More Exposure for Missing Black Women

Chandra Levy. Laci Peterson. Natalee Holloway. Jessie Marie Davis. Do you recognize these names? What about Tamika Huston, Latoyia Figueroa, Linda Renee Innocent and Stepha Henry? All are missing [some now deceased] women. The only difference is the color of their skin. The first group is white and the second group is black.

The purpose of the petition is to stop talking about the disparities in exposure of missing black women and white women and start taking action. My plan is to collect as many signatures as I can and email the petition to every single major news station that is out there: NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News anybody I can think of. Our time starts now. Please help support this cause!

Some words to get you started:

Taken from MSN.com:

[Stepha] Henry's case, however, has not been taken up by the media with the same fervor as that of Jessie Marie Davis a 26-year-old pregnant white woman who disappeared from her Canton, Ohio, home in mid-June about two weeks after Henry was reported missing. Media coverage of Davis' disappearance was nonstop. TV stations nationwide, as well as newspapers and magazines, followed the case closely. Thousands of people volunteered to search for her.

The disparity in exposure for the two cases is evident on the Web, too. A Live.com news search on Davis returns almost 20 times the results of a search on Henry.

There even seems to be a difference in reward money. The FBI offered $10,000 for information on Davis. Currently, there is a $6,000 reward for information to help find Henry, but that sum came from donations. Henry's family contributed $4,000; Crime Stoppers offered $1,000; and another $1,000 was donated by a family friend.

Davis' body was found June 23. Her boyfriend, former police officer Bobby Cutts Jr., 30, has been charged with her murder and the murder of her unborn child. But the media juggernaut didn't give up on her story: At a memorial service for her, news helicopters hovered overhead.
Stepha on the other hand is still missing.

Google searches [as of 8/17/07]:

Chandra Levy: 138,000
Laci Peterson: 254,000
Natalee Holloway: 667,000
Jessie Davis: 164,000

Tamika Huston: 10,900
Latoyia Figueroa: 23,100
Linda Renee Innocent: 9, 340
Stepha Henry: 30,900

Other articles on the misrepresentation of missing minorities in the media:

Media Searches for Missing Coverage of Missing Women

Why do we care about Natalee, Laci, Jennifer?

Damsels in distress

The problem with MWP news stories