What is at the core of African American politics and ideology? Which elements are essential for understanding the contours of ideological and strategic differences that define the political activities of African American citizens? James Lance Taylor offers up a careful, nuanced, and well-argued thesis about the central role of black nationalism as a critical historical aspect of black politics, and he illuminates how that role has impacted the development of political consciousness among the hip-hop generation and has shaped contemporary African American politics.

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 has given rise to multiple formulations regarding black power and black nationalism: as either being fulfilled by his election or marginalized due to the presence of an African American in the White House and thus a sign of the complete incorporation of a once outcast minority group. These arguments ignore the ideological cleavages among African Americans and how they speak to the diversity of their political experiences, experiences that Taylor argues are shaped by both African American religion and the fundamentally important connections to the social, cultural, and political concerns generated by the American political system. These connections lead to versions of black religion and black nationalism that lay the foundation for understanding both the history of past political behavior and the trajectory of ideological development and political strategies in the future.

Black nationalism has traditionally been studied as one of the diverse strands of African American political thought, and it has often been marginalized as a “reactive” ideology, a strain of thought that rises in responses to white racial excesses in which African Americans consider the idea that a unified community offers the best option for survival in the face of white racial animosity. This approach tends to analyze nationalism as a trend that rises and fades in relation to the larger racial environment, and it tends to link it episodically to its most famous advocates as extraordinary personalities trying to unite a politically excluded minority. This approach, according to Taylor, minimizes the impact of nationalism on all aspects of black politics, especially the role that nationalism plays in the structure of black religious faith. He convincingly argues that faith, beyond being a refuge from a harsh world, structured worldviews and defined the moral center of black politics. It also helped form the basis of the “jeremiad” or political sermon, which was at the core of African American demands for political rights. The arguments against segregation and oppression became more than legal and political discussions when religious considerations of right and wrong were fused to policy debates. The questions of integration, immigration, and community were all influenced by a moral concern, which, Taylor argues, is a much more essential dynamic than previous scholarly work has noted.

Black Nationalism in the United States builds a solid foundation for this argument by critically analyzing the history of community-oriented thought inherent in other African American ideologies, and how this presence structured political behavior in ways that, while diverse on the surface, revealed a common commitment and moral center to political action. The core argument in this work is that black nationalism has shaped the political visions of the future in ways that have not always been acknowledged by scholars in political science. The author skillfully connects previous scholarly work by historians Theodore Draper, Harold Cruse, and Penial Joseph in building his argument regarding the pivotal role that black nationalism plays in the development of African American politics, and he uses this point to illustrate that because black nationalism is not a static historical program but an evolving, influential part of black politics, it is something that scholars of political science must explore as a vital part of an understanding of contemporary black political behavior.

The role of faith as a major component of black nationalism and an essential element in the foundations of black politics is also explored in chapters dealing with Martin Delany and David Walker, which place their faith into the context of their political commitments and find a complex relationship that also reveals the role that nationalism plays in the formation of the visions of the ideal society. It is now important to understand black nationalism not only as a critical interrogator of American liberalism but also as an important agent shaping the moral and political contours of the alternatives to an unacceptable status quo. It is now clear that when looking at black nationalism and black faith as part of a continuum of ideological and intellectual exchanges, we must broaden our understanding of how, why, and who can and will articulate political visions in contemporary politics.

How can we understand the implications of the arguments set forth so far? If we understand black nationalism as shaping the visions of political society for many African Americans, the explorations by Taylor of the lives and politics of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan are valuable not as studies of historically important personalities but as articulators of political visions for the African American community. He finds that the community concern and moral visions of Malcolm X and other nationalists clash with the political realities of America during the decades of the 1990s. He also asserts that Minister Farrakhan, by building on nationalist ideals, was able to argue against the status quo in such strong terms and denounce the moral problems of both America and the African American community in ways that were so aggressive that they appeared to be creating an alternative political program that would serve as an intellectual and ideological model for young people disaffected by the current structures of politics.

The impact of this understanding is to illuminate the perspectives of African American politics. If we can utilize the evolving and continuing influence of black nationalism on the African American community, it becomes easier to see what the people perceive to be the biggest barriers to their success, how they want to go about trying to overcome those barriers, and, ultimately, what it is that they want to see done in their community and in the nation at large. This understanding allows the author to critically address the structures of government and the problems and possibilities of political ideology and political behavior.

This work argues for a more complex understanding of black nationalism as a central feature in the evolution of African American politics, and it poses a role for nationalism as vital to the structures of our visions of what a fully politically integrated America should look like. If the impact of this book is to help scholars rethink our assumptions regarding the role of black nationalism as historical antecedent to contemporary politics, it will be only one of its many contributions to the study of African American political ideologies. Taylor has done excellent work and presented an important argument that will be critical for uncovering the nature of political visions and engagement among the youth of the hip-hop generation.