A bill pending on Beacon Hill aims to improve the state’s response when Black women and girls go missing, and boost the amount of public attention paid to those cases.
“If a white woman is missing and she's got the blond hair, blue eyes, that kind of thing, the media attention is out of this world — all over social media, TV, radio, internet,” said state Rep. Bud Williams, the bill's lead sponsor. “But if a Black woman goes missing, it's deaf ears, very little attention. And the only attention comes from the advocates who push it, and they've been pushing a long time.”
Williams, a Springfield Democrat, and other bill backers spoke at the State House Wednesday in support of the legislation, which would create an Ebony Alert notification system for instances where Black youth are missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances. The Ebony Alerts would function similar to Amber Alerts for missing children and Silver Alerts for missing senior citizens. California launched its Ebony Alert system, the first in the nation, earlier this year.
Williams’ bill would also create a new state office focused on missing and murdered Black women and girls.
That office would be tasked with collecting data on missing person cases and homicides involving Black women and girls, analyzing how those cases intersect with labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and domestic violence, and recommending ways ”to address injustice in the criminal justice system's response to cases of missing and murdered Black women and girls.“
Event organizers cited statistics from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, showing Black children and other children of color are overrepresented among missing kids. Thirty-one percent of children reported missing to the center between 2016 and 2020 were Black, compared to 14% of the U.S. population.
Sen. Liz Miranda, a Roxbury Democrat, said there needs to be a “culture shift” in the response to missing person cases.
“We know that Black girls are adultified, criminalized, sexualized, and dehumanized in ways that other girls are not,” Miranda said. “We're often seen as more resilient, and that is often very damaging. It's devastating when these cultural and systemic racist beliefs impact our ability to receive the imminent safety and the relief we deserve in our times of crisis, or when we are missing.”
The Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee is still reviewing Williams' bill after a January hearing. The committee has until next Wednesday, May 8, to decide whether to advance the bill for consideration by the full House.
