Who Cares About Minorities?

It’s been an interesting week with respect to race relations in America.

First, there was Isaiah Washington’s rant about his firing from “Grey’s Anatomy” being racially motivated. He claims he was fired not for his use of a slur against fellow cast mate T. R. Knight but because “someone heard the booming voice of a black man and got really scared and that was the beginning of the end for me.” I have to wonder how much of it is actually true and how much of it is posturing by a man who can clearly not control himself. He did, after all, use the slur not once but twice. I don’t understand how he can not find it offensive – or how he would have reacted to a racial slur against him.

Then, the Supreme Court voted this week that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools. It was a deeply divisive ruling (5-4) with Roberts writing “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This, of course, seems like a good idea but the overriding concern is that eliminating the school district’s ability to use race as a means to populate schools may lead to increased segregation of races. Remember Brown v. Board of Education? I have to wonder what this means for districts like Philly which I believe are suffering because of bussing – which may be interpreted as racially driven.

But none of this affected me nearly this week as a piece in the Inquirer about Melvin Figueroa. Melvin is the father of La’Toyia Figueroa who went missing around the same time as Laci Peterson. She, too, was pregnant when she went missing. She was found dead in a vacant lot. Her boyfriend has been charged with her murder. You might not remember it because it received very little press. There were some grumblings when it first happened, claiming that she was being overlooked because she was Latina. I didn’t pay it a lot of mind at the time. Mea culpa. You see, in the wake of the constant coverage of Jessie Davis (the OH woman who was reportedly killed by the father of her baby), I have to wonder if I was wrong. Why did the stories of Peterson and Davis get so much press while mention of Figueroa barely made it in to the local press? It is really because Davis and Paterson are both young, pretty and white? Have we decided that there lives make better stories because they were taken from their nice middle class neighborhoods?

I tried to put myself in Melvin’s place and I couldn’t make any sense of it. If my child went missing, would I have to beg for coverage? Would it make a good story because my daughters are white and pretty? Because we live in a good neighborhood in the City where these things don’t happen? Because my husband and I are lawyers? Would I have to search for her myself or would I have legions of volunteers who showed up? Would I have her picture plastered on every news outlet – just in case someone knew something – or would I have to go door to door because the news folks didn’t think it was news worthy? Would I have to hound police to investigate the case?

I think you and I know the answers.

My heart goes out to Melvin – and to the nine year old daughter that La’Toyia left behind (her new baby was killed in utero). We live in a confusing world sometimes.