This post was supposed to be the third and final entry on the issue of standardized testing. I had set aside the time today to work on that post, but that post and discussion can wait. The act of white-supremacist terrorism in Charleston, South Carolina and the all-too-familiar responses by the political class have left me shaking with anger over the last 36 hours. This week, in nearly every possible way, our stagnant national (non)conversation on race has been reinforced by our media. This will happen again and we all know exactly how it will play out.

These victims don't matter: Consider the ratio of information we are receiving about the shooter versus the victims. The shooter (whose infamy I will not contribute to) has had his name and picture pasted on every newspaper in the land. Every flavor of benefit of the doubt is being offered to him: He was a nice young man. Sure he told racist jokes, but I didn’t think he was a racist. Maybe he was he mentally ill. Maybe he was on drugs. The @SeattleTimes (in a since deleted tweet) cast the shooter as a potentially “sweet kid”, meanwhile the victims (six women and three men) are nearly invisible in the media.