Professor Donald Jones recently published his fourth book, The Presumption: Racial Injustice in the United States. The book argues that a threatening narrative originating in slavery continues to link Black people to inferiority, dangerousness, and crime, causing them to be presumed guilty by society and the U.S. legal systems. Why are Black people stopped, arrested, and shot by police at such a high rate? Why are they portrayed in the media as urban thugs? Jones writes that the problem of race lies in the way Blackness has been inextricably knotted together in the culture with presumptions. Arguing that this presumption is not simply a matter of hate on the part of individuals, but instead a social process linked to a widely shared racial ideology, The Presumption points out the continuation of racial caste in the United States as a crisis for democracy and provides a blueprint for a kind of second Reconstruction.
Jones teaches Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and Criminal Law at Miami Law. He is a prominent author, legal theorist, and commentator who has earned an international reputation by thinking critically about important issues concerning the civil and political rights of all Americans.
Professor Jones is the author of three other books – Race, Sex and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male (Praeger 2005); Fear of a Hip-Hop Planet: America’s New Dilemma (2013); and Dangerous Spaces: Beyond the Racial Profile (Praeger 2016). Professor Jones’ work weaves together law, history, and human narratives to explore the gulf between formal equality and the social disadvantage people of color still experience in their lives.
