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Khalil Gibran Muhammad speaks Feb.12, part of Black History Celebration events

02/07/2013

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Khalil Gibran Muhammed will speak at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, part of Black History Celebration events at Miami (image courtesy Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture)

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, will present "Grand Simplification: The Challenge of Historical Illiteracy in the Age of Mass Incarceration" at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, in the Shriver Center multipurpose room. His talk is part of the Black History Celebration events at Miami.

Muhammad is author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America, which won the 2011 John Hope Franklin Best Book award in American Studies.

The Condemnation of Blackness - which explores the roots of the popular conception of black criminality in America - ”renders an incalculable service to civil rights scholarship by disrupting one of the nation’s most insidious, convenient, and resilient explanatory loops: whites commit crimes, but black males are criminals,” wrote author David Levering Lewis.

Muhammad is at the forefront of scholarship on the enduring link between race and crime, that has shaped and limited opportunities for African Americans.

Prior to joining the Schomburg Center in 2011, Muhammad was an assistant professor of history at Indiana University for five years.

His talk, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the office of diversity affairs and Black History Celebration committee.