Looking for the Lost
It seems that for people of colour/black people, racism, unlike love is all around us, and we feel it in our toes. Whether it’s at school, in education, the job market, housing, health…and now it seems when we go missing.
I was listening to a Youtube show, filmed and edited by my friends Ava Vidal and Ayisha Vigneswaren, of episode 13 of “Black Woman’s Hour”. In that particular episode they were dissecting the Sewell Report (which they amusingly and aptly, re-named the “Sewer Report”). At one stage they mentioned the missing (since then, alas discovered dead) teenager Richard Okorogheye https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fplqalqH53M.
The context here is that shortly after he went missing, his mother, Evidence Joel, went to the police for help, only to be told to look for him herself. Of course there are many reasons as to why to quote Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, as to why “not all those who wander are lost”.
Some go missing deliberately, others because of a major crisis in their lives, others because they have been kidnapped/trafficked. In all cases some effort is made to locate them…BUT there is a definite hierarchy as to how diligent and through that effort is, from the state.
A 8th July 2016 article from the South West Londoner stated that, “Black and minority ethnic people are more than twice as likely to go missing as white people in Wandsworth, statistics exclusively obtained from the Metropolitan police reveal.
The figures show there were an average of 890 cases of missing persons per 100,000 Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) people reported to Wandsworth police between 2013/14 and 2015/16, compared to 402 per 100,000 white people.” https://www.swlondoner.co.uk/news/08072016-black-asian-ethnic-minority-people-twice-likely-go-missing-wandsworth-children-risk
The 2019–20, National Crime Agencies, UK Missing Persons Unit, reported, on table C3, page 12 of its report that a total of 31, 732 black people, and 11,591 of Asian people went missing. Percentage wise, that comes to respectively; 9.7% and 3.6%. Also bear in mind that that official figures are most likely under reporting. Furthermore C5 of the report on page 17 shows for the same time period, 37.4% black women and 43.1% Asian women. For men it was respectively 62.3% and 56.4%. https://www.missingpersons.police.uk/en-gb/resources/downloads/missing-persons-statistical-bulletins (click on second to last link)
Danny Jones, writing for the online publication, Joe in an April 1st 2021 article said “Joel also noted that they were told the police did not have the resources to check CCTV near their home. Despite this, Chief Inspector Clare McCarthy maintains that “officers have been working tirelessly to locate Richard, using all investigative opportunities and data enquires, speaking with witnesses and trawling CCTV””. https://www.joe.co.uk/news/mum-of-missing-teenager-told-we-cant-find-your-son-if-you-cant-by-police-268444
Nadine White, writing for the Independent, noted on 8th April 2021, that “According to recent data from the National Crime Agency, Black people accounted for 14 percent of missing people in England and Wales between 2019 and 2020, over four times (3 percent) their relative population. Though the agency does not currently have a breakdown in missing people by age, data shows that more Black men (13 per cent) went missing than Black women (10 percent). In London between 2019 and 2020, Black people accounted for 36 percent of missing people, twice their population in the city (13 percent).
According to Sadia Ali, the founder of grassroots north London charity Minority Matters, which is largely devoted to supporting families whose children are trafficked by county lines gangs, the relatives of missing. Black people acutely feel their lives are not given the same value as other lives.
“No life is worth more than the other and Black and ethnic minorities parents feel that their sons lives aren’t valued the same,” she said, speaking to The Independent” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-people-missing-b1827530.html
The discrepancy when it comes to a sense of urgency when it comes to locating the missing, in the case of Sarah Everard is chilling. The latter made national media for days at a time, police made immediate appeals, and a wide spread search followed on, had a high profile vigil, with royalty attending and comments made in the House of Commons by both Priti Patel and Boris Johnson, respectively.
The mother of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, were not afforded the same luxury. Bibaa Henry (46) and Nicole Smallman (27) were discovered, stabbed to death, in Fryent Country Park, Brent London on 7th June 2020.
They were the daughters of Mina Smallman, the Church of England’s first non-white, female archdeacon. To add to the lack of respect, two police officers were eventually charged with ‘misconduct’ for inappropriate” photographs of the crime scene, which caused distress to the family and general public. The officers had taken ‘selfies’ next to sisters’ dead bodies. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53198702 According to the BBC report at the time, Mina Smallman complained that she had to organise her own search for her daughters.
“Other people have more kudos in this world than people of colour,” Ms Smallman recently told the BBC. “My girls and Sarah (Everard) — they didn’t get the same support, the same outcry”. Echoing this, the mother of Black student Joy Morgan, who went missing in 2019 and was later found murdered, told the BBC her case didn’t garner widespread attention: “Because my daughter was black and because I was black I was not newsworthy.”
At around the same time in 2019, in a stark contrast, Libby Squire, a white student of the same age, went missing and was also later found dead. Her case was a headline story, prominent across the national news for weeks.
It is clear that although black people do get looked for, there is a distinct lack of agency in terms of time and resources. It is almost as if the state thinks that going through the motions is enough, for people already regarded as disposable.
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