Much of the work on political participation by populations of African descent in the United States has focused, necessarily, on the African American population. Streams of Africans arrived in the United States from the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, but only through the involuntary coercion of the slave trade, rather than the patterns of migration available to European immigrants. These African Americans became part of the long struggle for freedom, citizenship, and participation after the Civil War, as well as for access to the political system in the twentieth century. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, for the first time in U.S. history, allowed a substantial increase in black immigration, although primarily from Africa, as Caribbean immigration was shaped by other factors.

Sharon D. Wright Austin considers important issues related to the changes in the U.S. populations of African descent. Will the patterns of increased political participation as measured by voting, strong group identification, and political incorporation generated in the interactions between whites and blacks in the twentieth century be replicated among West Indians, Haitians, and Cape Verdeans? Will there be conflicts and differences among the groups in relation to the recent generation of research? Michael Dawson’s Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (1995) emphasized findings of group identity and linked fate among African Americans. How will immigrant populations of African descent, with histories sharply varied from the American black population after their long history on the American mainland, reshape the theoretical analysis of black politics? Many African Americans include ancestors from outside the United States, but there have only recently been sizable black immigrant populations arriving simultaneously from outside the United States.

The Caribbeanization of Black Politics is a study of considerable depth and complexity. Wright Austin selected cases along two dimensions: by geographic location and by type of black ethnic group. She chose these locations as gateway cities into which black ethnics have moved, although not necessarily in the same patterns or time periods. This also required analysis of the literature and historical evolution of African American political participation in four different cities: Boston, Chicago, Miami/Dade County, and New York City, each in its own chapter. While Wright Austin points to the presence of political machines in these cities, the cities’ geographic space and organizational structures, as well as their European immigrant populations, are distinct. The author’s selection of black ethnic groups, in addition to the native African American population, also includes Cape Verdeans, Haitians, and West Indians. Three of the groups, African Americans, Haitians, and West Indians, were interviewed in all four cities, but Cape Verdeans were interviewed only in Boston. A total of 867 people were surveyed, the largest comparative African American urban survey. The inclusion of Cape Verdeans, who originated from former Portuguese colonies off the coast of Senegal, West Africa, poses some interesting challenges to the theoretical framework. Only two of the three groups chosen are from the Caribbean, but the implications of this point for the title and theme of the book are only lightly addressed.

Wright Austin reviews the literature on African American politics, finding that scholars identified important conflicts and differences between African Americans and newer black ethnic groups. African American politics involved distinctive patterns of political participation in voting: group consciousness and linked fate, and political incorporation. She compares the patterns of behavior and participation of the three different groups of black ethnics with that of the native African American population. While the author finds some variation across the four cities, in general her survey results show that black ethnics have strong group identity. They identify as and with African Americans; they also affirm the concept of linked fate, the idea that their fates are tied to those of African Americans. Black ethnics participate in politics by voting, although rarely does this extend to more intense activities, such as contacting elected officials or attending meetings. In this respect, the results closely match the political behavior of African Americans. Their political incorporation and election to office has not been as successful as that of African Americans, with West Indians, for example, elected infrequently even in cities in which they have settled in relatively large numbers, such as New York City and Boston.

Wright Austin does not address the fact that West Indians come from a number of islands, including Jamaica, Antigua, the Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and others. Many identify strongly with their particular island, and may choose not to support candidates from a location they might otherwise see as a competitor. In the United States, however, they may accept and support the more general identification of West Indian. While the overall patterns are similar, the author found some of the black ethnics, especially Haitians, considerably less likely to be attentive to American political participation because of their concerns about events at home, as well as the expectation that they would eventually return. Others, such as Cape Verdeans, who were interviewed only in Boston, were somewhat less likely to see themselves as subject to discrimination.

This work is subtle and complex, with an exploration of the importance of church attendance and the involvement of the author’s groups in politicized churches. Unlike the findings in the literature on African American churches by Eric McDaniel, Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs, and Fredrick Harris, Wright Austin shows that black ethnics do not attend such churches. She also compares the differences in the political attitudes of first- and second-generation black ethnics. While both generations show strong signs of group identity, linked fate, and political participation, the second generation in each group moves even further in the direction of racial group patterns similar to those of African Americans. In general, Wright Austin’s work strongly challenges the prediction of earlier studies of black ethnic groups that their political behavior and philosophical patterns would evolve into political beliefs and patterns of participation quite distinct from those of native African Americans.

Wright Austin selected the four cities comprising the study because of their large number of African Americans and black ethnics in the population, and because of the similarity of urban political contexts. She might also have considered other cities, such as Atlanta and/or Los Angeles. Atlanta, a southern city very different from Miami, has a substantial Caribbean population, but without the urban political machines of northern and industrial cities. Los Angeles is a very diverse city with a large African American population, as well as large proportions of Asians and Latinos from Mexico and Central and South America, although it lacks the black ethnics of more eastern cities.

The Caribbeanization of Black Politics is a project of importance for understanding a new era in African American politics, one which has infused new cohorts into the American population of African descent. Wright Austin’s findings challenge earlier comparative studies and also reaffirm the power of group identity. As she argues, previous research found that black ethnics tended to “reject a ‘black’ racial identification after assimilating into American society. . . . The findings of this research contradict those earlier observations. In Boston, Chicago, Miami, and New York City, most African Americans and first and second-generation identify as black. . . . Many Cape Verdeans, Haitians, and West Indians have acknowledged having a racial identity with African Americans, but point out the distinctions between their own and African American culture” (pp. 157–58). In making such important claims, the book breaks new ground in the study of black politics.