Gamma Pi

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

Date: Jan 22, 2020 at 4:00pm to 5:30pm
The history of racism in the South is well known—the chain gangs, lynch mobs and views of black southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow period are, for the most part, common knowledge today. But what do we know about the role the urban North played in shaping views on the intersection of race and crime in American society? In this talk, Khalil Gibran Muhammad reveals how the idea of black criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America, as were African Americans’ own ideas about race and crime. In the North, crime statistics, immigration trends, and references to America as the “land of opportunity” were woven into a cautionary tale about the threat Black people posed to modern urban society. Excessive arrest rates and overrepresentation in Northern prisons were pointed to by whites—liberals and conservatives alike—as proof of Blacks’ inferiority. The prevailing feeling was that, in the heyday of “separate but equal,” what else but pathology could explain Black people’s challenges in the “land of opportunity”? Chronicling the beginning of the deeply embedded notion of Black people as a dangerous race of criminals, Muhammed explores a different side of the history of racism, weaving a narrative that is both engaging and educational. Kahlil Gibran Muhammad is the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America Remember to fill out the Leadership Event Follow-Up Survey form to receive your leadership point! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe53y_cYfOWs5V5WL1l_UtVuuOH6opX8rqDZfyX5YslOw6TBQ/viewform