CBH Talk | Heather Ann Thompson on the Legacy of Bernie Goetz 11

In 1984, a white New Yorker named Bernie Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a subway train, igniting one of the most explosive public debates in modern New York history. Hailed by some as a hero and condemned by others as a vigilante, Goetz became a flashpoint for national anxieties about crime, race, fear, and who is entitled to safety in public space. In her new book Fear and Fury: Bernie Goetz, the Reagan '80s, and the Rebirth of White Rage, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Heather Ann Thompson revisits this moment not as an isolated incident, but as a turning point in American political culture, one that helped normalize vigilantism and laid groundwork for the rise of hate crimes in the decades that followed. Drawing on newly uncovered sources and deep historical context, Thompson traces how Goetz’s shooting of Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur reshaped public discourse, media narratives, and policy, revealing how fear was weaponized and racialized in ways that continue to shape our politics today. The story becomes a lens through which to understand mass incarceration, “tough on crime” governance, and the enduring consequences of framing violence as self-defense. Thompson will be in conversation with journalist, scholar, and co-host of Uncivil and Empire City, Chenjerai Kumanyika. Together, they will explore how the Goetz case reverberates through contemporary debates about policing, public safety, and racial justice, and what it can teach us about the stories we tell and are told, in