We still call it the "White House," don't we?

A little five-year-old girl is missing in Glendale, Arizona. You probably haven’t seen anything about it on television, though, because Jahessye Shockley’s not white.

According to the Washington Post:

"Jahessye Shockley has been missing since Oct. 11 after police believe she wandered from her apartment in Glendale, outside Phoenix, while her mother was running an errand. The girl’s three older siblings were the last to see her. Police have no evidence, suspects or promising leads, but the case points to a kidnapping because they found no trace of her after combing a 3-mile radius around her home."

I’ve written before about the infuriating disparity in media coverage of crimes against little girls. In “Justice for Aiyana?” on October 5, I wrote that “pictures of the pretty little girl with the big dimple, braided hair and beautiful eyes should be on television as much as Caylee Anthony’s and Natalee Holloway’s and Jaycee Lee Dugard’s and Elizabeth Smart’s and all the other white victims of crime.” (Aiyana was a seven-year-old black girl from Detroit’s east side who was sleeping on the couch when police burst in and shot her in the neck on May 16, 2010.)

And in “Who’s Turning Their Porch Lights on for Aiyana Jones?” back on July 6, I took Nancy Grace to task for devoting hours of airtime to the Caylee Anthony case – the little white girl allegedly murdered by her mother, Casey – and nothing to Aiyana’s. (Casey Anthony, as we all know, was subsequently acquitted.)

The Washington Post has run eight stories about Jahessye’s disappearance since October 13. And Yahoo News features a story entitled, “Missing 5-year-old Jahessye Shockley Gets No Prime Time.”

But as the Facebook post that brought this to my attention points out, “The family of this beautiful little girl is asking people to use their Facebook and Twitter Pages to spread the word about this story. Black people I think we all know that we cannot rely on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, or MSNBC to give this little black girl the same coverage they give white missing children so it’s up to us to use every resource we have to spread the word.”

This isn’t a crimes blog and as a middle-aged white guy, I’m not qualified to write about the African-American experience in this country. But it’s embarrassing, frustrating and irritating to scroll down my news feed in Facebook and see several posts about a missing white baby, Kansas City’s Lisa Irwin, and just one about Jahessye.

I hope she’s found safe and sound. And I hope people think about how ingrained racism is in this country’s systems and processes and institutions.

And if you’ve seen Jahessye Shockley, please call (623) 930-4357.