The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

Recommended by Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Dean, Harvard Radcliffe Institute; Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School; Professor of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America” describes the creation following slavery of a racist ideology that framed African Americans as dangerous and likely criminals; that mindset animated laws, policies, and aggressive police practices that dehumanize, criminalize, incarcerate, and sometimes lead to the killing of disproportionate numbers of African Americans.