The Condemnation of Blackness

W. E. B. Du Bois is regarded as one of the most influential intellectuals in American history. A sociologist by training, Du Bois was a prominent anti-racist scholar who worked from the 1890s to his death in 1963. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois was the first Black American to receive a PhD from Harvard University. He also received a graduate degree from the University of Berlin. Some of his most famous works include The Philadelphia Negro (1898), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and Black Reconstruction in America (1935).

Du Bois is one of the most prominent figures in The Condemnation of Blackness. Muhammad first mentions him in Part 1 as an example of a Black scholar who worked during the same time as Hoffman to dispute the rising popularity of Black criminality. His education in sociology gave Du Bois a thorough understanding of the power of statistics. Thus, he was able to use statistics in his own research to combat those like Hoffman who weaponized racial statistics for their white supremacist gain. He also worked alongside white progressives like Mary White Ovington to establish interracial coalition efforts in fighting Black criminality.

At the same time, Muhammad makes sure to point out that Du Bois was guilty of partially reinforcing Black criminality in his early work. Through the early 20th century, Du Bois tended to place the burden of solving Black criminality on the Black community itself. While he acknowledged that environmental factors such as poor housing and lack of employment fueled crime issues, he believed Black Americans needed stronger resolve and discipline in facing these issues. This facet of Du Bois’s early research is attributed to his middle class standing, which Muhammad believes lent Du Bois’s work an “elitist sensibility” (67).

Even this, Du Bois was still one of the most formidable opponents to Black criminality. Indeed, his work in The Philadelphia Negro and his continued calls for Black crime-fighting efforts paved the way for future scholars that are also studied by Muhammad, such as James Stemons and Henderson H. Donald, to find new ways to fight Black criminality and advocate for Black Americans.

A journalist, civil rights advocate, and women’s rights activist, Wells was also one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In The Condemnation of Blackness, Muhammad situates her next to Du Bois as one of the foundational figures in Black scholarship and the fight against Black criminality.

Wells was another researcher who saw the power in statistics and employed that methodology against white supremacists relying on racial statistics. She dealt a potent blow to racist myths surrounding Black men with her statistical research on lynching. In works such as A Red Record (1895), Wells provided empirical proof that white men committed sexual violence against Black women at a far higher rate than Black men against white women, undermining a popular excuse for lynching.

Importantly, Muhammad details Wells’s work in her community as much as her work in published research. Wells founded the Negro Fellowship League, a Black settlement house, in 1910. It was a direct response to the systemic denial of other settlement house leaders in Chicago to provide housing for Black citizens in the city. Throughout his book, Muhammad emphasizes Wells’s position on the frontlines of Black-led crime fighting efforts. Just as Du Bois paved the way for Stemons and Donald, Wells opened doors for civil rights and feminist activists later in the 20th century.

Frederick L. Hoffman was one of the first authors of Black criminality. His research brought racial statistics into the main fold and illustrated how they could be used effectively—and dangerously—to disseminate racist ideology. Hoffman wrote Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro in 1896. This work was a popular and influential force in American race research of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hoffman asserted that because Black arrest rates were high in the North and South, Black arrests were not due to racial discrimination, but because of biological inferiority.

Importantly, Hoffman was a Northern scholar. Muhammad’s analysis of Hoffman’s research proves his thesis that the urban North was a significant force in the racial attitudes of 19th and 20th century America. Another important factor in the connection between Hoffman and Black criminality is Hoffman’s role in ensuring the survival of the ideology. Muhammad points out in his conclusion that Hoffman was still publishing work defending Black criminality into the 1930s. The scholar was then not only at the forefront of inventing Black criminality; he also played a crucial role in carrying the ideology well into the 20th century.