RACE / RACISM

‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’ Strikes Again; U.S. Deports Thousands of Haitians from Mexican Border

This week’s roundup of race and racism news

Stephanie Siek
Momentum
Published in
4 min readSep 24, 2021

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(Photo credit: Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“Missing White Woman Syndrome”: It’s a term coined by the late journalist Gwen Ifill to describe the way the disappearances of young, attractive White women seem to dominate media coverage while missing people of color rarely command such attention. Seventeen years after Ifill named this phenomenon, it’s again being cited as people compare and contrast the way Gabby Petito’s disappearance resulted in hours of cable news coverage with how often the cases of Black missing persons like Daniel Robinson, Keeshae Jacobs and Jelani Day fail to attract the same level of attention. Find out more in this week’s roundup, and catch up on news about the increasingly desperate plight of Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and a Chicago café destigmatizing therapy and mental illness with every cup.

Missing from home, missing from the headlines

Families of Black missing persons are pleading for their cases to get the same level of resources and attention given to Gabby Petito, the White 22-year-old whose body was recently discovered after an intensive search and round-the-clock…

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Stephanie Siek
Momentum

Stephanie Siek is a writer and editor who loves cats, cookie dough and aborted alliteration.