The Condemnation of Blackness

Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

By: Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Narrated by: Mirron Willis

Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins

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.

©2010 Khalil Gibran Muhammad (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"This important book is a vital contribution to our understanding of the role of racism in American society." (Aldon D. Morris, author of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement)

Excellent Book

The Condemnation of Blackness was a excellent read with thorough research that outline how was race has been a problem in America. Numbers do not lie and Profosser Muhammad pointed that out clearly using statistical date.

You would love it

Nice work, well needed should be apart of everyone canons. Keep you knowledgeable of our history

A must read for modern police & politicians

A tremendous, clinical analysis that should be taught in high school, training academies and by every political institution in the country.

Flawlessly researched and documented

This book and even the narration was an example of flawless execution on a very difficult topic. The only thing the author could have improved upon would have been him relating how it all tied in today a bit more but that probably would have made the book too long. All in all I learned quite a bit from it.

Beautifully Written

Everyone needs to read this book, in fact, this book should be a required text and taught in schools.

An essential work

A foundational work in understanding how racism became written into our culture through “science.” Kahlil Muhammad writes dispassionately yet absolutely convincingly of how, from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th, largely through the “discipline” of sociology, blackness was made nearly synonymous with criminality, in a new and more sophisticated form of demonization through the so-called scientific interpretation of statistics, urban demographics, and in contrast to the whiteness of European immigrants.
Well-read, this work adds to the essential body of scholarship on how racism is maintained, expanded, and comes to pervade every single aspect of American society. Read it and rage against the lies promulgated in the name of “improvers” that we live with still in the 21st century.

So much has changed yet so little has changed....

Glad I got to listen to this.... With all the realities of black life nowadays leading to the prison or grave, this book opens up the curtains to how the pasts backdrop played a major role in today's situation. Worth listening to thrice....

Great Read

Very informative and detailed historical account of the racist sentiments of the dominant white American society from Emancipation through The Reconstruction period. This book makes a clear correlation between media publications take on race relations then and now with published writtings and incidents involving excessive force from the police, as well as organizations within the black community working to correct some of the public perception of what was deemed by opponents of black progress as 'Black Crime'.

Excellent Education ol

This book clearly identifies and eloquently explains the genesis of the deeply embedded social injustices and structural inequalities that the black community still struggles with to this day. The breath of clarity and astutely leveraged data points and references truly affords one a deeper understanding of the historical context of the black community struggles that brings us to the present day. We clearly have more work to do. We must continue to eradicate all forms of injustice to ensure everyone’s humanity is celebrated and upheld for we all rise and fall together as people and as a country.

Understanding history can change your perspective!

The author challenges where the statistics come from that make us believe that blacks are inherently violent and aggressive. And that any shortcomings we have are of our own making and therefore in our ability to change only on our own. There have always been structural issues in our society that need to be fixed!