It's definitely a thing.
When serial killer Anthony Sowell was arrested in 2009 in East Cleveland, his case made national headlines. But while his two most recent victims hadn't been reported missing yet, none of the other nine had received any known press coverage at the time of their disappearances. They were all African-American women mostly from that area, which is one of Cleveland's poorer neighborhoods.
Compare that to Ariel Castro, a kidnapper caught a couple of years later in Fremont, a better-off part of town anyway than the East Side. He had kidnapped three victims - two white women and a Hispanic girl - in the early 2000's and held them until they were all rescued in 2013; one of the women's disappearance wasn't paid much attention but the other woman and the girl got an America's Most Wanted segment when they disappeared. Their case even made it onto Montel Williams where Sylvia Browne told the family of the woman (Amanda Berry) that she was dead.
It seems to be an economic thing. People tend to have certain assumptions about women who live in poorer neighborhoods, especially minorities - or if not about the women themselves necessarily, about the people around them. When one of these women disappears there's something of a snap judgment where people will presume that she was either a sex worker or into drugs, or lived with/associated with/was friends with people who were, and "people in and around those situations fall victim to violence all the time"; and while it's certainly sad "that's just what happens in those neighborhoods". Even though the woman is only missing it's not thought of as some kind of mystery, because people generally tend to think they know what likely happened even if they don't know the details.
Whereas, some blond white suburbanite is (again, generally) presumed to not be involved in sex trade or drugs or gangs or anything of the like; it's presumed she lives in safety and "has a family that cares" and so when she goes missing the reaction is "oh my, what could possibly have happened to this woman?" The disappearance is treated like an intriguing novelty.
The fun part is, in cases where the white woman's disappearance DOES end up being tied to sex/drugs/gang activity, often it's like an instant effect - the recriminations and victim-blaming start rolling in and people suddenly start to care much less.
www.independent.co.uk
