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vladco's review against another edition
4.0
This is a book about the many ways Americans wove false narratives about their black countrymen. Statistics were used to lie, police were used too much and not enough to prove the lies, and even folks who should have been allies (including black leaders) helped spread the lies. This is a great read and more relevant than ever in the wake of the BLM and police reform movements.
amlecher's review against another edition
4.0
This book is important because it uses many primary and timely sources to show the history of discussing African-Americans as criminals - almost from the time there have been crime statistics, there have been racial crime statistics. It gave me more of a perspective even in my own life of seeing how crime is discussed from the 1980s to present.
doinacondrea's review against another edition
5.0
On the invention of "black criminality" and the use of statistics to justify racism, prejudice and racial and class inequality in political & socio-economic spheres.
morganbirck's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 stars
In this book, Muhammad methodically lays out how we have come to associate “crime” and “Blackness” since the end of the Civil War. Focusing on some of the biggest sociological scholars and their studies of generally northern cities, he shows how white racial liberals in the first decades of the twentieth century often failed to separate the two concepts, while Black scholars at the time tried to stop the association from becoming permanent. He also showed how progressives of the time treated white immigrant populations differently than the Black population by treating crime as a symptom of bad social conditions, and not a biological or cultural defect for these immigrants, but as a biological failing of Black people. These actions entrenched the connection between Blackness and crime, and allowed immigrants to enter into whiteness as time went on—shown explicitly by the FBI’s uniform crime reports which in the 1940s stopped separating “foreign born” and “native” whites. Ultimately, Muhammad shows how the use of crime statistics does not give us a neutral understanding of crime in America. Instead, the interpretation of those statistics throughout the late 19th and early 20th century by those wishing to prove Black inferiority created the framework we still deal with today.
Reading this book for an Abolitionist Book Club, I was floored by the depth of this book. It reads a bit more like a textbook/academic book, because it is so dense and packed with research, statistics, and details from the decades after the Civil War and into the 20th century. But although not a quick read, this is an essential one. This book has completely upended my ideas about crime statistics, and has forced me to think about my own associations and biases. It is a must-read to provide context for any use of crime statistics or association between Blackness and crime. I cannot begin to tell you how important it is to read this book.
In this book, Muhammad methodically lays out how we have come to associate “crime” and “Blackness” since the end of the Civil War. Focusing on some of the biggest sociological scholars and their studies of generally northern cities, he shows how white racial liberals in the first decades of the twentieth century often failed to separate the two concepts, while Black scholars at the time tried to stop the association from becoming permanent. He also showed how progressives of the time treated white immigrant populations differently than the Black population by treating crime as a symptom of bad social conditions, and not a biological or cultural defect for these immigrants, but as a biological failing of Black people. These actions entrenched the connection between Blackness and crime, and allowed immigrants to enter into whiteness as time went on—shown explicitly by the FBI’s uniform crime reports which in the 1940s stopped separating “foreign born” and “native” whites. Ultimately, Muhammad shows how the use of crime statistics does not give us a neutral understanding of crime in America. Instead, the interpretation of those statistics throughout the late 19th and early 20th century by those wishing to prove Black inferiority created the framework we still deal with today.
Reading this book for an Abolitionist Book Club, I was floored by the depth of this book. It reads a bit more like a textbook/academic book, because it is so dense and packed with research, statistics, and details from the decades after the Civil War and into the 20th century. But although not a quick read, this is an essential one. This book has completely upended my ideas about crime statistics, and has forced me to think about my own associations and biases. It is a must-read to provide context for any use of crime statistics or association between Blackness and crime. I cannot begin to tell you how important it is to read this book.