Inventing Black-on-Black Violence: Discourse, Space, and Representation
"This book explores the societal construction of "black-on-black violence" - referring to the 1980s when acts of aggression among African American perpetrators and victims increased. Massive job losses, debased identities, and rampant physical decay made American blacks seem ripe for explosive behavior. Many people blamed black lifestyle, values, and culture. David Wilson shows how America imbued a process of violence with race and accepted it as one of the country's most vexing ills during...
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Wilson (geography, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) examines how conservative and liberal discourses of "black-on-black violence" were constructed in the United States in the 1980s and describes their respective "fields of understanding" about cities, inner cities, African American youth, inner city institutions, and urban politicians. He argues that both discourses coalesced around the concept of a dysfunctional underclass culture and considers why such an idea resonated with mainstream America. Finally, he documents how politicians and the media used the discourse of "black-on-black violence" pin the blame for a spreading crime panic on inner city black people. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
1The nature of discourse32Postwar representations of urban black youth, 1950-1980213The conservative discourse474The liberal discourse795Communicative similarities in discourse1056The impacts1317Contesting the vision153
