Black and Missing, America's Overlooked Crisis

Maybe there are places where a Black teenager found hanging from a tree is likely a suicide, but Charlotte, North Carolina is not one of them. On May 8th, 2026, Charlotte local Kenneth Tolbert found the deceased body of Juliana Nzita hanging from a tree on the property of a church. Local authorities quickly ruled the case a suicide; which was followed with skepticism and outrage online, particularly on Twitter (now called X). These feelings came from a sadly familiar feeling deeply rooted in American history and were not without merit either with the unanswered questions in the case. Why were Juliana’s feet still touching the ground? Where did she get a small chair and rope after being missing for 10 days? How would she have reached the elevated branch and tied the rope there? Given circumstance and location, it’s hard not to think the answers for these questions add Juliana to one of America’s darkest stories of the probability and fate of Black people slipping through cracks of society.

From coast to coast there is a large disproportion with missing persons cases (MPCs) and population for Black Americans. An 2023 analysis of the US Census done by the Black and Missing Foundation found that 40% of MPCs were Black Americans despite only representing 13% of the greater population. 98% of people who go missing under 18 are found in a few days, but again the rates are not equal. A landmark study done from the Mälardalen University in Sweden used data from the state of New York from 2007 to 2010 and found that Black children were twice as likely to remain missing as children who were not Black. The disproportion heightens as race intersects with age and sex. Black girls under the age of 21 represent just 2% of the population, but they make up 15% of all MPCs, and the aforementioned study found they stay missing for a statistically significant length longer than Black boys. Black women also experience a much higher murder rate than white women. A study in the Lancet in 2024 analyzed murder rates over 21 years for women aged 25-44 and found that Black women are six times more likely to get murdered than white women; the biggest disparity was in Wisconsin, where a Black woman is 20 times more likely to be murdered than a white woman. The discrepancies between race for these statistics cannot be explained by one clear reason, but instead many that show the depth of America’s systemic and implicit racism.

The term Missing White Woman Syndrome was created by late PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill; the term describes the archetype of MPC that tends to control the news cycle. A landmark study by Zach Sommers from the Northwestern School of Law quantifies the disparities in news coverage among races in major news outlets by comparing them to the FBI population of MPCs. Sommers found that 23% of the individuals who had articles written about them in the study period were Black while the FBI’s population of Black MPCs was 35%; for white people the percentages were equal at 60%. Another metric is the coverage intensity given by the new outlets and Black MPCs only represent 13% of the total number of articles written in the study. This means that not only are Black MPCs underrepresented by 12%, their cases are much less likely to receive repeated media attention as cases of non-minorities. A trend that is initially confusing has to do with the AMBER Alert. In 2023, USA TODAY did an analysis of AMBER alert rates across race and found the alert was proportionately representative; however, the AMBER alerts were effective for 1 in 3 white or Hispanic children but only for 1 in 7 Black children. A hypothesis for why the effectiveness of the AMBER alert more than doubles when the race of the missing child changes is the adultification of Black children and the runaway label. A 2014 paper, “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” conducted several studies to see how Black boys were treated differently than white and Hispanic boys. Some relevant findings were that after the age of ten Black boys were rated as significantly less innocent on average by members of the general public, undergraduate students and police officers over estimated the age of Black felony suspects by an average of four and a half years, and sampled university students implicitly dehumanized Black boys and described their childhood as less essential than for white boys. A follow up study, “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood,” looked into the adultification of Black girls through a survey across a diverse set of participants and statistical analysis of the K-12 education and juvenile detention system. Compared to white girls their age, Black girls were described as needing less nurturing, support, comfort, and protection. The adultification bias aligned with the previous study, beginning largely at ten years of age. In the statistical analysis the Black girls were overrepresented by 5% in school suspension rates, and by 13% and 22% respectively for referrals to law enforcement and school based arrests. The adultification and dehumanization of Black children leads to the initial classification when missing as a runaway, which means decreased police effort and no AMBER alert. For many cases the wrong classification can squander the critical hours to recover a missing person, and delay media coverage. Because the reasons for the inequality in treatment are so deeply rooted, it feels difficult to spur on change, but there has been efforts.

In California, State Senator Steven Bradford proposed a now implemented system called the “ebony alert” which combats the runaway label by giving an alert for every black child that goes missing. Similar programs have been proposed in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Alabama. Minnesota has implemented a task force that aims to reduce the disproportions in missing and murder cases for Black women in the state. Potential legislation that could help is a reworking of the criteria for an AMBER alert. But still, what is there to do from an individual standpoint. The most important thing the average person can do is make their voice heard about this issue. These trends are one of the gravest examples of America’s ongoing inequality, and if that is to change the issue can’t be forgotten or overlooked anymore. 13% of the population is far from enough to bring the change that is needed. If there are enough unilateral calls for change then political parties can’t ignore this issue anymore. For the large majority of Americans this issue has no effect on their daily life, but that doesn’t mean it has to be ignored. I believe this is a call to the USA’s morality as a country because can the flag’s 50 stars and 13 stripes really stand for what it claims to if there are thousands of voices and eyes crying for help that won't come in its shadow.

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