If a Runaway Bride Can Get National Attention, Why Can’t Tamika Huston's

[lonewolf0507]

A slow news day can be a dangerous thing, especially in these days of a multi-channel, round-the-clock news cycle.

Dangerous, because the temptation is to make mountains out of molehills, as was the case on Saturday, when the cable news stations were going buck wild over the story of a missing woman in Georgia.

In case you missed it – and, lucky you, if you did – the story began a few days earlier when Jennifer Wilbanks of Duluth was reported missing. According to her fiance, whom Wilbanks was scheduled to marry on Saturday, she left the house on Tuesday evening for her customary jog and never came back.

For days, it looked like yet another tragedy in the making -- another young woman of unknown whereabouts, possibly rotting at the bottom of some lake or in some shallow grave or with body parts scattered in the woods.

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/bawcommentary/mathis502

Tamika Huston has yet to get that kind of attention, even on a slow news day.

Tamika, 24, disappeared nearly a year ago from her home in Spartanburg, S.C. Her car was discovered at a Spartanburg apartment complex about a month after she was last seen.

But, no missing black women get that kind of attention. Why not?

Could it be that a black woman’s life is just not thought to be as valuable as that of her white peers? Is black tragedy not as tragic? Is black trouble not as troubling? Is black sorrow not as sorrowful?

It doesn’t take a conspiracy to put a Tamika Huston on the back burner; all a producer, host or booker has to do is absorb the messages constantly sent by a society that has historically ignored black circumstance until directly affected by it. It’s not necessarily that they meet and decide not to cover the mystery of Tamika’s fate. It’s that it never occurs to them to cover it.

[Kipepeo]

1. The Terry Schiavo case was another example

The media-circus was so big around that case but I didn't see much about baby Sun Hudson who was taken off life support against his mom's wishes at around the same time: http://www.nbc5.com/health/4286333/detail.html??z=dp&dpswid=1167317&dppid=65194

I learned about that here on DU. No breaking CNN news footage or emergency trip for dubya to sign a bill to try to save his life.

[cruadin]

2. Too true, and too sad.

[Tomee450]

3. I couldn't agree with you more.

During the time that Elizabeth Small was missing, a black child in Wisconsin also disappeared. She however, received very little coverage from the media. This happens all the time. At the same time the Central Park jogger was attacked, a black woman was thrown out of a window in New York but very little was mentioned in the media about her murder. In this society it appears that the lives of African Americans are not valued highly.

[scarlet_owl]

4. I think it's disgusting the way they will run stories about missing

white women into the ground, but only mention in passing(or not at all) when a person of color goes missing, or is raped, or murdered. It's like our culture doesn't value their lives at all. I couldn't care less about the "Runaway Bride". In fact, if I hear that term one more time, I'm going to scream!

Sorry for the lousy grammar.