This powerful book on racism in the United States argues that a threatening narrative originating in slavery continues to link Black people to inferiority, dangerousness, and crime, causing them to be presumed guilty by society and U.S. legal systems.Why are Black people stopped, arrested, and shot by police at such a high rate? Why are they portrayed in the media as gangbangers and urban thugs? D. Marvin Jones writes that the problem of race lies in the way Blackness has been inextricably knotted together in our culture with presumptions. In the era of segregation this was a presumption of inferiority, but in our era, it is primarily a presumption of dangerousness or criminality.In chapters on slavery, urban spaces, the drug war, media portrayals, and white spaces, he shows how the presumption of guilt continues to shape the treatment of Black people in the United States. Arguing that this presumption is not simply a matter of hate on the part of individuals, but instead a social process linked to a widely shared racial ideology, The Presumption points out the continuation of racial caste in the United States as a crisis for democracy and provides a blueprint for a kind of second Reconstruction.

Considers the role of individuals and institutions in perpetuating prejudice and discrimination

Introduction1: Crimes of Identity: The Slaveship, the Plantation, and the Presumption2: "This Is a White Man's Country!": The Eviction of Ossian Sweet3: Makes Me Wanna Holler: The Making of the Second Ghetto4: The New Black Codes: The Presumption and the Drug War5: Strangers Paradise: The Presumption White Spaces6: From Blackface to Sidney Poitier: The Presumption on Our Screens (Part I)7: From Blaxploitation to Hood Films: The Presumption on Our Screens (Part II)8: ConclusionAfterwordIndex