There's a missing girl crisis in Chicago. Four teenage girls went missing earlier this year. Now 16-year-old Caniya Johnson has been reported missing, as well, WGN reports.
A similar rash of missing young women of color has hit other major cities in recent years, including Washington D.C., where activists began to question the amount of coverage these young women received, NPR reports.
Zach Sommers, a sociologist at Northwestern University NPR spoke with, said the media underreports missing women and girls of color, and the "missing white woman syndrome," which the late, great Gwen Ifill reported, was supported by his research.
Sommers analyzed news reports of missing women and found "half of the articles in the data set are just about white females alone," despite white women making up only a third of the U.S.' population. Sommers concluded the media outlets he included in his study were "implicitly — or perhaps explicitly — intimating that the cases of those [white] individuals matter more."
Fed up with coverage of their city's missing girls, Chicago activists organized the #WeWalkForHer March in June. At the time of that march, six girls were missing on the city's West Side, Teen Vogue reports.
Johnson was last seen in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, on the city's South Side. Police have not revealed if they have any leads, but have issued a request for the public's help.
— WGN TV News (@WGNNews) August 27, 2018
Johnson is described as a five feet tall young woman with medium brown skin, brown eyes and black hair. She weighs 135 pounds. She was last seen wearing black gold foam shoes and a blue and gold shirt emblazoned with the number 23 from Simeon Career Academy.
Anyone with information leading to finding Johnson is urged to contact Area South detectives at (312) 747-8274, per NBC Chicago.
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