Kansas City Confronts Racial Tensions After Front Door Shooting

The shooting of a Black teenager named Ralph Yarl by an older white man on the city’s northern edge has drawn attention to persistent disparities between Black and white residents in Kansas City. The case has reopened big questions about racism and segregation that have been fused into the city’s history for generations but never fully reckoned with. The lasting segregation, along with sprawling municipal boundaries that span more than 300 square miles, has created a Kansas City in which many Black and white residents live separate lives.