Crime and Racial Constructions: Cultural Misinformation about African Americans in Media and Academia

by Jeanette Covington

Overview

Crime and Racial Constructions: Cultural Misinformation about African Americans in Media and Academia focuses on how film images of dangerous, hedonistic blacks have assumed greater significance since blacks protested racial injustice during the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It does so by reviewing a number of films that have been released from the 1970s until the present in which black males are depicted as violent and threatening. It likewise considers how these same films represent black females as prostitutes; drug addicts; and irresponsible, abusive mothers who spawn violence in their children. Because these on-screen images of a violent, apolitical, and immoral black underclass find their way into the criminological literature, the book also takes a look at how criminologists use these images to link crime to underclass culture.

Both Hollywood and criminologists alike manage to ignore how black activism during the 1960s social movements actually sparked black opposition to the kind of black-on-black crime that is routinely depicted on-screen. By taking a critical look at these negative images, Crime and Racial Constructions seeks to correct some of the distortions that arise from the undue academic and cinematic focus on black criminals at the expense of racially conscious blacks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739125915
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	04/12/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jeanette Covington is associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Crime and Racial Constructions 1

Section I Images of Black Male Criminality in Media and the Social Sciences

1 Black Images in the Post-Civil Rights Era 35

2 Hollywood and Black Protest: The Rise of Ghetto Action Movies 61

3 Black Violence, White Violence: Cinematic Images of the Urban Underclass 89

4 Making Race Matter: How Criminologists Look at African Americans and Violence 129

5 Americanizing Black Violence: Making Criminology Race-Free 157

Section II Cinematic and Academic Images of Black Female Criminals and Victims

6 Black Women on the Silver Screen 185

7 Black Women, Violence and Masculinization 231

8 Comforting Fictions: Black Women, Hollywood and Color-Blind Racism 271

Bibliography 309

Index 323

About the Author 335

Editorial Reviews

This well-researched and referenced work makes a serious contribution to the crime and media literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

Choice Reviews

This well-researched and referenced work makes a serious contribution to the crime and media literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

Choice

This well-researched and referenced work makes a serious contribution to the crime and media literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended.--CHOICE

From the Publisher

This well-researched and referenced work makes a serious contribution to the crime and media literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

CHOICE