| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.2

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.2 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Hoodlums: Black Villains and Social Bandits in American Life. By William L. Van DeBurg (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. xiv + 283 pp. $29.00).
There is insight in Hoodlums, intelligence, and much scholarly erudition: 48 pages of notes, mostly citations, to go with 221 of text. But these virtues are hard to find, buried in repetitious verbiage, obscured by a tendentious thesis, diluted by a range of subjects too great to encompass in a short book.	1
The thesis advanced at the beginning is that real and imaginary villains in general serve useful functions, providing upright folks with vicarious experiences, the wider society with a "safety valve" (4). Without them life would be duller, and there would be a "decline in socially beneficial resultants," (5.) Above all, throughout" ... the epic morality play known as as American history," (21) black villainy has been essential to defining white virtue.	. . .

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