The central claims of this book are that the conversations ordinary black folk have with each other matter politically, and that there is a diverse range of ideological perspectives endorsed by African Americans. The author, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, supports these contentions by means of survey research, experimental studies, and ethnographic research. This comprehensive approach represents a significant accomplishment and, in combination with the theoretical contributions of the text, makes the book an invaluable addition to the African American politics canon.

In the first chapter, the author, using the work of James Scott, Robin Kelley, and Jane Mansbridge, among others, discusses the significance of black “everyday talk” and the relevant spaces—the church, the barbershop, the beauty salon, and black-controlled media—where these ideas are expressed and developed. Harris-Lacewell's ambition here is to identify the central concerns of black political thought; she also identifies nationalism, conservatism, feminism, and liberal integrationism as the four major ideological systems that blacks use to fulfill these tasks. In the spirit of Michael Dawson's groundbreaking Black Visions (2001), she also argues that it is important that ideological discourse be “restored” to its proper place in the study of African American politics, in particular, and American politics, in general.

The interior chapters are devoted to distinguishing these ideologies in action. The use of multiple approaches allows Harris-Lacewell to straighten out the causal arrows. Is everyday talk simply a reflection of elite discourse? Does exposure to such discourse affect the ways in which individuals orient themselves ideologically, or do individuals select discourse because of previous ideological commitments? She answers some of these questions by means of an ethnographic study set in a Baptist church in North Carolina. While acknowledging the limitations of her data (for example, the author notes that she had no “way of knowing how many men and women heard [the church's leader] speak only once and refused to return because of their opposition to his political views” [p. 77]), Harris-Lacewell suggests that, indeed, everyday talk does affect the political orientation of individuals.

In the third chapter, the author uses survey data to identify the stability of the ideological perspectives she is employing in order to organize the study and the correlation between exposure to various forms of black discourse and particular orientations. Working with the 1993–94 National Black Politics Survey (NBPS), she identifies some significant differences among the nationalist, conservative, and feminist clusters and, relevant to her broader concerns, suggests that engagement in everyday black talk (as registered by exposure to church sermons and black media, music, and literature) tends to correlate with certain ideological perspectives (e.g., nationalism and feminism, rather than conservatism). Another chapter involves two experimental studies of black college students—the first conducted in Durham, North Carolina, in 1998 and the second in Chicago in 2001—on the basis of which the author is able to make some claims regarding causality and suggest that “group interaction [in and of itself] has a discernible impact on political attitudes” (p. 152).

The fifth chapter, cowritten with Quincy T. Mills, is the most engaging in the book. It involves a second ethnographic study, this time in a South Side Chicago barbershop. Here, the study seeks to establish the contours of black everyday talk in a space reserved primarily for African American males. The marginalization of black lesbians and gays is highlighted as the boundaries of black community (to borrow from Cathy Cohen's crucial text The Boundaries of Blackness [1999]) are probed and revealed. In this chapter, the authors also capture the performative dimensions of black discourse: the things that are said “behind closed doors” that would not be repeated elsewhere (a tension the authors recognize as also relevant to the controversy associated with the release of the 2002 movie Barbershop). The chapter is an ethnographic gem.

There are some areas in which the text could be improved. The classification of the radio talk show host Tom Joyner as a nationalist will, as the author acknowledges, raise eyebrows, although she does not provide a convincing explanation of why she chooses to stick with this classification (especially given the availability of more logical examples), and indeed, she might have troubled the nationalist/integrationist dichotomy more profoundly. With regard to Harris-Lacewell's attempts to draw conclusions concerning the significance of rap music on the basis of questions about whether one listens to the music, a more useful question, for the purposes of analysis, might be to ask to which kinds of rap—that is, to which artists—do respondents listen. A related concern has to do with regionalism. As hip hop has always had different regional variations, Harris-Lacewell in her analysis of the survey and experimental data could have devoted more attention to the ways in which regional factors matter. For instance, how safely can one compare the experimental results based on focus groups composed of students in North Carolina with those involving students in Illinois? The author might have also tried to test for the duration of the impact of “everyday talk” in these experimental settings with follow-up surveys (or at least considered that their impact might be ephemeral).

There are instances where the narrative could be more probing (e.g., with regard to the parishioners' apparent silence around issues of sexuality in the second chapter; on the topic of relations between Caribbean Americans and African Americans; and the striking reticence regarding class issues in the barbershop chapter). The author also consistently fails to account for the impact of market processes, and white-owned media spaces, upon black everyday talk. Joyner's “nationalist” discourse is broadcast by ABC and sponsored by Walmart; the debate about the movie Barbershop, which Harris-Lacewell recounts effectively and vividly, takes place in, among other venues, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, and St. Petersburg Times. What does it mean that black everyday talk often takes place in spaces owned by individuals who are not black (e.g., the rap music industry, the BET television network)?

Ultimately, these are mostly minor quibbles. Barbershops, Bibles, and BET is well written and original in its conception, and it represents a remarkable achievement. It will undoubtedly generate more work in the future that probes the sources and character of black political thought, as well as the ability of ordinary black folk to think for themselves.