• Introduction: "'Black and More than Black' "


• Chapter One: "The Tension Perpetually Sustained "


• Democratic Indignation and the Dynamics of Black Philosophy


• Chapter Two: "An Almost Contemptuous Fairness "


• Styles of Democratic Indignation


• Chapter Three: "This Is Personal "


• Human Relationships and the Production of Democratic Dignity


• Chapter Four: "The Network of Complex Relationships Which Bind Us Together "


• Chesnutt, Larsen, and Baldwin on Seeing and Knowing Others


• Chapter Five: "The Full Understanding of My Relationship to America "


• Black Imaginings of Patriotic Cosmopolitanism


• Chapter Six: "The Moral Force of the Universe "


• Faith and Pluralism in the Black Democratic Imagination


• Chapter Seven: "The Moment We're In "


• The Democratic Imagination of Barack Obama

Nick Bromell is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and author of Tomorrow Never Knows (University of Chicago Press)

Nick Bromell argues in The Time is Always Now that blacks' reflections on their painful experience and their ability to advocate for people 'both black and more than black' (an Obama quote) provides us with the foundation for constructing a democracy that is less angry and more welcoming of a cosmopolitan polity.