How Race Plays a Role in the Search for Missing Children of Color – The Root
July 5, 2014 Leave a comment
A few weeks ago while attending the American Black Film Festival in New York City, I witnessed the short film Muted. Written by Brandi Ford, featuring Grey’s Anatomy star Chandra Wilson and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, and directed by Rachel Goldberg, Muted was only 20 minutes long, but the offering sat on my chest like a lump of steel for days afterward.
In the film a sweet, loving and creative African-American girl, Crystal Gladwell (Daniele Watts), leaves her home in the morning to go to school and is never seen alive again. Gleaned from the experiences of real African-American families forced to endure such terrible circumstances, Muted’s plot is an accurate depiction of what black families searching for their lost children can expect. A side storyline includes a white teenage girl, abducted at the same time, who is featured on the local evening news. Meanwhile, Crystal’s mother (Wilson) has to beg local journalists to cover the story, to no avail.
I Have Vanished 