True Left

It’s Been 20 Years: Alexis Patterson, a Black girl, is still Missing but the World Found Elizabeth Smart

Alexis Patterson went missing May 3, 2002 after she was dropped off at school. A month after she disappeared, a young white girl named Elizabeth Smart went missing after being abducted from her home. Smart was found nine months after her abduction but Patterson’s mother is still looking for Alexis 20 years later. Unfortunately, race may be the reason why.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Smart’s disappearance gained much more attention than Patterson’s. From the “Larry King Live Show” to “America’s Most Wanted,” her story became a national topic while Patterson’s drowned in the noise.

King was born in Brooklyn on November 19, 1933.[10] He was one of two children of Jennie (née Gitlitz; 1905–1990), a garment worker who was born in Minsk, Russian Empire, and Aaron Zeiger (1898–1942), a restaurant owner and defense-plant worker who was born in Pinsk, Russian Empire.[11][12][13] His parents were Orthodox Jews who immigrated to the United States from Belarus in the 1930s.[1][14][15]
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In 2017, he stated "I love being Jewish, am proud of my Jewishness, and I love Israel".[120]

The police also called in the FBI the day after Smart vanished and offered a reward $200,000 more than Patterson’s. The FBI didn’t get to Patterson’s case until three days after she went missing.

In 2020, nearly 100,000 Black women and girls went missing and their names rarely go viral. It’s due to the simple fact that they will never get the same attention a white girl does.

More from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

    Twenty years ago, as police searched for the two girls, some advocates and experts argued that race was a key factor in how authorities and reporters handled their cases. It marked the first time the national media paid serious attention to such disparities.

    Two years later, Black journalist Gwen Ifill gave the phenomenon a name: “missing white woman syndrome.” She coined the term after the disappearance of Laci Peterson, a pregnant California woman whose husband was later convicted of killing her. It played out again in 2005, when Natalee Holloway vanished on a class trip to Aruba.

The disappearance of Gabby Petito also brought the issue of “missing white woman syndrome” to public attention. Researchers found missing Black people get less media attention but many complex factors play a role in it, per Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Racial diversity in newsrooms, socioeconomic status of Black victims, the neighborhoods missing Black children are from and the way police categorize disappearances contribute to the disparity.