Ralph Yarl will live. But what did we learn?

The national glare is moving on from my city's angst. 

- Mary Sanchez

It's got a new focus: later in the month, Kansas City will host the 2023 NFL Draft, a lucrative, well-earned civic kudo.

This is replacing the hyper-fixation of the recent gun violence involving an 84-year-old white man accused of grabbing a revolver and shooting a 16-year-old Black youth because the latter rang the man's doorbell because he had the gall to step on his stoop.

The teen, sent to pick up his younger twin siblings, was on the wrong street; but at the right house address. He needed Terrace, not Street - an honest and easy mistake.

But Ralph Yarl, a stellar student at a local high school, got shot for the mix-up. Not once, but twice. And in the ensuing days, Kansas City got swarmed by national media.

Much of it was flyover reporting media people swooping in, filling airtime, and trying to make quick assessments during live standup broadcasts of what the incident says about the city, its people, and our history.

Yes, northern neighborhoods where the shooting occurred are predominantly white. They're separated by the Missouri River from the downtown core of the city, like the neighborhood where I live.

There are multiple bridges and highways connecting the two areas; it's not like a moat separates them. Much of the reporting failed to drill into the grittier and more telling history. Missouri, where the shooting occurred, was a slave state. Kansas, across the state line, was free.

It's old border war stuff with competing attitudes. On the slavery side, remnants of that dark history morphed into segregation, redlining, and housing patterns that-at one point culminated in the largest school desegregation case in the nation's history.

We're all of this.