The Condemnation of Blackness

Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America is a nonfiction history published in 2010. Muhammad, an American historian specializing on race and public policy, studies the connections between Blackness, crime, and the makings of America’s urban North after the Civil War. The book has garnered significant accolade, winning awards such as the 2011 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize and landing on the Vera Institute of Justice’s “Best Books of 2019” list.

Muhammad argues that the urban North played a significant role in constructing and perpetuating ideas of “Black criminality” from 1890 to 1940. Black criminality refers to the systemic conflation of crime and vice with Blackness. Muhammad asserts that from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, the category of white crime was effectively erased while the category of Black crime was emphasized in national crime statistics. As a result, the idea of Black criminality became embedded in the American consciousness and exists in society to this day.

This study guide references the 2019 edition of The Condemnation of Blackness with Muhammad’s new preface.

Summary

In his initial chapters, Muhammad examines the beginnings of Black criminality as an idea.