“David Robinson has been in Arizona for the last three months searching for his 24-year-old son Daniel Robinson who went missing after leaving a work site in the desert in his Jeep Renegade on June 23. Robinson, who lives in South Carolina, hired an independent investigator and assembled a volunteer search team when he says he felt the police weren’t making progress in the investigation. He also says he failed to get the amount of media coverage he believed the case needed. The case was reported by the local media as early as July 9. Robinson said he sympathizes with the family of Gabby Petito. Still, Robinson said it’s ‘hurtful’ to see a young White woman’s case met with more urgency and national attention than his son, who is Black.”

“‘You wish you lived in a world where everything was equal but it’s really not equal,’ Robinson told CNN. Robinson is among the Black and brown family members whose loved ones remain missing and say they have struggled to get fair attention on their cases. Some say they have grown frustrated with watching the search for missing White women like Petito being in the spotlight, while police appear to allow their cases to go cold or classify their loved one as a ‘runaway.’ Some experts say the nation faces ‘Missing White Women Syndrome,’ which is defined by the heavier media attention White women and girls receive when they go missing compared to anyone outside of those demographics, according to a study published by the Northwestern University School of Law in 2016. The study points out that missing Black people are less likely to garner media attention at the outset than other groups and when they do make the news and they receive a lower intensity of coverage” – CNN.