However, based on what I know of the US, nearly any murder or other serious incident caught in the news where the races of the victim and the accused were different would practically always provoke a hysterical reaction wracked with all the usual American neuroses.

There is plenty of counter evidence to this.

Even some stuff that would seem to have all the building blocks for media exposure and revenue generation, like say the recent case of a home invasion where a young man sexually assaults and kills a 85 year old woman and beats her husband to the point of him being hospitalized.