The following article is part of a collection entitled “The Perfect Victim,” which examines why police and media treat certain crime victims honestly while exposing negative traits in others that are often unrelated to their current case do have.
HOUSTON – If you were born before the new millennium, the idea of milk cartons is no stranger to you.
If you can, reach back…far back…into your memory and think about what those milk cartons used to look like.
Many times we remember sitting and reading the random words on the side while watching our favorite Saturday morning cartoons.
But do you remember the countless boxes filled with pictures of missing young people?
Back then, agencies searching for missing or endangered people would add a picture and a brief description of the person to attract the community’s attention.
The concept came about after the disappearance of Etan Patz in the late 1970s. The tactic of pasting missing children’s faces onto the side of milk cartons became widespread as Etan, a young white child, was said to be the first missing child to have his image depicted on milk cartons, according to CrimeMuseum.org.
But what about the other tens of thousands of black children during this time who didn’t have a chance?
There was a lot of debate at the time about how missing people who were black or brown weren’t getting the same coverage on television or given opportunities to, for example, be on the side of the milk carton.
In 2023 we are dealing with the same story.
Earlier this week, KPRC 2’s Re’Chelle Turner and Moriah Ballard spoke with the Black and Missing Foundation co-founder about several dozen, if not hundreds of cases that remain unsolved, largely because the victim is a Person acts color.
The Black and Missing Foundation highlights the disparities in missing person cases and emphasizes that black missing person cases remain open longer than white people. In 2022, approximately 546,568 people were reported missing, 38% of whom were Black.
Co-founder Natalie Wilson said that since the days of milk cartons are over, it is now up to the community to become an old-school version of those milk cartons by inventing ways to further raise awareness when someone close to you goes missing.
“We need our community to be our ‘digital milk carton,’” Wilson said. “I know when I was growing up there were missing people on the milk cartons at the grocery store.”
She added that it is important for community members to be aware of who is missing in their area so they can keep a watchful eye in their daily lives.
“If you could only understand or know who is missing in your community, would you know?” Wilson said. “Start there. Share this information with your network and really help our cause. It could help your community bring more people home.”
At the KPRC 2 Newsroom, we continue the discussion about what more we can do as journalists to adequately tell the stories of missing Black and brown people in our region and across the country. We created a series called “The Perfect Victim” where we explore why people of color who go missing or are killed are not labeled as victims and even vilified in public.
The Perfect Victim series
Copyright 2023 by KPRC Click2Houston – All Rights Reserved.
Comments are closed.