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The Condemnation Of Blackness: Race, Crime, And The Making Of Modern Urban America (2010)

by Khalil Gibran Muhammad(Favorite Author)

4.25 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0674035976 (ISBN13: 9780674035973)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harvard University Press

review 1: I'm a big enthusiast for history books that inform the present by examining the past. This is such a book! I was grabbed right from the introduction, on page 1, when the question is asked, "How was the statistical link between blackness and criminality initially forged?" Many ignore or are ill-informed about such a link. You hear today a lot of talk about "black-on-black" crime. Once you understand the history of linking blackness to criminality, and this book will cement that comprehension you will no longer, or SHOULD no longer engage in the ever so popular conversation of "black criminality."You will hear black commentators weighing in on the black criminal problem, and often use the same refrains that whites used in the 1920's and 30's. The author notes, '"the numbers ... morespeak for themselves" was one frequent refrain, followed by "I am not a racist."' So, Khalil Muhammad does an excellent job of getting to the root of black crime rhetoric using anecdotal history along with evidence of the evolution of crime reporting and statistics. Often, people think verbiage and concepts come out of a vacuum, that is why this book is important, it debunks that nonsense.If you want to be informed about how Blacks came to be condemned concerning the issue of criminality, then this is a must read. If you want to engage and challenge the "intelligent" pundits, do not hesitate in purchasing this thorough volume. It really illuminates the players in the drama of creating the idea of the black criminal.
review 2: I picked up Dr. Muhammad's book after reading his thought-provoking article in the New York Times, "Playing the Violence Card", earlier this month. In the wake of recent murders, such as those in Florida and Oklahoma, which seem to hinge on issues of race, Dr. Muhammad asked us to scrutinize the origins of America's common conflation of blackness with criminality. By examining the use and misuse of racialized statistics, and comparing the experiences of blacks, poor whites, and european immigrants from Post-Reconstruction through the Progressive era, Dr. Muhammad shows in his book that racism in the North took the seemingly contradictory form of social neglect and over-policing. The legacy of racialized crime discourse in the North was to set the black community as a people apart; the supposed biological, and later cultural, seeds of inherent criminality meant the black community was outside the scope of social programs implemented during the Progressive era for poor whites and european immigrants, the latter deemed a lower class yet "white on arrival", and hence, a people worth edifying. The legacy of associating blackness with criminality survives today in instances such as New York's "stop and frisk" policies and manifested itself most painfully in the murder of Trayvon Martin. By deconstructing the myth of black criminality, Dr. Muhammad urges us to remember that criminality heralds social strain- in the form of poverty, discrimination, and lack of educational opportunities and access to social programs- regardless of race. It is the responsibility of society as a whole to embrace its members and address the strain with social programs and empathy. Before reading this book, I had understood the legacy of slavery in the Post-Reconstruction era to be Jim Crow policies in the South. Dr. Muhammad convincingly shows that racism in the North, while perhaps more subtle, has had a lasting effect on the way we talk about black criminality. less

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