Early on Friday Morning, the California Highway Patrol issued this Ebony Alert:
EBONY ALERT - Los Angeles County
— CHP - Alerts (@CHPAlerts) February 16, 2024
Last seen: West 102nd Street and Figueroa Street, Los Angeles@LAPDHQ
IF SEEN, CALL 9-1-1 pic.twitter.com/yBdCwBy4R7
As of this writing there are over 34 million views and that’s probably good. But at least some of the views were probably generated by the shock that there is such a thing as an Ebony Alert. And an Ebony Alert is what you might guess: Something like an Amber Alert that is only issued when the missing youth is black.
But first, let’s talk about what the Constitution says. This is one of those situations where the ordinary meaning of a word is different from how it is understood in the law. In ordinary parlance, ‘discrimination’ means to treat people differently according to an unjust factor such as race. But in constitutional law, 'discrimination' means literally to classify—even if the government does nothing with that classification. If the government just keeps a list of who is black, white or whatever, but still treats everyone otherwise equally, that is racial discrimination.
Furthermore, in constitutional law, not all discrimination is illegal or wrong. After all, the government discriminates, classifies people and things all the all the time. To give one example, a regulatory scheme might rightfully treat bus drivers differently than airline pilots—setting up different standards for health, eyesight and proficiency, for instance. Or in a more basic way, two people might both be tried for murder and one person might go free, while the other is convicted and punished. Even if that is based on nothing more than the evidence, that is still discrimination, still classification, between a person proven guilty, versus a person who is not.
What the Supreme Court has said is the discrimination is considered more or less suspicious, depending on what factors are being considered. Discrimination against disabled people is not considered very suspicious at all, to pick one example. Discrimination against women or illegitimate status is more suspicious. And the most suspicious of all is discrimination based on race. Therefore, any discrimination, any classification, based on race has to be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. It is exceedingly rare for any kind of discrimination to pass that test.
Thus we come back to this idea of Ebony Alerts. This concept is actually written into California state law. Specifically, it's in Cal. Gov. Code § 8594.14. There’s a lot there but here are the criteria:
(c) A law enforcement agency may request that an Ebony Alert be activated if that agency determines that an Ebony Alert would be an effective tool in the investigation of missing Black youth, including a young woman or girl. The law enforcement agency may consider the following factors to make that determination:
(1) The missing person is between 12 to 25 years of age, inclusive.
(2) The missing person suffers from a mental or physical disability.
(3) The person is missing under circumstances that indicate any of the following:
(A) The missing person’s physical safety may be endangered.
(B) The missing person may be subject to trafficking.
(4) The law enforcement agency determines that the person has gone missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances.
(5) The law enforcement agency believes that the person is in danger because of age, health, mental or physical disability, or environment or weather conditions, that the person is in the company of a potentially dangerous person, or that there are other factors indicating that the person may be in peril.
(6) The investigating law enforcement agency has utilized available local resources.
(7) There is information available that, if disseminated to the public, could assist in the safe recovery of the missing person.
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One thing to understand when you read the law is the code words often used by the legislature. For instance, if a law says someone shall do something, that is almost always interpreted as saying that the person has no choice in the matter. But the word ‘may’ is almost always permissive. You may do it, but you don’t have to.
So, bluntly, no law enforcement agency has to do any of this, and we think they should refuse to do it because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. There is nothing in the Amber Alert system that excludes black people, even if they also qualify for Ebony Alerts, so they should stick to the Amber Alert system.
But more insidiously, all those factors mentioned in the Ebony Alert laws like disability status, age and so on are optional, too (‘The law enforcement agency may consider the following factors’). The only criteria that must be present is 1) that the law enforcement agency determines that would be an effective tool the in the investigation and 2) that the person be a black youth—whatever that means.
Further, as the title to this article promised, they don’t just have an Ebony Alert for young black people who are missing. Nope, they also have one for Native Americans in Cal. Gov. Code § 8594.13. And it uses a heck of a term: Feather Alert.
No, we are not making this up. We wish we were, but we aren’t.
Tribal leaders cite problems with California's Feather Alert for Native people who go missing https://t.co/aanS3mdRQt
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 29, 2024
Of course, there are other types of alerts. For instance, California also provides for:
- ‘Amber Alerts’ involving missing children under the age of 18, Cal. Gov. Code § 8594—we will assume you have heard of Amber Alerts by now;
- ‘Blue alerts’ involving attacks on police officers where the suspect has fled, Cal. Gov. Code § 8594.5;
- ‘Silver Alerts’ involving missing elderly or disabled persons, Cal. Gov. Code § 8594.10; and
- ‘Missing person advisory’ which applies to anyone ‘at risk’ or disabled, Cal. Gov. Code § 8594.11.
Also, when we saw they had something called a ‘Yellow Alert,’ we braced ourselves, thinking that this might be for Asian-Americans or something like that. But, in fact, it refers to hit-and-run situations where a person has died. Cal. Gov. Code § 8594.15.
But that brings us to the most indefensible part of this statutory scheme. This guy gets at it in a different way:
Amber alert (missing child) gave way to Ebony alert (missing BLACK person).
— Mario Presents Official (@Mario_Presents) February 17, 2024
Indigenous now have their own notification... Feather alert.
When will California add Curry, Rice, and Sombrero alert to the list? pic.twitter.com/NIEqRWvh1n
Yes, as of now, there is a special alert for missing black people and missing Native Americans … and no other race. So missing Latino, Asian and white children will be treated separately from Black and Native American children.
After all, this all started with Amber Alerts, which are named after Amber Rene Hagerman who was abducted and murdered when she was 9, in California. The point of these alerts are obvious: To get special attention in the community, because we want to work extra hard to protect children.
So, if we are supposed to pay extra attention when it is an Amber Alert, what are we supposed to do with an Ebony Alert or a (sigh) Feather Alert? We doubt it is because the government is sending the message that we have to treat this disappearance as being no different from any other.
Mind you, we are not saying that race is completely irrelevant in handling missing persons reports, whether they are Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts or something else. After all, these alerts are also accompanied with a general description which includes race, sex and age. We think a simple notation of the person’s race would pass muster under the constitutional test for racial discrimination because it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling purpose: Describing race as part of providing a general description to help people actually recognize the person more easily. One major problem we have with these Ebony and Feather Alerts is with segregating these alerts by race, putting the race of the individual front and center as if it is the most important thing to pay attention to when it is not. An Asian mother cries just as much when she misses her daughter as a black mother.
In fact, the criteria used for Ebony and Feather Alerts are different from ordinary Amber Alerts. We said in the beginning that an Ebony Alert is ‘something like an Amber Alert that is only issued when the missing youth is black.’ Well, it is something like it, but not quite identical, and many of the differences between an Amber Alert and an Ebony or Feather Alert mean that a black or Native American youth will get an alert when children of other races won’t.
For instance, in California, Amber Alerts require proof of abduction, that the child be 17 years old or younger, or have a ‘proven’ disability.
By comparison, we just saw that Ebony Alerts can be issued for children 12-25 years old (and theoretically older or younger), or if the black youth has a disability (no mention of it being a ‘proven’ one like with Amber Alerts). Abduction doesn’t have to be determined, the person only has to go missing under ‘suspicious’ or ‘unexplained circumstances,’ if law enforcement believes they are endangered or may be subject to trafficking. Feather alerts have similarly relaxed criteria.
So, imagine this scenario. An Asian man and his black wife both live in California. Like the Brady Bunch, they both brought children into the marriage. One is Joe, son of the black wife and he is himself black. The other is Jane, daughter of the Asian husband and she is herself Asian. Both Joe and Jane are 13 years old and loved dearly by both parents. Each parent loves their step children as much as Uncle Ben and Aunt May loved Peter Parker.
And imagine both children go missing. No one knows how or why they are missing but the circumstances of their disappearance are suspicious. Under this law, California authorities would have the power to issue an Ebony Alert for the black son, but because abduction is not proven, they can’t even issue an Amber Alert for the Asian daughter. She gets no alert. That in turn creates the very real possibility that one child might die (or face other horrors) and the other might be saved, because of the race that child happens to be.
The same could be said if you modified the circumstances, slightly. Suppose both children were adults, aged 21. Suppose further that the parents had absolute video proof that Jane and Joe were simultaneously abducted—perhaps they have footage from their home security camera, recorded when the parents were at work. Well, Amber Alerts only apply to children below the age of 18, while an Ebony Alert can at least go to the age of 25. So again, Joe’s abduction earns an Ebony Alert while Jane doesn’t merit any alert at all. Again, these parents might see their son saved but not their daughter because the official policy of the state of California is that Asian lives don’t matter as much as black ones.
It is hard to imagine a more heartless form of discrimination.
And not for nothing, but the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t literally say ‘don’t discriminate against people.’ That is a reasonable summary of what it means, but what it actually says is
No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So the actual language says that the state is supposed to protect people equally. Can you tell the mother of a missing Asian, Latino or white child living in California that her children are being equally protected? Of course not.
Even the language on the California Highway Patrol website is discriminatory. One danger of putting out a separate alert by race is that people of other races might not care because of it. An anti-Native racist might read every Amber Alert, but ignore Feather Alerts because he knows up front that this involves Native Americans.
And while we assume this is unintentional, the language of the California Highway Patrol website indicates you should care less about Ebony Alerts, too. After all it, says this about Amber Alerts: ‘AMBER Alerts are the most serious alerts we can issue involving children.’ There is no similar wording when they talk about Ebony Alerts, so the implication is that it is less serious when black youth are missing.
And so far, we’ve ignored another question: What makes a person black or Native American in the first place? Is Barack Obama black? In fact, he only has one black parent. Just how black do you have to be to qualify? Or Native American? Elizabeth Warren claims to be 1/1032nd Cherokee (don’t laugh), so would she have been Native American enough to qualify when she was younger? Would Shawn King qualify as black? What about Rachel Dolezal?
Do you start to see how racist these things start to get when you treat people differently by race?
Of course, in the South, we used to have laws that laid out careful criteria for racial identity. They were called The Black Codes—and they were passed by Democrats, too! Of course we were being very sarcastic right there, but we keep hearing that there has been some kind of great party switch between those days and 2024, but Democrats don’t seem to have changed very much.
Naturally this nonsense generated controversy.
Like seriously I have to imagine a racist frat bro intern was like “let’s tell them to call it a feather alert and see what happens!” and then he slipped “feather alert” into a PowerPoint and the boss was like “ah yes great idea” and then the practical joke congealed into reality
— Tyler Austin Harper (@Tyler_A_Harper) February 17, 2024
"Ebony Alert" and "Feather Alert" do sound like a racist troll made them up https://t.co/fdIQO5MF1V
— Alice (@AliceFromQueens) February 17, 2024
What is the point of race-specific alerts? Let's say someone's really racist, won't they just ignore ebony alerts? https://t.co/Fn8n8jRuzv
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) February 17, 2024
Or if they a racist might exclusively pay attention to only Ebony Alerts or (ugh) Feather Alerts.
The ebony alert bill was authored by a Black Senator and passed both houses of the California legislature unanimously.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 17, 2024
Black girls and young black women are disproportionately represented on lists of missing people and they are often falsely categorized as runaways.
This bill… https://t.co/uJE8IHVHmb
The missing text says:
This bill and others like it seek to mitigate that issue.
According to what we have read, Mr. Ali is an Iranian American. If he hypothetically had an Iranian daughter who was missing in California, would he like the police to care less about her disappearance? For the public to care less? In fact, if that daughter missed the criteria for an Amber Alert (or the other kind of alerts) would he be satisfied with no alert being issued at all, when she would be given an alert if she was at least partially black or Native American? Since these alerts can mean the difference between life and death, is he willing to risk the life of such a hypothetical daughter, because he thinks that this affirmative action is justified?
Further, he mentions the specific issue of runaways, but why not work to stop all children from being mischaracterized as runaways? Why the discrimination?
Shockingly this isn't disinfo, it's real. California is actually issuing "ebony alerts" for missing black ppl & feather (FEATHER! 🤦🏻♀️) alerts for missing indigenous ppl. It sounds so cringe & so painfully racist that I'm truly jaw agape re: how anyone thought this was a good idea. https://t.co/jGYxgOYBPW
— Monica Marks (@MonicaLMarks) February 17, 2024
These labels seem out of pocket, cringe even. At the same time, it is well documented that media is more apt to ignore missing girls and women who are black and Native American than white girls and women. It’s media’s fault. We should be the ones responsible for correcting it. https://t.co/O9akKSEyP9
— @ijbailey (@ijbailey) February 17, 2024
But no ivory alerts? Sounds like they don't care about the ivories! https://t.co/0aqWB6TOeI
— Mark Mendlovitz (@MendlovitzMark) February 17, 2024
Dang it, now we have that Stevie Wonder/Paul McCartney song in our head.
This political culture or sometimes just culture is what people mean when they say nobody would care if the left coast disappeared. This guy talks about it being a cool intern inserting “feather alert”, reminiscent of the Wi Tu Lo and Ho Lee Fuk Chinese pilots intern. https://t.co/R3amvQdZVM
— StephenMills (@Stephengm99) February 18, 2024
That is a reference to the infamous incident where Asiana Flight 214 crashed and someone claimed to know the names of the pilots, but in fact they were making obvious jokes. The troll became epic when a local news affiliate reported the fake names as actual news:
Now this is good reporting. #KTVU read these off as the "confirmed" pilot names on #Asiana crash. @ktvu good job pic.twitter.com/UjlOfIecab
— Suzanna B. Stinnett (@Brainmaker) July 12, 2013
Going back to the issue of alerts:
I’d love to hear Gavin Newsom explain this without a prepared statement and without him mentioning another state as a deflection. https://t.co/WXMxpwjJVV
— SlingshotPeriwinkle (@White_Shadow81) February 17, 2024
Good luck getting him to do that.
The first time I saw the "Feather Alert" screenshot I was suprememly confident it was a meme to make fun on "Ebony Alert". How did zero people notice the pure self parody of this?? https://t.co/947bMEeSl3
— Budmandude (@Budmandude_) February 18, 2024
Maybe all the Black legislators who spearheaded this initiative? https://t.co/SG5QnohnLj
— Jesse Spafford (@jessespafford) February 17, 2024
Proving once again that just because a person is black, doesn’t mean they can’t also be racist.
"True seperate but equalism has never been tried" https://t.co/5a6vD0ZQAc
— haumake17 (@haumake17) February 17, 2024
Imagine if it was white alert! https://t.co/Wdm2Yq5jhA
— Tim Erickson (@timfirewater) February 17, 2024
Sir, that would be ‘Honky Alert.’
Tell me you don’t know any black people without telling me https://t.co/tYzTtvCCKD
— Buckle 🐰 Barbie (@dearryka) February 17, 2024
Tell us you don’t know any Asians. We can all play this game. Maybe we should just stop discriminating by race.
We are a silly people. https://t.co/OX0ejXjxZZ
— Brandon Ayscue (@AyscueBrandon) February 17, 2024
Who is "we" kemosabe?
There is even the allegation that they don’t give the same kind of notice as an Amber Alert:
>Creates whole separate category for missing black kids
— Cody (@AltHistCody) February 16, 2024
>Calls it Ebony Alert
>Doesn't notify anybody's phones
The LAPD at it again https://t.co/CUhG7TtYRL
We can't verify but we wouldn’t be surprised. One of the problems with ‘separate but equal’ is that separate is never equal.
Creating an Amber Alert specifically for black kids and calling it an "Ebony Alert" was an incredible choice by the State of California https://t.co/Jm5nm8Q0rd
— Swann Marcus (@SwannMarcus89) February 17, 2024
“We call it an Ebony alert if the kid is Black” feels insanely racist, but what do I know, I’m not a California lawmaker pic.twitter.com/fyZ0H8vpDW
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) February 17, 2024
Democrats = Jim Crow. Segregation is back with a vengeance. Black people aren't good enough for amber alert? So we get Ebony Alert? This is just another "Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the ghetto." California, for the sake of your CHILDREN... PLEASE STOP voting Democrat! -VJ https://t.co/NKHoSVmuGt
— RealVinnieJames (@RealVinnieJames) February 17, 2024
And we even saw a defense of this law by self-described ‘Conservative Leadership Coach’ Felicia Killings, who started off by complaining that conservative men were whining about Ebony Alerts:
Well, in this case, racists in California are creating the division. If we had one Amber Alert and one set of criteria for alerts for all missing children, regardless of race, there would be no division.
Let’s note that @CoachFelecia is engaging in the cheapest race baiting.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) February 17, 2024
If you object to race based missing person alerts like Ebony alerts, you supposedly object to finding missing black women.
As if you can’t find black ppl without setting up a special alert for them.
If you… pic.twitter.com/WnIzfn7Iij
The pictures were from two parts of our argument:
For the record, we said this before we read the relevant statutes and knew of all the non-race-based criteria law enforcement could consider. We thought it applied to all black women who were missing.
And of course, pointing out that the segregation doesn't result in equality is not conceding that the segregation is a good idea.
She even had a defender, who was stunningly racist. For instance, when one of our own Twitchy writers (Twitchers? Twitchyers?) responded to Killings, a someone calling himself Brody stepped in:
How is it racist? It’s not about you.
— Brody (@mcfarland_brody) February 17, 2024
What does this 🇮🇱 mean ? It’s an identifier right?
It’s only racist to a bigot
Which led to this exchange:
And 1/2 an Amber. 🤦🏽♂️
— Brody (@mcfarland_brody) February 17, 2024
Indeed, he indicated that the real problem is his own racism:
When I hear amber alert I imagine a little white girl missing. Not a Tommy or a black James or Nicki.
— Brody (@mcfarland_brody) February 17, 2024
Good lord. We hope for his sake he was drunk posting.
And, for the record, when we hear there's been an amber alert. We look at the information including the picture and form the image based on that.
Finally, some sanity.
I would be thrilled to discover that there isn’t a separate alert for kids based on their race—ebony for “black” kids, feather for native kids—because there is nothing about a kid’s skin color or race that should change anything about how we respond to their going missing.
— Angel Eduardo (@StrangelEdweird) February 18, 2024
Seriously, amen to that.
As we said early on, none of special alerts based on race have to be used at all. Since they violate the Constitution, they shouldn’t be used at all. Stick to the Amber Alert and don’t divide people by race. If California’s law enforcement doesn’t enforce these racist laws, maybe no lawsuit will be necessary.
But at the same time, if you have a child who is not black or Native American, and your child was missing, consider reaching out to a California Lawyer. We think this case is about as open and shut as it comes. This kind of discrimination will stop eventually. It’s just a matter of time before it is challenged and collapses.
That all being said, before you close out this post, scroll up. Take a moment to look at the Ebony Alert. It is obnoxious to call it that, but underneath all of this is a young girl who is missing. There are people who love her who are praying for her safe return. Take a moment to look at her picture and keep your eyes peeled. Don’t let the illegal behavior of California officials obscure the fact that a child is missing or prevent you from keeping your eyes open in case you can help her. She has been missing since January, so she could literally be anywhere.
And let us pray for her safe return.
***
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