The journalist Gwen Ifill called the lack of attention to such disappearances “missing white woman syndrome.” Missing white, upper middle-class women and girls receive a disproportionate amount of press coverage compared to women and girls of color, poor people and men. In 2016, according to the National Crime Information Center, African-Americans, who make up only 13.3 percent of the United States population, represented 33.8 percent of the missing. Cmdr. Chanel Dickerson of the district’s police department has said that a large percentage of missing teenagers are leaving home voluntarily.

But even leaving voluntarily can be evidence of a problem. As Commander Dickerson noted, “We need to get to the bottom of why these young people feel that there’s no other alternative but to leave home.”

According to a 2016 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 46 percent of runaways and homeless youth report being physically abused, 38 percent report being emotionally abused and 17 percent report being forced into unwanted sexual activity with a relative or member of their household. Claims that black girls leave home voluntarily, if not coupled with an examination of all the reasons they might feel they need to leave, encourage the public to see black girls not as children in need of protection but adults responsible for their own predicament. As a result, few in authority do anything for them.

The narrative around missing black girls is only part of the problem. Mainstream feminism has historically ignored the issues facing runaway and other missing black girls as well as most other issues regarding women and children of color. So far, nonblack women have been unwilling to get involved in something that doesn’t directly affect them.

The same is true with regard to transgender women of color, who face a disproportionate risk of violence. Fifty-five percent of homicide victims in L.G.B.T. and H.I.V.-affected communities in 2014 were transgender women of color, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Three black transgender women — Ciara McElveen, Chyna Gibson and Jaquarrius Holland — were killed in Louisiana in February. Given the severity of the problem, violence against black transgender women gets far less attention than it should from nonblack feminists.