Understanding the nature and extent to which black Americans take pride in being black and understanding the political and social consequences for such pride is the subject of this latest Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza collaboration. Using a creative experimental design to augment and enhance a standard and more conventional survey methodology, the authors address two primary questions: 1) Does taking pride in being black come hand in hand with blacks being more likely to be anti-other (i.e., those who are not black)? and 2) Does racial solidarity or having a distinctive black identity mean that black Americans do not share a sense of connectedness to the larger American culture? As for answer to these questions, according to Sniderman and Piazza, black pride contributes to black solidarity but does not lead to black intolerance of other groups. Moreover, they find that, in general, the black masses overwhelmingly reject racial separatism and tend to see themselves as being part of the larger society. As they put it, “in the larger black community being pro-black does not mean being anti-white—or anti-Jewish, or anti-Hispanic, or anti-Asian. Black pride and prejudice are not opposite sides of the same coin” (p. 164). The data that yield these findings come from a 1997 telephone survey of a representative sample of blacks in Chicago. The authors anticipated generalizability questions that might be raised about their findings by including, for comparison purposes, data from national surveys of blacks.

Chapter 1 introduces the main research questions and provides the context and contours of the study. Here the authors reveal the discovery of two recurring and seemingly conflicting themes that coexist within the black community: distinctiveness and inclusion. Distinctiveness marks and reflects the sense of difference that blacks feel from other Americans, and inclusion underscores feelings of commonality with their fellow citizens. These two themes are reminiscent and provide empirical confirmation of W. E. B. Dubois's idea of “double-consciousness,” expounded in his now-classic The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Sniderman and Piazza argue that the inordinate amount of attention paid to the potential tension between these themes obscures the reality that blacks, for the most part, are very successful at managing this duality. That is, “black Americans can and do simultaneously affirm their distinctiveness as blacks and their commitment to the common culture they share with their fellow Americans” (p. 10).

In Chapter 2 the authors explore the concept of black solidarity, that is, what it means for blacks to identify with other blacks. A desire for economic independence, a desire to have black achievements acknowledged, and feeling a sense of linked fate with other blacks are some of the expressions of black solidarity identified and discussed. Among several note-worthy findings from the analyses in this chapter, two stand out. First, Sniderman and Piazza find that there is a link between economic class and feelings of black identity. Blacks who are more well-off tend to more strongly identify themselves as black. Second, after controlling for the effects of education, they find no connection between a sense of black identity and levels of self-esteem. Both of these findings challenge the conventional wisdom that is derived from the existing identity politics literature.

It is also in Chapter 2 where we discover perhaps the most controversial findings of the study. While finding no significant evidence that black pride and black solidarity are connected to blacks' readiness to be prejudiced against Jews, the authors do report a link between support for Afrocentrism and black anti-Semitism. Sniderman and Piazza contrast the definition of Afrocentricity used in “serious scholarship,” like Martin Bernal's Black Athena (1987), with what they refer to as the popular meaning of the term. For them, the scholarly conceptualization is based on extensive research and holds that Egypt (i.e., Africa) significantly influenced the development of Greek civilization (p. 22). The authors represent the popular understanding as being the belief that European achievements and contributions to human civilization have been unabashedly exaggerated, while at the same time, legitimate African accomplishments and contributions have been systematically ignored or downplayed. They argue that this popular notion of Afrocentrism can lend itself “to claims that violate ordinary standards of evidence and reasoning” (p. 22). Moreover, they state that “truth sometimes seems a secondary factor” in research projects that employ this popular understanding (p. 23). It is ironic and disappointing that the authors themselves violate ordinary standards of evidence and reasoning to support or substantiate these claims about the popular understanding of Afrocentrism. Not only do they rely on an overly narrow conceptualization of Afrocentrism, but they also rely on a single example as their evidence for their decidedly negative conclusions about it.

Reactions to two statements are used to gauge the degree to which the so-called popular understanding of Afrocentrism is present within the black community. Seventy-three percent of the respondents agreed with the statement: The ancient Greek philosophers copied many ideas from black philosophers who lived in Egypt; and 89% agreed that African wise men who lived hundreds of years ago do not get enough credit for their contributions to modern science. Sniderman and Piazza characterize such beliefs as “odd” and “off-the-wall.” However, it is reasonable to conclude that such beliefs are derived, either directly or indirectly, from “serious scholarship” and well-researched mainstream academic studies, such as the 1987 Bernal study that is referenced by the authors.

The core of the study's experimental analyses are found in Chapters 3 and 4. The conventional wisdom regarding black conflict with other groups—whites, Jews, and Koreans—is tested in Chapter 3 by using experiments that allow for randomized variations in questions and scenarios. The conventional wisdom offers three explanations for this confict: 1) competition for scarce resources; 2) irrational hostility that accompanies prejudice; and 3) black pride (p. 61). In general, the results of the experiments call into question much of our existing knowledge and understanding on this topic. Chapter 4 focuses on the views that blacks have about American society and their place in it. Sniderman and Piazza find that although ordinary black citizens tend to possess distinctive identities as blacks, they maintain a commitment to a common American culture, and they remain overwhelmingly committed to racial integration. The authors argue that these findings refute the multiculturalist claim that American culture has no common core. However, here, as was the case with Afrocentrism, their critique relies on an overly narrow representation of the multiculturalist perspective.

Overall, Black Pride and Black Prejudice offers several important findings. This somewhat provocative book is well researched and is very well written. Its detailed analyses contribute to the extant knowledge in several fields of study, including race and ethnic politics, public opinion and political attitudes, political culture, identity politics, race relations, ethnic conflict, and political socialization. This study is a must read for serious students in each of these areas. Because of its innovative research design, the book will be of interest to scholars outside of these substantive areas as well.