These True Crime Podcasts Highlight Forgotten Black Victims
To openly describe myself as a “true crime fan” makes me uncomfortable. And yet, whether it’s a Netflix special about opportunistic scammers or gripping cold cases retold by a plucky investigative reporter, I eat true crime up. I am deep into the thick of the genre, especially in 2022, when the recent success of Netflix's Tinder Swindler and cult podcast Sweet Bobby. prove there’s a real thirst for the dark, disturbing and terrible.
To enjoy true crime is to admit you’re entertained by the most horrendous of criminal stories, whilst also understanding that there’s very real victims involved. It’s something Black true crime podcasters — yes, they’re out there! — appear to grapple with the most. Yes, they are “entertainment” but amongst the vast stories of white criminals and their victims, some Black creators are using their true crime platforms as a means of service to forgotten Black victims.
Back in March, actress and activist Erika Alexander, dropped podcast Finding Tamika to Amazon’s Audible, a neo-noir crime drama charting the disappearance of Tamika Huston, a 24-year-old Black woman from Spartanburg, SC who went missing in 2004. The series is said to unearth “the troubling phenomenon that is the media’s lack of significant coverage of cases of missing or murdered Black women.” Sadly there are many stories like Tamika Huston's that have been forgotten or overlooked by the mainstream media.
Similarly, true crime stories told by Black creators, especially concerning Black victims, have a tendency to float under the radar. As Metro wrote in 2021, the biggest consumer of true crime podcasts tends to be white women aged 18-50. In the true crime world, they are marketed as the biggest victims of violent crimes and yet, in the UK and US, statistically white women “are much less likely to be the victims of violent crime” compared to Black women and trans women of color.
Now, true crime content concerning the lives and traumas of people who look like you, can feel a little too true and real. Yet true crime continues to dominate podcast charts. There’s more than enough room for Black people to tell their own and forgotten stories, in their own voice, albeit the darker themes. With that said, I’ve found eight Black podcasts that highlight forgotten victims of color.
