Interviews
Interviews
I wanted these interviews to be an opportunity for young Black women to talk about a topic that affects us the most. These interviews were enlightening and shine a light on new and powerful experiences and perspectives about my topic. These are only quotes from hour long conversations that ranged on many topics. I wanted the interview portion to be open ended because I didn't want them to feel as thought they were being interrogated or that they had to know a lot about the topic. I wanted it to be an opportunity to have an impactful conversation between black girls.
Kia, NY
“ I was thinking about how, you know the recent Barnard thing that was too close to the Central Park 5. I was thinking about how they thought that two 14 year old boys murdered someone and left them on the street and raped her like, f*ck! People can accept that but they can’t accept that 14 year old girls are probably going missing and not being accounted for.”
“In media Black people are always treated as the predator and when they’re given the chance to be a victim they always find a way to make them look like some sort of predator”
“ Especially in New York City every girl has to go through having to worry about if it’s late at night.. like I’ve many times looked behind me to check and see if anyone was following me or if I hear a noise, let me clench my fist and prepare myself. Which sucks.”
Sekai, NM
“Albuquerque is a dangerous place and the crimes you hear about are insane. And I had an experience last year where I was really close to getting sex trafficked… Think about that and looking at your project, if it was a situation where I did go missing, I wouldn’t have the access or resources for my story to even be told because of my race and because of my economic status. It would have been a situation where it was just another missing person. Almost like I would have been dead instead of being looked for.”
“Being a woman, you’re already scared of being venerable in situations and I feel like people can always feel like they can prepare you for those moments of, you might be taken advantage of, but then there's another factor there of being black, where it’s if you are taken advantage of and you do end up in that situation you’re not gonna have the resources then to get help.”
“ I always think about these two types of differing kind of sides that I’ve had from growing up. With being biracial, and having a white family and also a black family. With the white side of my family it’s always been this idea where, they are very free spirited people and so their tactics to raise me has also been the same. In terms of wanting your children to be free spirited and go on their own path. That’s their mentality for raising me is just like you’ll fall and you’ll get back up and you’ll be free…. But with the other side of my family, like the black people that raised me, of course they want me to be free spirited and have the ability to feel like I have freedom in the world to make my own choices but it's also this mentality that as a black woman, you can’t always, you don’t have the privilege to be free and relaxed all the time. And because you are black you have to be more aware and cautious just of your situations and you have to be prepared and in some situations it’s impossible to be free. Because being black and everything that it means with being black means you have to be more careful. So this free spirited mentality of raising children can’t unfortunately always apply when you are a black child”
Zivi, NY
“The amount of media coverage that missing girls get really varies so much based so much off of where you live, where you’re from, how much money your family has, where you’re white or not. Girls in the projects and girls that live in low government households go missing every single day and we don’t hear sh*t about it. But white girl from Connecticut goes missing and there is a national headline. And I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be a national headline because I think that it is so important … but there is no reason for the girl in the project to get as much coverage as a white girl from Connecticut or Delaware.”
“There is nothing that separates the black kids from the white kids. It’s not that they are harder to find, it's just that people put less effort into finding them.”
“If I didn’t go to a predominately white school, like if I went to the public school down the street and went missing that I would get a lot less coverage. I know that the only reason that people would give two shits about me going missing besides my family and the people who love me is because I go to a very high profile school... Without that school I’m just another brown girl that is just middle-lower class.”
“If you go missing you get a lot more coverage if you’re pretty and you’re skinny. Think about the pretty black girls going missing vs overweight girls from the projects. They are… it’s easier to plaster your face everywhere.”
“I always have the alerts on for when people go missing in my area and you see people missing since 2014 and you just feel so helpless.”