The Lineaments of Wrath: Race, Violent Crime and American Culture

By James Clarke

Book Overview

Violence has marked relations between blacks and whites in America for nearly four hundred years. In The Lineaments of Wrath, James W. Clarke draws upon behavioral science theory and primary historical evidence to examine and explain its causes and enduring consequences.

Beginning with slavery and concluding with the present, Clarke describes how the combined effects of state-sanctioned mob violence and the discriminatory administration of race-blind criminal and contract labor laws terrorized and immobilized the black population in the post-emancipation South. In this fashion an agricultural system, based on debt peonage and convict labor, quickly replaced slavery and remained the back-bone of the region's economy well into the twentieth century.

Quoting the actual words of victims and witnesses--from former slaves to gangsta rappers--Clarke documents the erosion of black confidence in American criminal justice. In so doing, he also traces the evolution, across many generations, of a black subculture of violence, in which disputes are settled personally, and without recourse to the legal system. That subculture, the author concludes, accounts for historically high rates of black-on-black violence which now threatens to destroy the black inner city from within. The Lineaments of Wrath puts America's race issues into a completely original historical perspective. Those in the fields of political science, sociology, history, psychology, public policy, race relations, and law will find Clarke's work of profound importance.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765808730
• ISBN13: 9780765808738
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 339 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

"...a disturbing window on a drama not yet played out."

--Dick Hogan, The Irish Times (May 25, 1999

"stunningly treats the might collision of four centuries

of violent oppresssion of African Americans by white Americans with the current explosive subculture of black-ghetto violence. As no other book has done, Clarke explores the deep historical roots of our late-twentieth century crisis in American race relations--an urgent example of how the present must learn from the past to insure a future of peace and civility." --Richard Maxwell Brown, Univ of Oregon

"Clarke's important study takes

its title from the words of Thomas Jefferson. The author reminds readers that Jefferson used this phrase 'to describe the 'unhappy' effects of slavery that he observed in the faces of white and black children.' In his comprehensive, no-holds-barred study Clarke, a political scientist, reviews the history of race relations from slavery and Emancipation, the immediate post-Civil War period of Reconstruction to 'Restoration' and the emergence of Jim Crow segregation (what white southerners once called 'Redemption') to the ill-fated move to the dark ghettoes of the 'Promised Land', the urban north. He highlights the brutality of slave-holders, organized Klansmen, lynch mobs who scoffed at the law, and law enforcers who also did, and continue to do so. He writes about the devastating effects of race riots on communities and of widespread black-on-black crime. And he offers hard evidence of the persisting problems faced by inner-city African Americans living in anomic conditions marked by fear, disillusionment with the legal system, disdain of authority, broken families, and broken lives. The first chapter, 'Violence Begets Violence,' is a recurring motif in this sobering rendition of America's greatest tragedy." --Choice magazine

...an extremely valuable piece of research...

"In this thoroughly researched and elegantly organised study, [Clarke] makes a significant contribution to understanding of the historical and political origins of race-based violence in the United States. The The Lineaments of Wrath, Clarke combines archival research with an impressive range of secondary sources to examine key aspects of contemporary violence in America. It is an extremely valuable piece of research." --Desmond King, Oxford University