Black lawmakers across the city and state are pushing for the creation of a task force to investigate the disproportionately high number of missing Black, indigenous, and other women and girls of color.
Legislation pending in Albany would create a nine-person state panel charged with addressing the “lack of care and concern” for BIPOC girls, and also develop policies for keeping them out of harm’s way. Black lawmakers from New York City have been among those championing the effort.
The issue of missing BIPOC women and girls has gained increasing attention, spurring a two-hour hearing in Congress last year titled “The Neglected Epidemic of Missing BIPOC Women and Girls.” The hearing followed fresh criticism of what long has been viewed by critics as the media’s hyperfixation on cases of missing white women, like vlogger Gabby Petito in 2021.
The numbers keep rising over time, but nothing is being done. The lack of awareness and effort to address this ongoing silent epidemic is what motivated sponsoring this resolution.
About 40% of the more than 250,000 women and girls reported missing in 2020 were people of color, and mostly Black, according to data from the National Crime Information Center, orNCIC. And in New York state, despite representing less than 15% of minors, Black youth made up the majority of missing children, with Black girls over 13 comprising the largest group of disappearance, according to the 2020 Missing Persons Clearinghouse Annual Report.
The disparity in disappearances is compounded by a lack of attention and resources dedicated to finding missing BIPOC women and girls, in the media and elsewhere, said state Sen. Lea Webb of Western New York, chair of the women’s issues committee and the main Senate sponsor of state bill S426AA to create the taskforce. Such disappearances are often typecast as runaways, rather than victims of abduction or human trafficking, leaving some families resorting to hiring…
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