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?

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.

Presumptions of guilt, dangerousness, and menace have haunted the black community since America was founded. These inhumane assumptions continue to infect every aspect of American justice, causing untold suffering, marginalization, and death. No one understands this toxicity better than Professor Donald M. Jones. In a work like no other, Professor Jones dives deeply into the psychological, historical, and legal elements of these deadly presumptions. The analysis is brilliant, original, sober, and clear. Lawyers, law students, academics, journalists, activists, college students, and anyone concerned about injustice will benefit from the work of the preeminent expert on this subject, Professor Donald M. Jones.