Why should her disappearance be tossed aside? Should we as a
society sit so idly while different lives are put on different rungs
to be cared for or ignored,

In an Esquire interview with Whitton’s mother Lisa Daniels,
she reveals that directors for TV show host Nancy Grace were
completely uninterested in her daughter's story simply because
of her past. Given that Nancy Grace herself argued to Larry
King that she felt no guilt for wrongly accusing Richard Ricci of
kidnap by saying: “I still say to this day, he was the most logical
suspect police had at the time,” its not that surprising that she
would not feel much sympathy to Whitton or any other missing
person with a less than perfect history.

Here in Canada, we can look at the Highway of Tears and
the apathy of the RCMP and other police forces in finding these
missing women. According to RCMP standards, only 18 women
have been deemed missing on the Highway of Tears, while
First Nations groups have put the numbers at over 50 women
taken. The issue has been so serious that it spawned a day of
awareness in Red Dress Day, held annually on May 5. But even
that is overshadowed by the response to missing white women.

For many missing white women, their images and names
have been immortalized in laws or public actions. The Amber
Alert is named after Amber Hagerman who was murdered
in 1996. Her family's story so thoroughly captured the
imaginations and hearts of Americans that it spawned the now
ubiquitous alert system for missing children. In contrast, an

6¢

Photo by Arnaldo Fragozo

almost unknowable number of young BIPOC women and girls
have gone missing with nary a peep and certainly no wall-to-
wall coverage. Laci Connor’s law was implemented following
the death of Laci Peterson and her unborn child, while other
laws including Jessica’s Law (named after Jessica Lunsford)
have been passed and thoroughly incorporated into our legal
system while only recently has the plight of missing Indigenous
women along the Highway of Tears garnered coverage and
governmental action.

| think it's time we ask ourselves, how equal is our world
really when some people's children are promised front-page
status in life and disappearance while other children are
confined to single columns deep in the paper? How close
to justice are we when the RCMP sight 18 women missing
while families and loved ones believe that nearly four times
that number have been taken? How just is our world when
the media can pan some for seeming to lack a sufficient level
of innocence? Have we internalized a racial hierarchy that
maintains a real worth division when it comes to human lives?

Maybe our ongoing cultural awakening will expose people
to these more subtle forms of inequality. Maybe this will force
a change in media offices around the world and it can help
all of us view each other's lives as equally valid. Until then, it
seems like families far and wide will continue to suffer these
horrid injustices.

22

The term is not really about white women as a category vis-a-vis non-white
women or others, rather it’s a question of how we in society value different lives
and why we value these lives differently.

 

Illustration by Christine Weenk