The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Did This Black Child Go Missing and No One Noticed?

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

Filmmaker and Emmy Award-winning director Geeta Gambhir’s latest documentary, HBO’s “Black and Missing,” is unfortunately very timely, in large part because of the Gabby Petito case. She tells Molly Jong-Fast about why missing children cases involving Black kids are often ignored, the role cops play in the phenomenon, and details about the case of a missing Black 8-year-old that haunts her. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. This interview is with Gita Gandabir, who's a six-time Emmy Award nominee and two-time Emmy Award winner director. She's done documentaries like a journey of a thousand miles, peacekeepers, I Am Evidence, prison dogs, all sorts of amazing work. And today she's going to talk to us about her latest, Black and Missing, which is out now on HBO. Welcome to the new abnormal, Gita. Thank you so much for having me. So talk to me about the show. Sure.

So the series that I just finished is titled Black and Missing, and it follows the Black and Missing Foundation and its founders, who are sister-in-laws, which made this show actually a lot of fun. Derica Wilson and Natalie Wilson. Derricka is married to Natalie's brother, so they're very close. They basically concerned by the lack of media coverage. and the lack of attention to that was given from, historically from law enforcement to missing black and brown folks, they decided to form an organization, which they called the Black and Missing Foundation.

And through that organization, they advocate and raise awareness for the families of missing people of color. And they were formed in 2008, and it's interesting because the series could really not be more timely considering it's, I mean, it was always timely, to be honest, but, you know, recently in the media, we sort of had the phenomenon of the Gabby Petito case, which brought a lot of attention to, you know, again, a tragic story deserving of coverage, but it highlighted the discrepancy between the coverage of missing white women in particular and everyone else.

So what's interesting to me about the Gabby Petito case and I've written about it is that at that same time, there was a woman who went missing who was an indigenous woman, right? Correct. That discrepancy, you know, has been widely and, you know, has been widely discussed. And it's, you know, again, this is critical. I think, you know, in this series, it's interesting. We discuss the topic of missing white women syndrome. And when I feel, you know, brilliantly coined that, term. And this was years ago, but, you know, having worked in the news, she sort of saw the media frenzy that would ensue every time a white woman, you know, such as a Natalie Holloway. Right. We know their names. Yes. And what's so interesting is, you know, Natalie Wilson says to us in the series, I challenge anyone to name five missing women of color and they can't do it. So it just, it speaks to, you know, where sort of the bias, the racial bias and, you know, you know, you know, where the attention lies.

Yeah, that is just so disturbing. So talk to me about what it was like to make this. Did you learn a lot of stuff that you didn't know before? So I absolutely did. You know, we came at this film, myself and my team, you know, Soledadad O'Brien's company, SOP Productions, came to me with this film. It didn't, I mean, with this series, I should say,

it didn't originate with me. So they came to me and, you know, and asked if I would be part of it. I have a long relationship with HBO, which has been really wonderful, and they've always really supported my work. So when, you know, of course, conceptually it fit in with a lot of what I'm interested in, you know, which is, you know, I like to do work that focuses on social justice issues. I mean, I'm interested in other things as well, but that's sort of my heart. And I think a lot of us documentary filmmakers do that kind of work, you know, are interested in, you know, the sort of stories that are not otherwise covered, you know, in the media. So this was really interesting to me, but I, you know, and I understood that sort of the foundation of the issues are all structural, really, when you look at it, you know, there's sort of major overlying problems with our society that cause BIPAC people to go missing at a disproportionate rate and to remain missing. And I think, you know, we, so we look in this area as, you know, systemic and structural racism, which is sort of founded in white supremacy and anti-blackness.

which, you know, unfortunately, was the foundation of, you know, our country, right? So that's something that we look at. And then we also look at issues of poverty, issues of sexism and violence against women. We look at mental health. These are sort of the overlying structural things. But what was interesting for me is I really didn't understand how they manifested. Right. You know, like, and it's something as simple as black children being disproportionately labeled runaways.

Right. It's possible that it's like a policing issue too, right? Absolutely. It's policing. There's always been, and we look at that bias as well, and the issues that exist between, you know, there's longstanding tension between the African-American community, you know, and law enforcement, right?

They're not committed to protecting that group. They're committed to prosecuting that group. Yes. The African-American community and BIPO communities in general have long been marginalized, there's a long history of abuse, there's a history of criminalization, you know, there's a sort of prison industrial complex is founded on kind of cycling us through it, right, as bipartisan people. And so this is a huge problem. You know, so there's the systemic, and again, systemic racism infiltrates everything, right? And infiltrates every aspect of our society

and every institution in our society. And I think until that's dismantled, you know, it's going to be very challenging for for black and brown folks, I should say, to get sort of fair and just treatments by any of these organizations that are meant to protect and serve us. The devil is really in the details because sometimes it's incredibly, it's nuanced in a way that we wouldn't know. Like when you think about a runaway child and the fact that if you label a child or runaway, they don't tend to receive amber alerts, they're seen they are often criminalized. They're seen as a bad kid or a problem kid, right, not as a victim. And that alone, you know, the fact that the police disproportionately label black and brown kids of runaways means that they don't receive the attention

needed by the media, even by the community. So, you know, whether or not we realize that we have our own, right, the communities at large have our own biases about these issues. So it's things like that, too. There's certainly the overarching things that we can talk about that we see in the news, you know, like police violence and, and, you know, the protests against them. But then it's also in the small things that, like, it's the font you can't read and the legal, the sort of the legal system too, which really puts us in more peril. Can you tell us one story about, like, a family, a missing child that you interviewed the family of for this documentary? I want to just make sure that I'm clear that the series focuses on both children and adults, and obviously one is, I don't want to say

that either are more important than the other. But I think, you know, obviously, Derek and Natalie have said that the cases that trouble them the most are the cases of children because, you know, the onus is on all of us as a society to protect our children and there is a real failing there. I think one of the most, the saddest stories or the most tragic stories in that encapsulates so many of the issues. It's sort of a microcosm for all the structural issues that we talk about in this series is the Relisha Red case. And it's a fairly well-known case, you know, about an eight-year-old girl who went missing from a homeless shelter in D.C. What I found the most alarming about that story was really not the idea that she, went missing. And it's the fact that she actually was missing for an extended period of time

before anyone took notice. How long? She had been out of school for approximately a month before anyone really flagged it. And she was living in a shelter. And there's an incredible activist in our series, her name is Black Rose. She was living in a shelter where people were being paid salaries to look out for the welfare of the families and the children. She just slipped through the cracks. Now, her parents were also extremely vulnerable. Her mother struggles with mental health issues and had grown up in poverty, had been in the foster care system.

The father also had, that's her stepfather, I should say, because her father is not, wasn't in the picture at the time. But her stepfather, who was raising her, also, you know, had his own struggle. And so, again, there's just, you know, and this beautiful eight-year-old girl disappears from the shelter. You know, it's not reported, basically, or he's missing, you know, significant amounts of school. And it was a school social worker who actually figured it out and flagged it and called the cops. The cops were called eventually because he realized something was very wrong. But what is so disturbing about that is the idea of that people just are sort of so marginalized that they just fall through the cracks.

Did they ever find her? No, she remains missing to this day. I don't know how much I want to give away because, I mean, obviously it could be found online, but it's a very, you know, is a very, like a sort of a terrible crime story. And we still don't know where she is. And that, I think, is, you know, the question, you know, at the end of that story is really could this happen again? And every single person who worked on it, you know, or was involved with it said, yes,

absolutely. You know, that was one of the most difficult. Do you see things that could be implemented that could help? Absolutely. So I think so much of what happens, again, the ills in our society, oftentimes we, there's like an emergency room response when something happens. But as we know, a lot of times people end up in the emergency room for things that were preventable. You know, it had a, you know, really it's about investment in our communities. You know, there's things like desperate poverty lead for, you know, oftentimes with children who leave the home or are lured. That's a huge problem, right?

Is the trafficking of children. And, you know, when we're talking about children, we're talking about, you know, most states you're a child until you're 16, right? But so trafficking and then, which is also sex trafficking, oftentimes children are lured online. And, you know, so there's oftentimes parents who must work. three and four jobs to support their families, you know, don't have as much time to, you know, to pay attention to their kids and make sure that they're not online or doing unsafe things. Even parents, honestly, who do have the time can lose track of what's happening with their kids online. And, you know, children who live in poverty are more vulnerable to being lured.

Because, again, the folks who lure them, sort of the perpetrators of luring and then and trafficking offer them things that they don't have access to. You know, they'll buy them a cell phone. They'll buy them shoes. They'll buy them clothes. You know, there's a process that happens of grooming and then kids leave home, you know, eventually because they're, you know, they don't feel like they're getting at home what they might need.

And then poverty also leads to, you know, it's well known that it exacerbates mental health issues. It leaves people more vulnerable to putting themselves in risky situations. And then there's also, it leads to domestic violence. And black women are disproportionately victims of domestic violence. You just see that, again, it sort of starts with families being terribly under-resourced. And then at every turn facing other systemic barriers that are often, you know, caused by race, racism, I should say. And so it's really, I think, resourcing communities, and communities want to take care of themselves. They absolutely want to, right? Like, we all want to be self-sufficient and independent and, you know, take pride in taking care of ourselves and our

communities. But due to systemic racism and, you know, like a long history of economic, you know, economic racism and disenfranchisement, essentially, you know, some folks have not had the chance to do so, have not had the chance to sort of live in an economically stable situation. So I think it's really critical to look at the roots of these issues so that we can sort of solve the larger problems. I mean, there's obviously the bigger issues of systemic bias in policing and law enforcement. And that needs to be changed. We need to root out systemic racism in all our institutions. So those are some of the things and only some.

Thank you so much for joining us. Looking forward to seeing the show. Thank you so much for having me. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the New Abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode.

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