The Role of Blackness in American History

In order to understand what happened on the street not more than three miles from my home we have to go back in American history and understand how the categories of whiteness and blackness were created. In the 19th century there were studies, pseudo-scientific studies where any crime committed by a black person was evidence of the criminality of the entire black race. So back then even that you have two very different scientific criteria applied to a black person committed a crime and a whiteperson committed a crime.