If your child is missing, the State of California will put more effort into finding and recovering your child if he is Black.

No, I am not exaggerating. That is the upshot of a law that was just signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.

California’s newly enacted “Ebony Alert” law is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for Black youth gone missing. https://t.co/HSZky3PMPY

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 10, 2023

It’s impossible to overstate just how vile this is. Not because Black children don’t deserve the utmost effort be put into finding them, but rather because ALL children deserve the utmost effort be put into keeping them safe.

How hard is that to understand?

California’s newly enacted “Ebony Alert” law is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for Black youth gone missing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 673 into law on Sunday, making California the first state to create an alert notification system — similar to an Amber Alert — to address the crisis of missing Black children and young women.

The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area. The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25.

12-25, so not quite the same as an Amber Alert. It is more comprehensive than an Amber Alert, in fact.

This isn’t about finding missing and abducted children, but young people who have run away, fallen into the wrong crowd, or gotten into trouble. A missing 25-year-old is hardly the profile of the typical Amber Alert victim. Missing children who are suspected of being danger get Amber Alerts regardless of race.

In order for authorities in California to issue an Amber Alert, the victim must be under 17 — or have a proven disability, — there must be reason to believe they’re in danger, and the alerts cannot be used for custodial disputes or runaway cases. Part of the problem is that missing Black children are usually classified as runaways and, as a result, don’t get an AMBER alert, according to the foundation. Since its inception in 1996, 1,127 children have been successfully recovered through the Amber Alert system, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The Black and Missing Foundation also also found that Amber alerts are inexplicably less effective when Black children are missing than for white children.

Supporters of this law claim that it is needed because of what amounts to systemic racism, because Amber Alerts are generally less successful for Blacks and because many missing Black children are runaways not eligible for the system. Which begs the question: if the police and others are to search for runaways, why limit the population to Blacks?

Generally speaking, missing persons, especially those not kidnapped, fall through the cracks because it is almost impossible to find them without expending huge resources. Often they don’t want to be found, or are in places not easily surveilled. The homeless, fugitives, or people just hiding for their own reasons are outside the normal systems of society. This is tragic, but also difficult to see how it can be fixed.

No law will do so, and Ebony Alerts will do little other than to virtue signal to one group while telling others that they don’t count.

Which, come to think about it, is the essense of woke.