A detached consideration of a very scary situation

I'm having strange reactions to a story that's big news in Akron right now, about a young woman, nine-months' pregnant, who disappeared from her home last week. Her two-year-old son was left in the home, unharmed, and he told his grandmother, heartbreakingly, that his mommy was crying and was "in the rug."

My overriding reaction is one of horror, as kidnappings are frightening, let alone kidnappings of pregnant women, let alone kidnappings that occur in front of terrified two-year-olds, let alone the fact that something very similar to this happened a few years ago in nearby Ravenna.

But once I got past my initial visceral reaction, I started thinking about all those times you hear about news bias, and how stories about white women and children in peril are reported with much greater frequency, and with much greater sympathy and outcry, than are stories about black women and children in peril. Not knowing the race of the woman involved in this current abduction, I considered this supposed bias and assumed she must be white.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the photo that accompanied the Akron Beacon Journal story, which featured the abducted woman's baby's father, a black man, kneeling on the ground.

Interesting, I thought. A black victim is, in this case, the recipient of public outcry and indignation. (Not that your race matters when you are kidnapped, but that goes without saying, yes? [Yet I still feel compelled to mention it, lest you, gentle reader, think I think it's OK or surprising or good for anyone to get abducted to buck some trend.])

But then the papers finally printed a photograph of the victim: she is white. So it's just like the media bias says, regardless of the interracial relationship.