For years, NewsOne has published various stories regarding the discrepancy in attention given to cases of missing Black women and women of color in comparison to the media coverage and law enforcement attention missing white women receive. For the last four years, in Wisconsin, where Black women were 20 times more likely to be murdered than white women in 2019-20, according to research from Columbia University, state lawmakers led by Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) have been working to create a task force to examine why so many Black women and girls go missing or are murdered in the state.
It’s an initiative that has received bipartisan support, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and yet, it has been blocked by Republican legislators not once, but twice. Stubbs is planning to reintroduce her bill to create the task force for a third time now that GOP opponents, including a top legislator, Sen. Duey Strobel (R-Cedarburg), who blocked the bill last year, are no longer serving at the state Capitol.
From the Journal Sentinel:
She’s considering when the most appropriate time is to renew the push, especially as advocates who have attended press conferences for the bill are focused on the trial for Maxwell Anderson, accused of killing 19-year-old Sade Robinson last April.
Robinson’s mother, Sheena Scarbrough, supports establishing the task force and joined lawmakers on a panel in October “to make sure (Sade’s) voice is continuing to be heard by all individuals on a daily basis.”
The task force would submit a report with recommendations to the state Legislature after examining the systemic causes of violence against African American women and girls, ways to help victims’ families heal, methods to track data to understand the scope of the issue and more.
“As an African American woman, as a mom, as a pastor, as a community activist, as a legislator, I could not sit in my office and not sound the alarm,” Stubbs said in a statement. “I’m going to keep fighting for this legislation until it becomes law. Because one woman murdered (is) one too many.”
An Assembly committee unanimously approved the bill to create the task force last year, but it never made it to the Senate floor because Strobel, who chaired the Senate’s committee on government operations at the time, refused to advance it “citing his belief that every missing or murdered person deserves equal justice, and justice should not be prioritized based on a victim’s race or gender,” the Journal Sentinel reported.
So, once again, due to the passive-aggressive white fragility of GOP legislators, racial and gender disparities can’t even be examined, no matter how clear the data is, because “all lives matter.”
Justice is already “prioritized based on a victim’s race or gender,” it’s just a discrepancy that is invisible in a nation that has always defaulted to white privilege and wilful indifference to the plights of marginalized people — especially Black women.
SEE ALSO:
Fact Check: Are Black Women Still The ‘Most Educated’ Group In America?
Beyond Betrayal: Black Women’s Fight For Equity In The Time Of Trump
Wisconsin Democrat Plans To Reintroduce Bill For Missing Black Women Task Force After GOP Rejected It Twice
was originally published on
newsone.com
