”

Ifill, the late PBS anchor, coined the term during a 2004 conference for journalists of color. As interest grew in true crime since then — especially in the past five years— so has criticism of the unwavering whiteness of the genre. Both fictional and nonfictional true crime media disproportionately centers around cases in which white women are the victims.

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Missing white women statistically receive more media coverage than any other racial and gender group. Northwestern University sociologist Zach Sommers published a 2013 study in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology analyzing coverage of FBI missing person cases in four online media outlets. Cross-referencing the FBI’s database of missing persons with coverage from the Star-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, CNN.com, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sommers concluded that white women make up roughly a third of the national population, but account for half of the news articles in his data set.

News outlets were likely to report on the same missing white women multiple times, which added up. Sommers wrote in the study that by disproportionately writing about white victims, the four news outlets “are implicitly — or perhaps explicitly — intimating that the cases of those individuals matter more.”

Conversely, the lack of media attention trained on victims of color denotes that their lives are less valuable and less of a priority for rescue.

“White women and girls in particular are more easily seen as ‘universal’ victims with whom all viewers and readers can identify,” Sommers continued. “Their outsized presence in the news as crime victims implies that they are inherently good and innocent. Conversely, the lack of media attention trained on victims of color denotes that their lives are less valuable and less of a priority for rescue.”

People of color, particularly Black and Indigenous women, get disproportionately less media coverage than white people who are reported missing. The FBI’s National Crime Information Center reported that in 2020, of all missing persons in the U.S., 33.6 percent were Black. Only 13.4 percent of the U.S. population is Black, per U.S. Census Bureau records. Cases involving Black victims receive significantly less coverage by news outlets, let alone the attention of true crime enthusiasts like the ones dedicated to Petito’s case.

Statistics regarding missing Native American women are largely underreported, as law enforcement agencies and tribal governments are often at odds. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice found that more than four in five Native American men and women have experienced violence in their lifetime. The Department of Justice reports that on some reservations, the murder rate of Native American women is more than 10 times the national average. In Wyoming alone, where Petito’s body was found, 21 percent of the state’s homicide victims were Native American, despite Native American people only making up 3 percent of the population. A horrifying 710 Indigenous people — most of whom were young women and girls — have gone missing in Wyoming between 2011 and 2020. In Canada, a national inquiry concluded that while Indigenous women and girls only made up 4 percent of the country’s population, they represented 16 percent of female homicides between 1980 and 2012. Despite the staggering rates, news outlets neglect to cover their disappearances.

In an effort to raise awareness for violence within Indigenous communities activists began using the hashtags #MMIW and #MMIWG2S, which stand for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit individuals. The tags have circulated online since 2016, when Canada opened a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

On Instagram, the tag #mmiw has more than 144,000 posts. On TikTok, the tag #mmiw has 248.6 million views, and the tag #mmiwawareness has 65 million.

But in the days since Petito was reported missing, TikTok tags related to her case have skyrocketed. Her name #gabbypetito has roughly 812 million views, the tag #findgabbypetito has 69.3 million, #gabbypetitoupdate has 133 million, and #whereisgabbypetito has 48.4 million.

The fact that Petito and her fiancé was so active on social media may have contributed to the widespread attention on her case. In addition to her online presence, which portrayed her nomadic life with Laundrie as an idyllic one, outsider recordings and clues in posts from other YouTubers in the area made Petito’s case even more compelling. A 911 caller reported Laundrie for slapping Petito weeks before she went missing, and bodycam footage from a police stop in Utah shows a clearly distressed Petito describing Laundrie locking her out of the van. Law enforcement undoubtedly failed to protect Petito, who admitted to hitting Laundrie in an effort to take back her phone and keys; the police wrote off the encounter as a mental health crisis rather than a domestic incident.

Petito’s death is a tragedy, and the events leading up to it make it even more devastating. The national concern for her wellbeing, and widespread grief after her body was found, is completely understandable. It’s just as tragic that the coverage revolving around her far overshadows that of Black and Indigenous people who also went missing in that area around the same time she did — if they received any coverage at all.

When cases involving victims of color do receive attention, the victims typically aren’t described as righteously as their white counterparts are. Cara Chambers, the chair of the task force that released the report on Wyoming’s missing and murdered Indigenous people, told NPR that media coverage of Indigenous homicide victims is often more centered on the grisly act than on the victim’s personhood.

“When you had an Indigenous victim, the articles were more likely to have negative character framing,” Chambers said. “More violent and graphic language, really focusing more on sort of where the homicide occurred versus anything about the victim.”

Amid mourning for Petito, others on social media are trying to bring the same awareness for missing people of color. As Twitter users expressed condolences for the Petito family, they also asked that the true crime community and others following Petito’s case bring attention to victims who aren’t white women.

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Few, if any, have expressed resentment toward Petito. The widespread attention on her case is not her fault; she is as much of a victim of violence as any missing or murdered person. If anything, her case should alert the country to how many women experience violence in their lifetimes. But the lack of awareness and care for Black, Indigenous, and non-white victims is even more apparent when compared to the attention that Petito’s case received.

The fact that so many people are offended at the suggestion that Petito’s whiteness influenced media coverage of her case is telling. Pointing out the disparity between empathy for her and the lack of it for Black and Indigenous people doesn’t diminish the tragedy of Petito’s death. Instead, it amplifies the fact that many people don’t seem to care for Black and Indigenous victims the way they do for white ones. We can start by raising awareness for their cases the way true crime enthusiasts did for Petito’s.

“Bring them home,” Valera wrote in her Instagram post about the countless missing Indigenous women and Two Spirit, Black women, and women of color. “Bring them justice.”