Everyone is familiar with the Amber Alert system. It's for abducted children, and it's named after Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. For some reason, though, its original backers thought it would be better to have a more official name for it, so by the time it was legislated nationwide in 2003 it had become America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. Thus it is now the AMBER Alert.
I didn't know this until last night, but it eventually turned out that Amber Hagerman had two problems: she was white and she was a child. Here in California this has spurred the creation of an entire rainbow of alerts:
Would you like to go through a timeline?
2003: AMBER Alert for abducted children who are 17 or younger.
2011: Blue Alert, for cops who have been attacked or killed.
2012: Silver Alert, for missing elderly folks who are cognitively impaired.
2022: Yellow Alert, for hit-and-run suspects who have killed someone.
2022: Feather Alert, for suspicious disappearances of Native Americans of any age. The motive for this is a little hazy but has something to do with tribal sovereignty. It is already a source of contention because local police don't approve every request.
2024: Ebony Alert, for suspicious disappearances of Black women or Black persons age 12-25 who suffer a mental or physical disability. The motive is again a little hazy, but apparently has something to do with the fact that Black children go missing at higher rates than white children. Also, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, racist law enforcement often classifies Black people as "runaways" while white people are classified as "missing," and therefore eligible for an alert.
2024: Endangered Missing Advisory, for any disappearances which, somehow, aren't covered by all the other alerts.
So there you have it. Before yesterday, if someone had told me about an "Ebony Alert," I would have thought it was a straight-up joke. But it's not. California now has segregated alerts for Black and white children.
Awesome! Now not only do I get to hear that irritating alarm on my phone, I have to Google the nature of the alert.
Progress!
Feather alert. So funny. Is this for real? 😂
I realize the categories here don't begin to describe all the intersectional possibilities, but if everyone just called them "police alerts," wouldn't that work?
It's all rather silly. Which is not unusual. There's always something silly going on. But silliness today is not a reason for passing amusement. It's the source of endless jokes, most of which won't be funny the first time you hear them, and even worse, the source of endless attacks by folks who'd like to start a civil war.
Which sums up a good chunk of my thoughts about the world today. Everything is so damn silly and everybody is so damn serious.
Makes me nostalgic for simpler times.
Alerts for missing people makes sense, as would wildfire, flood, and possibly active shooter and riot alerts. In those cases there are descriptions to send out and/or specific actions that need to be taken. Not sure what one is supposed to do with an alert in other cases--first responders are already there. Sending out requests for information concerning crimes is fine, but not typically an emergency alert to the public.
Also, in Texas at least, there is a “camo alert” for missing vet PTSD sufferers.
And, of course, there’s the “spoiler alert” to warn you that the end of a story or a surprise plot point is going to be discussed.
During our January travels in Puerto Rico, we received at least 10 ‘Rosa (pink) Alerts’ for missing young women. The disappearance of women 18-30 is so common there, they developed a unique alert.
"California must be destroyed!"
Am I right?
/JK
"Feather alert" honestly sounds like something a racist would make up, like if he was out and wanted to warn his other racist friend that a Native was in the area. Never would I have ever guessed that it's a real thing.
'Yellow alert' had me prepared to cringe. Relieved to find it was about hit-and-run.
This looks like...not a problem.
It’s no different from how the pride rainbow suddenly “needs” new stripes, slashes and circles. Because somehow even though the original Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple stripes didn’t correspond to anyone in particular - it’s not like lesbians were assigned to Orange or white men considered themselves all Purple or anything - we needed to assign new meaning to the additional stripes, slashes and circles so that somehow the flag would be more welcoming even as it also became ugly as fck.
The other alerts will vanish into obscurity after a decade or so of the rest of the states not adopting them. (I’ve never seen anything but AMBER and silver alerts here in metro DC, so this doesn’t seem to be catching on quickly outside of the west coast.) Ebony in particular seems ripe for a Clarence Thomas wannabe to strike down for being reverse racist - what about all the blond white women who disappear and can’t use the alert?
Well part of the reason why is that we wiped out nearly all of the indigenous population in the area so there aren't many to go missing around here.
Also we do have missing endangered alerts in NOVA - they've done them for folks with mental health challanges, adults with dementia that are younger than 65 etc.
I was unfamiliar with any of these. I had assumed the colors corresponded to some kind of severity: amber less critical than red, for example, and green meaning it's okay now.
I don't see a good reason for all these cutesy colors (feather??) for specific categories of victim. Can't the victim just be described? And why does my phone have to go off in the middle of the night with "Speeding car just south of Las Cruces", when I'm in Albuquerque? And what's with the car? Am I supposed to stop it?
Also, get off the lawn, you kids. The sprinkler system is running, and you're in the section where it'll turn on next.
Whatever happened to "integration"?
Racist backlash prevented aspirations of integration from happening.
There are at least two alerts missing - Horse Hockey, and Spit Take.
No sooner did I comment then I saw: https://sfist.com/2024/02/17/ebony-alert-issued-for-missing-at-risk-teenager-last-seen-in-san-francisco-on-wednesday/
Vacationing in FL I have now encountered a "purple alert" - for missing mentally challenged adults.
I've always assumed these are purely aimed at news organizations and public consumption and otherwise were meaningless because they don't actually have any particular legal meaning.
If someone wanted the public to keep an eye out for a missing child, wouldn’t it be helpful to know that the child was black?
It apears that Kevin does not know about the problem of young Indian women disappearing without law enforcement investigation. These disappearances deserve to be taken seriously and not dismissed as runaways when they may be abductions or homicides. His casual dismissal of the problem compounds the injury.
This is akin to the historic reluctance of police to investigate deaths or missing black women and prostitutes. Designating certain categories as throw-away wimen is not justice. That’s why these alerts tell the public that all missing people are important including neglected cases.