There is a new trend in our community. It is quietly making its way around our neighborhoods, schools, places of worship, any of the places you at one point thought you and your family were safe. It’s a silent cancer,  you walk past it everyday, you drive past it everyday and never give a second thought to it, yet every day it greedily grows on the life of the community.  It has hit your neighborhood hard and you may only hear of a single incident nearby but the full story is not known.  The headline read “Calling all hustlers: Are you ready for a more lucrative yet less risky hustle?

Drug dealers trade in their low profit, high risk hustle for a highly lucrative and slap on the wrist type of hustle. I’m sure you’re interested in the exact hustle by now, it is human trafficking and the targets are young black girls. It’s more lucrative because as we have learned most drug dealers struggle to break even after taking care of costs. As a pimp, 2 girls make $600 per day from two clients each, multiply that by 30 and that is a monthly income of $18,000. Unlike the situation with drugs, a pimp does not run out of “product” that needs to be replenished in order to start over. They will use these girls’ bodies until it is impossible to get anymore use from them.

Despite what you may imagine or what you have seen in the movies, it is a new type of trafficking in our community. This story is unlike stories told of young Asian or Hispanic girls who are in the US illegally, being kept locked in unsanitary conditions in a house down the street from someone you know while they are abused. It is unlike the story that we are all familiar with of the young girl turned prostitute who now stands on high traffic corners terribly or barely dressed, waiting for the next John to come through. The story is that of a young girl who was put out by a family member as a means to make money for the family. Others, at some point either ran away,were kidnapped  or simply recruited and were taken advantage of by a pimp.  He’s not just any pimp. He is likely a pimp who is aware of the greater benefits of this business than that of the drug trade.

Human trafficking is not only a black issue, however the numbers prove that it is more of a problem in the black community. I found an article that states the reasons as law enforcement seeing it as an international problem meaning spending less time looking for it in our own country as well as a  lack of attention by law enforcement and media to black girls. Think about it, when was the last time you saw an Amber Alert or a national search for a missing black child?

“According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), nearly 800,000 children under the age of 18 are reported missing each year in the United States. Of that number, 33 percent are African-American. Even more frighteningly, in 2008, half of reported missing children in New York City were black, 60 percent of missing black children were female, and most of the girls were between 13 and 15. ” (Black Girls are Still Enslaved)

Despite the reasons behind the trafficking, whether it is economic, ignorance, lack of foresight, the problem remains, the young girls in our community are suffering an often ignored plight.

I found this to be alarming not only because of the nature of it but because so many young girls fall victim to this because of pure low self-esteem or wanting to be a part of something. Our young girls need to be educated about the beauty in them and given love, morals and self esteem