Gabby Petito and the ‘Missing White Girl Syndrome’
posted by DorMiya Vance | September 27, 2021 | In Opinion“Between 2011 and September 2020, 710 Indigenous persons were reported missing,” according to Wyoming’s statewide missing and murdered report. Recently, one white female, Gabby Petitio, disappeared and has caused a culture shock in every news outlet.
The recent disappearance and death of Gabby Petitio should not go unnoticed. However, in this case, this story has gained more traction than women of minorities who have gone missing in the same area of Wyoming. Why?
Missing White girl syndrome.
According to NPR, this “syndrome” is “the mainstream media’s seeming fascination with covering missing or endangered white women and its seeming disinterest in cases involving missing people of color.”
The stories of missing Black and Brown women tend to show up less in media, while those of White women lead headlines with heavy coverage and day-to-day updates or timelines seen in outlets like NBC New York.
The counties in Wyoming are no stranger to missing women with indigenous backgrounds. According to the report, 22 out of 23 counties in Wyoming had reports of missing indigenous people, with 28 percent of accounts out of Natrona County.
Petito’s case opens doors for more research into missing persons of the state, but why does the media move faster when the face of these types of stories is white?
The media is a factor in these cases. Media outlets tend to paint Black and Brown individuals in a negative light. The missing and murdered report says the articles and media coverage for these women in this area is very harmful and paints them as lesser individuals. The scope also lacks information as compared to white victims.
Gabby Petito’s life will be remembered, but will it come at the cost of forgetting others like Mary Johnson, an Indigenous woman, whose been missing since December 9, 2020? There is a task force to learn more about the statewide issue plaguing the Indigenous communities in Wyoming. There are 45 missing person cases in Wyoming as of now.
Photo courtesy of Noe Alfaro
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.