Hey Lorrae, thanks for reading and commenting! A few thoughts based on what you wrote here:
1. Actually, only 61.5% of Americans are white (the remainder of the statistic you cited are mixed-race). Not an enormous difference, but it's worth mentioning because as we inch closer to white Americans becoming a minority (which we are), the issue won't be going away, as you alluded to with at least 90% of the coverage focused on missing white women.
2. Agreed if this happened almost anywhere else (except for maybe Britain), there'd be almost no coverage about it in American media. I don't think Amanda Knox would've been covered here if she hadn't been American!
3. I want to put a big emphasis here on what you described as "aesthetically pleasing" and "physically attractive" people--there's a lot of super interesting research out there on this topic, but also intuitively speaking we can probably recognize the innate relativity of these qualitative terms. What's interesting, however, is how many of us administer those terms as if they were absolute, which I think really overlooks the way other influences and phenomena (including and especially racism, but also ableism, fatphobia, etc. though many of these still stem from a sort of socially conditioned expression of a certain kind of eugenics) affect the circumstances of these terms. As you are probably aware, there are cultures around the world that prize fatness, cultures that prize looking bronzed, others that prize height, and others where that's not a factor. There is an observable increased homogeneity of these measures with the advent of globalization (which is part of why so many people bemoan the nature of white supremacy, though it's also true that even before what we know as modern white supremacy, places like China prized light skin on the basis of it demonstrating a lack of need to work in the fields in the sun, thus demonstrating a certain status advantage).
My point is here, with America's demographics changing rapidly--and even if they weren't, I think merely accepting "we like this because it's attractive" feels a bit glib to me. There are many things that we may be magnetized to--which can have both socialized and in many cases also genetic/intrinsic bases (like craving cake), but that doesn't make them beyond questioning or introspection. In the example of cake (not the best comparison), regardless of whether I want cake all the time 24/7 because I naturally crave sweetness or because it's loaded with artificial sweeteners and I've been seeing Betty Crocker ads all over TV, I shouldn't assume that my attraction is A) good or B) not worth thinking twice about and not necessarily acting upon.
That was long, does that make any sense? I'm basically just saying that even if we were feel out interest piqued in someone or something that fits this society's criteria of attractiveness, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't question it or that we should just give into it like it was junk food we have no will or capacity to avoid.
4. I think if YOU love true crime and it doesn't instill in you deep irrational fears or obsessive behavior, then that is your prerogative to enjoy what you enjoy. My concern is, like any number of behaviors or phenomena in our society that have become normal and mainstream, that the magnitude of this interest is something that should collectively concern us. We are a gun-obsessed, violence-obsessed/violent society that is deeply lacking in empathy--most adults are on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, most people can't sustain relationships and a disturbing number of people are lonely. Media reflects and influences society--you cannot divorce one from the other, so to think that we should just accept the entertainment value of something popular without considering its effect seems reductive to me.
5. Relatedly and last but not least, having worked several years in and adjacent to media, I can tell you that there's not much of a need to overextend compassion or empathy to the media. People deserve empathy, but the media is not people; again, it's a mirror and a building block for how people behave and think. And it's overwhelmingly profit-driven, serving the wealth of a small number of people at the expense of the vast majority of people who become addicted or dulled to things (sometimes even to life) without realizing it. It's never entirely the media to blame, of course, but media is one of the core aspects of life, behavior and norms in any civilization. It cannot be ignored, even if "accepting" it sounds like the simplest option. The only way society progresses is by keeping media accountable--all the more so in a society as inescapably mediated as ours with social media and 24/7 news cycles.
But as I mentioned in the article, I agree that there would be a high likelihood of racist coverage and commentary if there were 24/7 speculation about the violence of Black men as some of the people are suggesting who would like to see equal coverage of victims of color in these kinds of cases. But that doesn't make me feel inclined to pity the media. It just reaffirms the need to keep media accountable and keep this kind of coverage in perspective.
Appreciate the dialogue!
