Inspired by Allison Davis and John Dollard’s 1940 study Children of Bondage, Muhammad’s talk is titled, “Children of Statistical Bondage: The Punitive Legacy of Racial Quantification in Modern America.” This event took place in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, Bernhard Music Center. Muhammad’s academic work has focused on discovering the link between race and crime that has shaped and limited opportunities for African Americans. His first book, The Condemnation of Blackness, and the Making of Modern Urban America, an examination of the role of the social scientists in shaping racial “data” and its consequences on African-Americans, won the American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Publication Prize. Muhammad is currently working on his second book, Disappearing Acts: The End of White Criminality in the Age of Jim Crow,which traces the historical roots of the changing demographics of crime and punishment. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Davis Center.
