Howard University’s Esube ‘Izzy’ Wondwossen Was Found Safe. Why Are We Refusing To Give Black Women The Privacy They Deserve? [Op-Ed]

When 22-year-old Howard University senior Esube “Izzy” Wondwossen was reported missing, her story spread quickly throughout the D.C. Metropolitan area.

According to reports, her father dropped her off at the Branch Avenue Metro Station on the morning of Sept. 15, believing she was beginning her usual commute to Howard University. Instead, surveillance placed her at the Pentagon Metro Station in Virginia, and her family later said she had been seen getting off a bus in Alexandria. Her mother discovered that location tracking on Wondwossen’s phone appeared to have been turned off. Days later, police announced that she had been found safe and in good health. Authorities have not publicly said where she was found or what happened during those days.

That should probably be the end of what strangers believe they are entitled to know. Of course, the internet does not work that way. Speculation quickly shifted from concern about a missing young woman to theories that Wondwossen had secretly gone to meet a romantic or sexual partner. There is no public evidence establishing that as fact, yet a hypothetical rendezvous became enough for strangers to moralize about the private life of a 22-year-old woman.

That left me with a different question: If the internet’s theory were true, why would that be a scandal?

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