Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2025
In the 1970s, Black and white media raised an alarm over “Black-on-Black crime,” drawing a line between law-abiding Black citizens and criminals who were making their neighborhoods unlivable. The narrative of Black-on-Black crime would become one of the leading alibis of the wars on crime and drugs, and it originated not with the Nixon or Reagan administrations but in boxing. Chapter 3 follows a cast of magazine writers – John Lardner, A. J. Liebling, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton – who taught the nation to root for the right kind of Black fighter against the wrong kind. Their stories showed advocates for the wars on crime and drugs how anti-Blackness could survive civil rights: It had to come wrapped in pro-Blackness.
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