In May 2007, a beautiful little girl was abducted from her family’s room at a resort in Praia de Luz, Portugal while her parents dined with their friends at the resort’s restaurant. Kate and Gerry McCann’s initial call to the local police quickly turned into a nationwide manhunt for Madeleine, and a worldwide media sensation. After an unsuccessful search, the case eventually quietened down and life went back to normal. That is, until last week when London’s Metropolitan Police finally found a suspect… 13 years later.

British law enforcement have continued looking for Madeleine for 13 years. Granted the parents are wealthy enough to have funded the search all these years. Clearly their wealth has kept them out of jail too, where they should be for negligence. I’ll add that Portugal has an extradition policy so the was no reason for Kate and Gerry McCann to be free all these years.

You might be wondering how any of this links to white privilege. Well I did some research on missing children in Britain, and the first article I found was from the Sun a few years ago. They claim that 140,000 children go missing in Britain every year, but these are the 10 currently missing. Notice any similarities?

When I saw this I thought “there must be at least one child of color who is missing.” So I did more research through the National Crime Agency and found that in 2014-2015, 20,298 Black children followed by 7981 Asian children. The article in the Sun was written in 2015.

Where are the photos of the children of color? Are they just less important than the white children?

This image is proof of the inherent racism that exists in the foundation of many Western countries. It’s subtle, but you can find it if you scratch the surface. Of 10 children featured in article, at least one Black and one Asian child should have been included. What makes Madeleine’s case stand out is that her family are both white and wealthy. The McCann’s negligence not only caused their daughter to get abducted, but also cost British taxpayers millions of pounds. Seriously, if you want to dine without your kids on vacation, leave your kids at home!

Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is for sure: if Kate and Gerry McCann were people of color, and their daughter was abducted from their council flat, they would be in jail.