Jacob Blake, Breonna Taylor, and the arbitrariness of the police-shooting news cycle

On Sunday, police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, seven times. Blake had been climbing into a car with three of his sons in the back seat; the eldest was celebrating his eighth birthday. Today, Blake is alive and conscious, though the bullets severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. Members of Blake’s family and Benjamin Crump, their attorney, held a press conference in Kenosha that was carried live on cable news. A reporter asked Jacob Blake, Sr., Blake’s father, how the children were coping. “The whole picture plays over and over in front of their little faces,” Blake, Sr. said. Then he turned the question on the reporter: “How would you feel if your white son walked...