During two weeks under Morocco’s sheltering skies, one loses a granulated sense of current American civil discourse. Sipping mint tea in the souks of Marrakesh, the world filtered through the International Herald Tribune, it appeared that Iranian nuclear policy, gas prices, and the health care challenge were sucking up American discursive oxygen. I was vaguely aware that a teenager had been shot in a small town in Florida, but across the ocean that seemed like a routine tragedy in a nation awash in firearms. Teens are often shot and often shooters.

Within hours of touching down at JFK, I learned that the killing (or, some insist, the murder) of Trayvon Martin in Deland, Florida, constituted that now-common spark that creates a blaze in the public sphere. As is so common when the insistent force of the image outruns mundane evidence, people were making forceful pronouncements, selectively parsing the facts of the incident. Trayvon was transformed from a Skittles-eating kid to a talking point. Anytime an adolescent dies, we should weep, but should we pounce?

As many have noted, from Attorney General Eric Holder on down, Americans have great difficulty – perhaps cowardice – in discussing the pathologies and the possibilities of racial contact. Even our president is palpably anxious behind his bully pulpit. So rather than discussing the broad structural challenges of race relations we often rely on idiosyncratic moments, often tragic ones: Bernard Goetz, the subway vigilante; the dragging death of James Byrd; the wilding attack on the Central Park jogger; and, of course, OJ. Now we discuss the shooting death of young African-American Trayvon Martin in a suburban gated community. Each of these instances is a rare and atypical moment, but they are magnified to reveal pervasive racial animosities and resentments. And frequently what we believe is at some remove from how the events evolved.

The jury is still out on Trayvon’s shooting, or perhaps with more accuracy the jury hasn’t yet been called in. But on that evening of February 26^th, 17-year-old Trayvon, wearing a hoodie, was returning to his father’s home in a gated community in Deland, where neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman noticed him and felt that he was acting suspiciously. As things transpired – we know not how, precisely – Trayvon died from a gunshot wound, and Zimmerman is in hiding, not arrested but under moral assault. With the details trickling out, the story became curiouser. Despite the reputation of gated communities as redoubts of the white elite, Zimmerman is Hispanic (sometimes snidely described as “white Hispanic”) and Trayvon’s father is black. Both reside in this gated community, which is perhaps a positive sign of a sort.

As information was released, neither Martin nor Zimmerman was a paragon. In 2005 Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer, a charge that was dropped. Trayvon had been suspended several times from high school with indications of drug use and perhaps burglary. While this background does not determine what happened that February night, imperfection rules. Together the two created a complex puzzle.

Is this a case of “walking while black”: A harmless youth harassed, and then murdered, because of the symbolism of his hoodie and the pigment of his skin. Or was this an instance in which a wild youth threatened the tranquil order of a multi-racial community. These two are surrounded by others who attempted to use the incident for their own purposes. The filmmaker Spike Lee felt it his responsibility to tweet the (wrong) address for George Zimmerman, leading an elderly couple to fear for their lives. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson each hoped to boost their own sagging street cred. Ann Coulter for her part likened those who wanted justice for young Martin to the KKK. Gun rights advocates have weighed in, endorsing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, permitting the use of deadly force.

These incidents misdirect us away from the deliberate consideration of our real racial divides. As we tell them, these are stories that are too good to be false. We trap ourselves when treating racial imaginaries as definitive accounts. As a parent myself, I recognize the anguish of Trayvon’s parents. Further, as a student of racial rumors (in my book with Patricia Turner, Whispers on the Color Line) I realize how difficult it is to avoid the desire to draw conclusions based on hunches. However, the debate over the linked fate of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin reveals our racial tensions at their most troubling. We would rather have our fantasy Martin and Zimmerman without waiting for the complex world to unspool. Perhaps the events of February 26 hold a mirror up to American race relations, but more surely the discussions since that Sunday do so. It is not the acts of Martin and Zimmerman that we need most to worry about, but the claims of those who struggle to fit these two into Procrustean boxes of their own design.

Barack Obama has been doing well recently. The public is beginning to experience the economic recovery. Job growth and consumer spending are up, a bit. Obama is shaping the political agenda on his own terms, with the full support of his party. At year’s end, he negotiated more resolutely with the Republican Congress, extending the payroll tax cut thus far for a couple of months, with every indication that it will be extended for a year. He has the political advantage on this, along with other legislative issues, as reported in The New York Times. He refused to be forced into making an abrupt decision in the Keystone XL oil pipeline. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, is challenging the legality of voter ID laws in the old confederacy. His job approval rating is up, as the Republican’s in Congress approval is down.

I think that the improvement in Obama’s standing is related to the change in the public debate, away from the obsession with deficits and cutting, toward jobs, inequality and social justice. This is not only a matter of changed tactics, but of a transformed political environment. Obama can thank Occupy Wall Street for making this possible. It’s an OWS not a Tea Party environment now. But it’s not just a matter of the environment. Obama also has contributed in a significant way. He made these issues his own in his Osawatomie, Kansas speech. I agree with David Howell, it was one of his best. He again revealed his capacity as story-teller-in-chief.

Howell liked the speech because it spoke to a pressing problem and its sociological consequence and political cause: “the massive and continued growth in inequality, linking this to the collapse of the middle class and to the obstructionism of the Republican-controlled Congress.”

I liked it especially because Obama continued to cogently tell our story, describing the path of the country, both in the short and the long run. He explained his approach in his first term and suggested where he is going. He showed how his policy positions fit into a long and deep American story. He went to Osawatomie, the site of an historic speech by Teddy Roosevelt. The former Republican President spoke about the problems of progress and social justice in the shadow of the industrial revolution. Obama addressed the same problems in the shadows of the post-industrial electronic revolution. Then and now the meaning of America was at stake. The power of Obama’s speech was its historic richness, tied to the everyday experience. Inequality, social justice and the progress of the Republic and its citizens, Obama revealed, are at stake. He did this in an understated way. It was a grand speech, without being grandiose (the contrast to Newt Gingrich comes to mind). Consider some highlights and also take a look at the speech as it was delivered (also embedded below).

Obama recognized that for many the American Dream seems to be fading. He points to broad disappointment and dismay.

“For most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments — wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t — and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

Now, for many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over this harsh reality. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed.”

This was the condition of the country when Obama became president. And since:

“[T]here’s been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity, restore balance, restore fairness. Throughout the country, it’s sparked protests and political movements — from the tea party to the people who’ve been occupying the streets of New York and other cities. It’s left Washington in a near-constant state of gridlock. It’s been the topic of heated and sometimes colorful discussion among the men and women running for president. (Laughter.)

But, Osawatomie, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.”

He then linked this debate to an earlier one, at another time of economic transformation and growing inequality.

“[I]n 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here to Osawatomie and he laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism.”

Roosevelt was concerned with the inordinate power of the captains of industry and the gross inequality that resulted when that power was left unchecked. Obama drew the comparison.

“Today, over 100 years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and it’s made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere they want in the world. And many of you know firsthand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans.”

Obama accepted that the primary concerns of his opposition, deficits and debts, had to be addressed:

“But in order to structurally close the deficit, get our fiscal house in order, we have to decide what our priorities are. Now, most immediately, short term, we need to extend a payroll tax cut that’s set to expire at the end of this month. (Applause.) If we don’t do that, 160 million Americans, including most of the people here, will see their taxes go up by an average of $1,000 starting in January and it would badly weaken our recovery. That’s the short term.

In the long term, we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally. We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education and research and high-tech manufacturing — all those things that helped make us an economic superpower? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can’t afford to do both. That is not politics. That’s just math.” (Laughter and applause.)

Obama is calling for a sharing of responsibility and prosperity as an American heritage. He went to Osawatomie because this was also the theme of Roosevelt, the great Republican President. Obama approvingly quoting the Republican hero:  “ ‘We are all Americans,’ Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. ‘Our common interests are as broad as the continent.’ ” Obama then identifies our project with the Republican’s:

“And well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and we’ve changed in many ways since Roosevelt’s time. The world is faster and the playing field is larger and the challenges are more complex. But what hasn’t changed — what can never change — are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, ‘The fundamental rule of our national life,’ he said, ‘the rule which underlies all others — is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.’ And I believe America is on the way up.”

Obama’s speech was well received. It is notable that he openly addressed the issue of social justice, addressing inequality as being the primary problem of our time. He is attempting to redefine the politics of the moment, building upon social ferment and discontent, most dramatically expressed by Occupy Wall Street, but quite evident in the labor struggles that started in Madison, Wisconsin last year, as we have observed here.

The President’s Republican opponents are appalled by his newly intensified commitment to class warfare. Many on the left are heartened by his change in direction, though skeptics are waiting to see if this is for real from a President that they think has been too closely connected to Wall Street and corporate wealth. I see the constant centrist, adopting new tactics appropriate to a changed political environment, a centrist trying to move the center left, now focused on the movement because it is again a real possibility.