Research Catalog

The condemnation of blackness : race, crime, and the making of modern urban America

Title
The condemnation of blackness : race, crime, and the making of modern urban America / Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
Author
Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, 1972-
Publication
  • Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2010]
  • ©2010

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library IEC 11-158Schwarzman Building - Milstein Division Room 121
TextUse in library Sc E 10-712Schomburg Center - Research & Reference
TextUse in library Sc E 16-966Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

Details

Description
ix, 380 pages : illustrations, portraits; 24 cm
Summary
"The Idea of Black Criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America. Khalil Gibran Muhammad chronicles how, when, and why modern notions of black people as an exceptionally dangerous race of criminals first emerged. Well known are the lynch mobs and racist criminal justice practices in the South that stoked white fears of black crime and shaped the contours of the New South. In this illuminating book, Muhammad shifts our attention to the urban North as a crucial but overlooked site for the production and dissemination of those ideas and practices. Following the 1890 census - the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery - crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land were woven into a cautionary tale about the exceptional threat black people posed to modern urban society. Excessive arrest rates and overrepresentation in northern prisons were seen by many whites - liberals and conservatives, northerners and southerners - as indisputable proof of blacks' inferiority. What else but pathology could explain black failure in the land of opportunity? Social scientists and reformers used crime statistics to mask and excuse anti-black racism, violence, and discrimination across the nation, especially in the urban North. The Condemnation of Blackness is the most thorough historical account of the enduring link between blackness and criminality in the making of modern urban America. It is a startling examination of why the echoes of America's Jim Crow past continue to resonate in 'color-blind' crime rhetoric today."--Book jacket.
Alternative Title
Race, crime, and the making of modern urban America
Subjects
Genre/Form
History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-367) and index.
Contents
Introduction : The mismeasure of crime -- Saving the nation : the racial data revolution and the negro problem -- Writing crime into race : racial criminalization and the dawn of Jim Crow -- Incriminating culture : the limits of racial liberalism in the progressive era -- Preventing crime : white and black reformers in Philadelphia -- Fighting crime : politics and prejudice in the city of brotherly love -- Policing racism : Jim Crow justice in the urban north -- Conclusion : The conundrum of criminality.
Call Number
Sc E 16-966
ISBN
  • 9780674035973
  • 0674035976
  • 9780674062115
  • 0674062116
LCCN
  • 2009014930
  • 99940005802
OCLC
318970547
Author
Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, 1972- author.
Title
The condemnation of blackness : race, crime, and the making of modern urban America / Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
Publisher
Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2010]
Copyright Date
©2010
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-367) and index.
Local Note
Schomburg copy 2 signed by author and dedicated to the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division.
Schomburg copy 2 with with dust jacket.
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Table of contents
Chronological Term
1900-1999
Local Subject
Black author.
Other Standard Identifier
99940005802
Research Call Number
Sc E 16-966
Sc E 10-712
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