"Drawing from a deep well of resources and historical figures, William L. Van Deburg comes up with an absorbing portrait of black villainy in America's popular mythos, art, and everyday life. The line between 'bad blacks' and 'baadd blacks' is truly fine and reveals much about the great American dilemma, race. From Nat Turner to hip-hop's own band of hell raisers, Hoodlums takes the reader on an incredible historical and analytical passage that is sure to take us all a long way in better understanding the complex configurations marking black culture, performance, and politics. Hoodlums shows us why black villains, in their own bombastic and sometimes tragic way, are just as important as black heroes in the struggle for racial justice, equality, and, believe it or not, peace."
— S. Craig Watkins, author of Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of
"This book addresses a fascinating topic. It should interest sociologists working in the fields of social deviance, race relations, or cultural sociology."
— Robert E. Washington, American Journal of Sociology
"Hoodlums serves as a timely and important meditation on racialized notions of villainy in American culture. . . . Van Deburg's weaving of antebellum and postbellum conceptions of white and black social banditry and villainy within both the Euro-American and African American communities is brilliantly written."
— Gerald R. Butters Jr., Journal of American History
"[The book] asks black communities to be critical of representational strategies that have long been held as a means of survival. . . . In the end, the black villain becomes a type that hinders equitable race relations and black communal interests."
— Habiba Ibrahim, American Literature