Volume 35, Number 3 · March 3, 1988
Black Crime, White Racism
By Andrew Hacker
Black Robes, White Justice
by Bruce Wright
Lyle Stuart, 214 pp., $15.95
Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations
by Howard Schuman, by Charlotte Steeh, by Lawrence Bobo
Harvard University Press, 260 pp., $25.00
The Afrocentric Idea
by Molefi Kete Asante
Temple University Press, 217 pp., $24.95
Plural but Equal
by Harold Cruse
William Morrow, 420 pp., $22.95
Crime in the United States
a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
US Government Printing Office, 371 pp., $17.00
Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1985: A National Crime Survey Report
a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics
US Department of Justice, 113 pp., Free
'For many whites,' Mayor Edward Koch of New York City remarked last year, 'crime has a black face.' A few days later, the city's black police commissioner added that members of his own race had a similar perception. 'It's the blacks who are victims of criminality,' he said, 'and it's the blacks who are perpetrating those crimes.'[1] While black Americans make up about 12 percent of the country's population, they account for 30 percent of the 2.4 million people currently on probation or parole for crimes they have committed; 41 percent of the 275,000 men and women awaiting trial in local jails or serving short terms there; and 45 percent of the 547,000 inmates of state and federal prisons. Overall, this means that more than a million black Americans are behind bars or could be returned there.
Review, 6677 words
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