Not all missing women are white
I had a different blog post planned for this week. But we all need to take a minute to talk about Sarah Everard.
This week, in the UK, outrage has been loud over the sad case of the 33-year-old. She went missing in London on her walk home. Wayne Couzens, a police officer, was arrested on suspicion of murder. On Wednesday evening, human remains had been found in a woodland. As I write this, the remains have yet to be identified.
This case has hit a lot of people hard. Women, because they know it could have been them. And men are asking what they could do to make women feel safer. (A small part of me is wondering: are they asking because they are genuinely interested or because they’re scared they wouldn’t get to be part of the conversation otherwise?)
Don’t get me wrong, I think this is an important conversation to have. But I also think that focusing on the death of a young, pretty, white woman is not the way to go about this conversation.
There’s something called the missing white woman syndrome. It describes the Western media’s obsessive coverage of white women who disappear compared to the coverage of missing Black women. For example, who here has heard of Olusegun’s case, a Black 21-year-old student whose body was found on a beach in Sussex last year?
Police said there was nothing to investigate in Olusegun’s case, but where is the media’s outrage? It’s not like she lacks beauty, or youth. All she lacks is whiteness.
Of course, I, a white woman, have also felt unsafe walking home at night. I, too, have walked home with my finger on my phone’s rape alarm. I have asked my friends to text me when they’ve made it home safe, and I’ve texted my friends first thing after getting home. How many men have to fear for their lives on a regular basis? How many men see danger in every man that walks slightly too close, who’s eyes linger slightly too long?
Women have a right to be outraged at this, all women. But maybe, if you’re a white woman who has been sharing posts about Sarah but not Olusegun, you should take a moment to think about why that is. We all live in a white man’s world. And some of us have it easier than others.
We shouldn’t save our outrage for the white beautiful women. We should share it for everyone, every woman who has been wronged by men. And only then will things ever change for us.
