The Race Sympathy Gap: Why Lindsay Clancy Went Viral and Keshia Golden Didn't

Send us Fan MailJonelle brings Karen two murder cases that stood before judges in the same August week, and one question underneath both of them: who gets believed. Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts labor and delivery nurse, is on trial for the deaths of her three children, with postpartum psychosis as her defense. Keshia Golden, eight months pregnant at the time, was charged with first-degree murder after stabbing a boyfriend; police had been called on more than fifty times. Jonelle refuses to put the crimes on a scale and says so on air. What she compares instead is the response. One case drew roughly 160,000 TikToks and close to two million GoFundMe dollars. The other drew six small Chicago organizations and a five-thousand-dollar bond. The conversation moves through the maternal mental health screening gap, the finding that Black women are 41 percent less likely to start treatment for a postpartum condition, the 2017 Georgetown Law research showing adults see Black girls as needing less protection starting at age five, and the uncomfortable detail that both lead prosecutors are women. Karen argues the cases are too complex to compare and that mainstream media is the culprit. Jonelle disagrees on the second point, and that disagreement becomes the spine of the episode. She closes by admitting her own feed skipped Keshia Golden entirely until two creators redirected her, and by naming attention as the one variable a listener actually controls.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, when a woman's story is moving fast through your feed, stop and ask who is not in the frame. Then spend thirty seconds looking her up. That search is the whole ask.Pick one organization carrying a case nobody is covering and follow it. Survived and Punished and Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration are two places to start. Following is not activism, but it does change what your algorithm hands you next.Notice where your own empathy runs out this week. Not to judge yourself for it, just to see it. Then ask what would have to be true about a woman for you to give her the benefit of the doubt automatically.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Notes: The postpartum screening numbers, that 1 in 5 women are likely to suffer from postpartum, and the finding that Black women are 41% less likely to seek treatment come from the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health and from research by Katy Backes Kozhimannil. The postpartum psychosis clinical picture is from Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman at Case Western Reserve and Dr. Veerle Bergink at Mount Sinai, reported by NPR and WBUR this month. The research on adults seeing Black girls as needing less protection in Girlhood Interrupted by Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia Blake, and Thalia Gonzalez at Georgetown Law. The numbers on the incarcerated survivors are from the Sentencing Project and from Survived and Punished, co-founded by Mariame Kaba and Alisa Bierria. Keshia Golden's case was carried on for 4 years by Truthout, Block Club Chicago, and the Chicago Sun-Times, and by Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration.Support the show