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 "