The Condemnation of Blackness

Winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize

A Moyers & Company Best Book of the Year

How did we come to think of race as synonymous with crime? The Condemnation of Blackness is a biography of the idea of black criminality in the making of modern urban America. It reveals the influence this pernicious myth, rooted in crime statistics, has had on our society and our sense of self. Black crime statistics have shaped debates about everything from public education to policing to presidential elections, fueling racism and justifying inequality, in stark contrast to the use of white crime statistics. How was this statistical link between blackness and criminality initially forged? Why have the ideas endured for so long? In the age of Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump, under the shadow of Ferguson and Baltimore, no questions could be more urgent and vexing.

"A brilliant work that tells us how directly the past has formed us."

--Darryl Pinckney, New York Review of Books

"The role of social-science research in creating the myth of black criminality is the focus of this seminal work...Shows how progressive reformers, academics, and policy-makers subscribed to a 'statistical discourse' about black crime...one that shifted blame onto black people for their disproportionate incarceration and continues to sustain gross racial disparities in American law enforcement and criminal justice."

--Elizabeth Hinton, The Nation