Barbershops, Bibles, and Bet: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought

What is the best way to understand black political ideology? Just listen to the everyday talk that emerges in public spaces, suggests Melissa Harris-Lacewell. And listen this author has--to black college students talking about the Million Man March and welfare, to Southern, black Baptists discussing homosexuality in the church, to black men in a barbershop early on a Saturday morning, to the voices of hip-hop music and Black Entertainment Television.

Using statistical, experimental, and ethnographic methods Barbershops, Bibles, and B.E.T offers a new perspective on the way public opinion and ideologies are formed at the grassroots level. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of black politics by shifting the focus from the influence of national elites in opinion formation to the influence of local elites and people in daily interaction with each other. Arguing that African Americans use community dialogue to jointly develop understandings of their collective political interests, Harris-Lacewell identifies four political ideologies that constitute the framework of contemporary black political thought: Black Nationalism, Black Feminism, Black Conservatism and Liberal Integrationism. These ideologies, the book posits, help African Americans to understand persistent social and economic inequality, to identify the significance of race in that inequality, and to devise strategies for overcoming it.

Author: Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 07/23/2006
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.29h x 6.13w x 0.91d
ISBN: 9780691126098

About the Author

Melissa Harris-Perry, formerly Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University, where she is the founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Center. She is editor-at-large at Elle.com and hosted the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC from 2012-2016. She is also the author of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America.