Who is Phylicia Barnes and why should you care?

Phylicia Barnes, now 17 years old, disappeared when visiting family in Baltimore over the holiday season in 2010. She went missing on December 28th when visiting her newly found half-sister's house in Baltimore, Maryland. Phylicia Barnes was a very gifted and hardworking student, she graduated  from High Sshool early  and was getting ready to attend college.  Soon after her disappearance, in addition to doing all the routine police investigating, Baltimore Police department spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi  also tried to reach out to local media outlets to get Phylicia's face known to the public. 

Mr. Gulielmi was not to happy with the response from local and national media outlets when he asked for their help with getting Phylicia's face on the news. Since it was unlikely that a great student who had never been in trouble before just got up and ran away, Guglielmi knew she might of been abducted out of state and wanted people to see her face as soon as possible. In Mr. Guglielmi's own words he said that the response from the news outlets where less then enthusiastic and anemic. At the time, the media was more concerned with birds dropping out of the sky mysteriously then a missing African American women in Baltimore.

I think it is important to point these stories out to everyone, not to cause tension, but to shed light on the facts. Without doing a google search, just off the top of your head how many African American women do you remember being acknowledged in the news for being missing?  I do remember Natalie Halloway who went missing in another country was on the news everyday, I do remember that crazy bride with the bug eyes who ran away from her husband, but I can't recall any African American women in the News.

If Phylicia Barnes was a white girl who graduated early from High School, who was going places with her life and went missing in Baltimore, the news would of been all over the story. Now put your self in the shoes of Phylicia's family, because your daughter is black there is a good chance that that's the reason people don't care. Unfortunately missing black girls do not get the ratings, so they don't deserve all the resources available.

Daily Update News - Phylicia Barnes: Missing and invisible – Baltimore Sun