By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 13th, 2012 
Remember Preston Brown? He is the senior lifeguard at the Theodore Young Community Center, where I go for my daily swim. For a long time, Preston and I have been joking around about current events, joking with a serious punch. I play the role of the privileged white liberal, he, the skeptical black man. We first developed our parts in a year-long confrontation over the Obama candidacy. The skeptical Preston laughed at my conviction that Obama would be the Democratic nominee, and he thought it was absolutely hysterical that I thought that Americans would likely elect either a black man or a white woman to be President. As I have reported here, we made a couple of bets, which became the source of general community interest, and which Preston, to the surprise of many, paid up. We had a nice lunch at Applebee’s. It ironically, but presciently, ended with a small racist gesture coming from our waiter. We celebrated together, and we sadly noted that while things had changed, the change had its limits.
As a participant observer of Solidarność in Poland, the great social movement that significantly contributed to the end of Communism around the old Soviet bloc, I appreciate limited revolutions. Solidarność called for a self-limiting revolution. Perhaps this is even the time that I should approve of Lenin: “two steps forward, one step back.” Yet, I must admit, I have been disappointed with the stubborn and sometimes very ugly persistence of open racism after the momentous election of President Obama. While I think there is more to the Tea Party than racism, the calls to “take our country back” and the refusal of many to recognize Obama’s legitimacy have been extremely unsettling. Preston’s skeptical view was wrong about the majority of Americans, but he was right about a significant minority. And his concerns have a lot to do with the recent doings in Sanford, Florida.
Yesterday, Preston and I had a brief discussion about Trayvon Martin, which revealed to me, once again, how it is that race is . . .
Read more: Race and Racism in Everyday Life: Talking about Trayvon Martin
By Gary Alan Fine, April 2nd, 2012 
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 26th, 17-year-old Trayvon, wearing a hoodie, was returning to his father’s home in a gated . . .
Read more: Hoodie Nights: Trayvon Martin and the Racial Politics of Small Things
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 30th, 2012 
It’s been a big week for cynicism in the news. Involved as I was with the book party for Reinventing Political Culture and teaching preparation, I didn’t realize that this would be the case until an A.P. reporter called on Tuesday morning. I get such calls every two years or so about some cynical development in the news as a part of the election cycle, as the author of The Cynical Society, This time the journalist focused upon two headlines: the “etch a sketch” remark by a Romney campaign aide and President Obama’s open mic remark in his conversation with President Medvedev.
I perversely enjoy these periodic interviews. Because I wrote a book with cynicism in the title, I am asked to provide rapid responses to questions about latest cynical manifestations. This provides some kind of public confirmation that my academic writing has some continuing relevance beyond academic circles. Yet, I must admit, there is cynicism in the asking and the answering.
Sometimes the journalist and I have a robust interesting conversation. At other times, I am at a loss for words, because I am busy with other things, hadn’t really given much thought to the issue, or know that what I have to say will not serve the journalist’s needs. But even when I am not sure what to say, the journalist presses and I usually comply. She needs a quote to build up her piece, to get “expert opinion” because journalistic convention stipulates that she should not express her own judgment explicitly, and I recognize the convention and willingly comply, concerned primarily that my name is spelled correctly and my institutional affiliation is properly identified, hoping that the sentence or two that the journalist draws from our conversation resembles what I actually think. Cynically speaking, I do this because I know that to appear in public is good for my and The New School’s reputations, and there is always a chance that what I say may matter a little.
I have talked with Nancy Benac, the reporter who called Tuesday, . . .
Read more: A Cynical Society Update: Part 1
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