the condemnation of blackness by khalil gibran muhammad

In three seasons at the Ensemble Theatre (Houston, Texas), Mirron appeared as JP in What I Learned in Paris, Malcolm X in The Meeting, Henry in Race, and as Countee Cullen in Knock Me a Kiss (2013 Giorgee Award for Best Leading Actor). Notable works include Ginny Gall by Charlie Smith, The Smokey Dalton Series by Kris Nelscott My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte The Long Fall (Booklist, Best of 2009) and others by Walter Mosley Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elijah of Buxton, The Translator and Souls of Black Folk by W. Mirron Willis has narrated over 200 audiobooks across various literary genres and has won several Earphone Awards for Excellence and is an Audie Award finalist and winner. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals by explicit contrast to working-class whites and European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the influence such ideas have had on urban development and social policies. 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 heyday of 'separate but equal,' what else but pathology could explain black failure in the 'land of opportunity?' Excessive arrest rates and overrepresentation in northern prisons were seen by many whites-liberals and conservatives, northerners and southerners-as indisputable proof of blacks' inferiority.

We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society.įollowing the 1890 census-the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery-crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land of opportunity were woven into a cautionary tale about the exceptional threat black people posed to modern urban society. Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known.

The condemnation of blackness by khalil gibran muhammad