As the media cover the manhunt for Brian Laundrie, the sole person of interest in the homicide of his fiancé, Gabby Petito, some of the wokest scolds in the press have wondered: Do people only care about this dead girl because she’s white?
CNN devotes 15 minutes to the Gabby Petito story. (I’m betting broadcast nets were heavy into this as well).If you think it’s unfair to suggest a racial aspect to this, show me the story of a missing/ murdered Black woman that got anything like this play.
— Jeff Greenfield (@greenfield64) September 23, 2021
Social media, not traditional media, generated this particular interest in Petito, who herself had a large social media presence during her life. The fact that the police could have arrested the allegedly abusive Laundrie while Petito was still alive renders this story a scandal truly worthy of the coverage. But the real reason the media fail to cover more black murder victims is precisely because of the woke scolds who only want to cover white perpetrators.
Statistically speaking, black people are significantly more likely to be murdered by black perpetrators. Saying this would get you banned from most newsrooms in America, but it shouldn’t because this is not a unique phenomenon. Whites are significantly more likely to be murdered by white perpetrators, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders are significantly more likely to be murdered by AAPI perpetrators.
The reason is simple: The overwhelming majority of murder victims are killed by someone they know, and in cases like Petito’s, it’s often pretty safe to assume it’s the boyfriend. In more than a third of all female murder cases, it’s the boyfriend or husband who did it.
The Black Lives Matter movement failed to generate any federal police reform — the hopes of a bipartisan bill just died in the Senate to little fanfare — but it did coincide with a nearly 30% rise in homicides last year, surely a mere coincidence as police were terrified of being accused of racism. Given that black people are more likely than any other race to be murdered, it’s fully possible that Black Lives Matter actually cost black lives. But to highlight that fact would also force the media to face the other uncomfortable fact: Black people statistically are more likely than any other race to commit murder. (This is not a judgment about motives or circumstances — it’s just a reality, for whatever reason.)
Black victims deserve justice and media coverage, and some of us have been screaming bloody murder about the crime wave that is disproportionately taking the lives of black victims. But that involves dealing with the simple fact that across the board, murder victims and their perpetrators are most likely of the same race. That’s not a racist thing to observe.
