Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad observes in his book The Condemnation of Blackness that “to think and talk about African-Americans as criminal is encoded deeply in our DNA.” In this 2012 Moyers Moment from Moyers & Company, Muhammad tells Bill how, during Reconstruction, former slaves were perceived to have a moral failing that made them different from white European immigrants. As a result, he explained, “immigrant communities got police reform. And black people got police repression.”
Watch Bill’s full interview with Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
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