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HAD MADELEINE BEEN BLACK.........
MISSING WHITE GIRL SYNDROME' continues to be one of the most
pernicious expressions of our contemporary media
culture. The latest celebrity victim is an adorable
little girl named Caylee Anthony, a child who has been
missing for months from the care of an unstable mother,
who remains in jail on charges related to her daughter's
disappearance. In spite of days and days of fruitless
searching -- and hundreds of hours of cable television
coverage -- Caylee is presumed by many to be dead.
Caylee Anthony is the latest in a long list of celebrity victims,
or should I say, victims who become celebrities. You
know their names by now: Polly Klaas, JonBenet Ramsey,
Elizabeth Smart, Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, Natalee
Holloway, and now Caylee Anthony. These victims, who
were either kidnapped or murdered or both, have several
things in common:
(Caylee's body has since been found and the bizarre twisted tale of
her mothers life has been exposed)
* They are white.
* They are female.
* They are young.
* They are either cute or attractive.
* They are middle class or upper-middle class.
* They are the center of a mystery: either "where is she" or "who
killed her."
* They have advocates who are capable of keeping their names in the
news.
* They have a photo or video record of their lives that can be
used, over and over again, by television producers.
So what, you may ask. These girls or women are interesting
characters. So what if I am drawn to care about what
happened to them?
My answer comes in the form of additional questions: What about the
black children or brown children who are missing or
dead? What about the poor children? What about the boys?
What about the men of any color?
Beneath the endless cable promotions and unquenchable public
curiosity is a dark hole. If you shine a light into that
hole you will find three familiar demons: racism,
sexism, and a virulent class bias. I am not arguing
overt discrimination here. Instead, I believe that those
who produce this coverage have succumbed to a collective
failure of vision.
That failure happens to be an old, sad story in journalism, and you
might have thought we would have evolved beyond it by
now. Back in the day, especially in big-city newsrooms,
there were too many murders to cover. So white reporters
and editors drew a distinction between a "good" murder
and a "bad" one. A good murder involved a debutante, a
cheerleader, a young, beautiful heiress. A bad murder,
the one you didn't have to cover, involved street thugs,
or gang members or drug dealers.
The missing white girl syndrome allows television producers to
manipulate some of the most ancient and insidious
stereotypes in our culture: the damsel in distress, the
lost child, the kidnapped princess. Here's how it works,
especially as stage-managed by the likes of CNN's Nancy
Grace. First you identify an appropriate victim. Then
you alert us time and time again of her and our
collective vulnerability. The exposure turns the victim
into a celebrity, a household name. You create an
irresistible story engine, a question that viewers need
to have answered: Is this girl dead or alive? What
happened to her? Where is she? Who did this to her? Why
isn't law enforcement more effective in finding the
victim or prosecuting the criminal? Finally, to justify
continuing coverage, you treat even the tiniest new
development in the case as "breaking news" or an
"exclusive report."
In doing all of this, you create an illusion that what is
interesting is also important. As the father of three
white daughters, I would never dismiss the pain that
comes to loved ones from the horrible tragedy of a
kidnapped or murdered child. But who could argue that
the issues behind the loss of any of these children
warrant the amount of soap-opera style coverage they
receive?
Please try and think of exceptions to this coverage if you can.
Perhaps you recall the recent case of murder involving
relatives of actress and singer Jennifer Hudson, who
lost her mother, brother, and nephew. Jennifer Hudson
gained her fame through "American Idol" and her
Oscar-winning performance in "Dreamgirls," and it was
her celebrity that drove the news coverage, not the
plight of her missing 7-year-old nephew.
Do you remember his name? It was Julian King. If he had been a
pretty white girl, it would probably be on the tip of
your tongue.
AUTHOR: Roy Clark |
