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

Responsibility: Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Publication: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2010]
Copyright notice: ©2010
Physical description: 1 online resource (ix, 380 pages) : illustrations, portraits

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Description

Creators/Contributors

Author/Creator: Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, 1972- author.
Contributor: ProQuest (Firm)

Contents/Summary

Bibliography

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

Publisher's summary

Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known. We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society. 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 of opportunity 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. In the heyday of "separate but equal, " what else but pathology could explain black failure in the "land of opportunity"? The idea of black criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America, as were African Americans' own ideas about race and crime. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals by explicit contrast to working-class whites and European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the influence such ideas have had on urban development and social policies.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Subjects

Subjects: Crime and race > United States > History > 20th century.; African Americans > Social conditions > 20th century.; African Americans > Legal status, laws, etc. > History > 20th century.; Discrimination in criminal justice administration > United States > History > 20th century.; Hate crimes > United States > History > 20th century.; Racism > Political aspects > United States > History > 20th century.; United States > Race relations > History > 20th century.

Bibliographic information

Publication date: 2010
Title variation: Race, crime, and the making of modern urban America
Reproduction: Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI Available via World Wide Web
ISBN: 9780674240919 (electronic bk.); 067424091X (electronic bk.); 9780674035973; 0674035976; 9780674062115; 0674062116; 9780674054325 (electronic bk.); 0674054326 (electronic bk.)