Nearly 100,000 went of color went missing during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, new studies have claimed. Black women make up 13% of the total female population of the United States, yet they account for a huge 35% of the country’s missing women.
Legislators in Minnesota hope to establish the nation’s first-of-its-kind organization to investigate the disappearances of Black women and girls in the country. House Bill HF55 will create an Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls. The initiative will cost $2.5 million, Yahoo news has reported.
Brittany Lewis, the co-founder of Research in Action, claims that an estimated 60,000 Black women are missing nationwide and they are twice as likely to be victims of homicides. Data shows that cases involving black women are more likely to remain unresolved and remain open for four times as long as cases involving white females.
The Missing and Murdered African American Women Task Force (MMAAF) submitted a report in December 2022 that showed endemic system racism adversely impacts the lives of Black women in Minnesota. The Task Force was described by Gov. Tim Walz as a “first-in-the-nation initiative to examine the systemic causes of violence against African American women and girls,” which aimed to support, protect and heal communities “with better data and increased awareness.”
Some notable findings of the Task Force Report are astounding:
- Black Women are nearly three times more likely to be murdered than white women.
- Missing Person cases involving Black Women are likely to linger on four times longer than cases of white women.
- Black women make up only 7% of the total population of the state of Minnesota but account for an alarming 40% of total cases of domestic violence.
- The maternal Mortality rate for Black mothers is 2.3 times higher than that of white women.
- Black women face higher eviction rates than white women.
- Minnesota, one of the wealthiest states in the U.S. is also home to one of the worst health disparities in the nation.
