NYC NOW - April 27, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

APRIL 27 EVENING Black lawmakers are pushing to investigate the disproportionately high number of missing Black, indigenous, and other women and girls of color. Legislation pending in Albany, state bill S426AA, would create a task force charged with addressing the “lack of care and concern” for BIPOC girls, and also develop policies for keeping them out of harm’s way. WNYC’S Race and Justice Unit reporter Arya Sundarum joins us to discuss the issue further.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. In Albany, New York lawmakers are trying to create a statewide task force to investigate the disproportionately high number of missing black, indigenous, and other women and girls of color. State Senator Leo Webb of Western New York sponsors the bill. She says many of these missing women and girls are cast as runaways, when that's not always the case.

People who've been abducted, folks who have been put into sex trafficking circles, some have been murdered, and their bodies have not been found. WNYC reporter ARIA Sundaram joins us to talk about this issue further. The issue of missing Bipak women and girls has gained increasing attention recently, Aria. Tell us about this legislation pending in Albany and why it's so important. In the last few years, there's been a growing concern, not only in New York, but also across the country. about the racial disparities that you just spoke about. And coupled with a disparity in attention and resources that are spent on actually finding missing BIPC women and girls.

And this is really captured by a phenomena that's called Missing White Girl Syndrome, which is basically the trend of media outlets granting an outsized amount of time and space to covering white women compared to women of color. And also vast differences in their portrayal. So white women are cast as virtuous victims. You know, there's a lot of focus on their role as mothers, daughters, or students. Meanwhile, women of color are cast in a very different light.

There's much more focus on their criminal history or ties to abusive boyfriends, for example. And this can also be reflected in law enforcement's response. Here's an example that Senator Webb told me about. You know, I have a constituent in my district who was initially casted as a runaway when in fact, she was abducted and put into a human sex trafficking circle. She said she's heard many other similar stories. And these disparities have existed for decades, right? So why are legislators trying to address them now?

Exactly. White Woman Syndrome has been documented and studied for decades. It was actually coined in 2004. But it resurfaced into the public conversation a few years ago with the disappearance of a 22-year-old vlogger, named Gabby Petito, who went missing and we later found out was killed by her boyfriend during a cross-country van trip. And the story of her disappearance went viral on TikTok and other apps and was covered by national news outlets. Galvanized viewers from across the country, and you had amateur sleuth spending hours just trying to solve the case.

And then there was this backlash because public attention was fixed so highly on this one woman, while there were other missing. Bipak women who are being ignored. You know, for example, there were 400 Native American women and girls who went missing in Wyoming, which is where Petito disappeared. And these concerns were met with new ears and in a sense of urgency because of the increased awareness and motivation to end systemic racism in recent years. So last year, Congress held a two-hour hearing with the title the neglected epidemic of missing Bipak women in girls. And now a number of black officials from New York City are pushing to create the state task force. You know, it's the first item on a wishlist of budget requests from a coalition of 17 local black lawmakers, including the city council speaker

and public advocate. And the city council is holding a hearing next week on a resolution calling on the state legislature to pass the bill. I'm speaking with race and justice reporter Arias Sundaram. Our conversation continues after the break. So if this bill passes, what would the task force look like in who appoints its members? It's nine people, and the goal here is to concentrate state resources on this issue. And it's heads of state agencies that are in charge of child welfare and criminal justice and the state police. But mostly, it's people who would be appointed by the leaders of both legislative houses. According to the bill, they're supposed to be representative of the people that are most affected by this issue.

And the main task, really, is to develop policies to address these disparities, but also collect data on disappearances. There are so many concerns I've heard about issues with federal data. You know, the total number of missing Native American women is unknown, in part because the federal government doesn't collect it. Tribal law enforcement agencies don't have to report all of that information. What about Hispanic women? Well, the federal government generally classifies Hispanic and Latino women as white and the federal members, totally leaving out Afro-Latinas. And on top of all this, you know, on top of trying to deal with this data, there's also an effort to create a statewide awareness campaign from this task force, you know, and specifically to educate and train BIPA communities on the best responses moving forward. And also figure out exactly where, what traffic hubs are where these BIPP women are getting abducted.

Aria, I know you've sort of taken a deep dive into some data from the National Crime Information Center and also state division. of criminal justice. What have you learned about the women and girls missing here in New York? Looking at 2020, across the country, a quarter million women and girls were reported missing, and about 40% were people of color, mostly black women. And black children made up a third of all missing child cases. That same year, across New York State, black children made up more than half of all missing child cases. Black girls, over 13, were the largest single group of disappearances, even though black people make up 15% of the state population and even less of the country overall. What's driving these disparities? There's lots of reasons that researchers

and advocates point to, and it's complicated. But many say that bi-pac women are more likely to be the victims of the kind of violence that can lead to these disappearances. So, for example, half of black and Native American women are victims of intimate partner violence. That's as opposed to 37% of all white women. And when you look at sex trafficking, nearly two-thirds of sex trafficking victims are black, Latino, or Hispanic. And then on top of that, Native women have unique risks as well. So there's oil labor camps nearby, like many tribal reservations that co-cones. side with major increases of crime. But advocates also point to disparities in who gets justice as well.

So missing persons cases have declined by half since the late 90s. You know, some 90 or by even some counts, even close to 98% are ultimately found. But according to a USA Today investigation from last year, most of the kids who aren't found are black. Wow. And that just shows just how important this bill is. what's next? Is this bill likely to pass? It's hard to say. This bill was also up in the legislature last year, and it wasn't included in the budget. And it needed to be specifically including the budget because of its $1 million price tag and was totally passed over afterwards. So this year, the budget is still being ironed out, but it's still on the table, according to Senator Webb's team, since the language and the funding for this task force was in at least one house's budget. And then, um, For the actual assembly, there was funding allocated for a number of different task forces. So we'll have to see what happens on the state budget comes out. That's WNYC reporter, Aria Sundaram.

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