Within the context of black nationalism, the concept of cultural nationalism assumes that peoples of African descent share a way of life, or culture, which is fundamentally different from that of Europeans and other non-Africans. This way of life, it is assumed, is permitted greater freedom of expression on the continent of Africa than in the Western Hemisphere, but it is shared by Afro-Americans as well. Generations of American social scientists have rejected this notion, preferring instead the positions that Afro-American culture did not exist, that it represented a “pathological” version of the larger American culture, or that it was part of the larger “culture of poverty.” One noted exception to the general practice of rejecting the validity of Afro-American culture was the work of Melville J. Herskovits, who as early as the 1930s put forth the theory that African cultural traits survived in the Western Hemisphere. Herskovits, a cultural anthropologist, maintained that aspects of African culture have had a marked effect on blacks in the United States, especially in religion, music, family life, language, dance, and mutual aid societies. At about the same time, the most persistent critic of the Herskovits's theory was E. Franklin Frazier. Unlike Herskovits, Frazier maintained that the Afro-American's way of life derived largely from the circumstances under which they were forced to live in the United States, especially during the era of slavery and the first decades following emancipation.

In many regards the theories of Herskovits and Frazier are not contradictory. The differences in formulation are found in differing approaches to the subject.