Descartes

Chapter Title: African American Philosophy: Through the Lens of Struggle

Chapter Author(s): George Yancy Book Title: African American Studies

Book Editor(s): Jeanette R. Davidson

Published by: Edinburgh University Press

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chapter 10

African American Philosophy:

Through the Lens of Struggle

George Yancy

Duquesne University

introduction

In this chapter, I provide a general characterization of African American

philosophy which presupposes the continuous encounter by persons

of African descent with the absurd in the form of white racism. While

by no means exhaustive, I provide a broadly contextual approach to

African American philosophy, emphasizing meta- philosophical themes

and assumptions that I take to be salient. I then provide a sketch of a few

early African American philosophers who earned their PhDs in the fi eld of

philosophy, focusing especially on two of those pioneer fi gures who have

been historically neglected. Thematizing the neglect of early credentialed

African American philosophers by those engaged in the project of explicat-

ing the meaning, structure, and various historical trajectories of African

American philosophy functions as a form of critique. I then conclude,

briefl y, with African American philosophers’ efforts to create sites that

nurture a sense of critical community and self- determination. Such efforts

are dialectically linked to ideological and material anti- Black racist contexts

out of which African American philosophy struggled and continues to

struggle. Lastly, I make no claims to provide the last word on the subject of

African American philosophy—as if there were such a thing. My approach

to African American philosophy, and the assumptions that inform that

approach, as with every hermeneutic framework, both discloses and yet

conceals. One always begins an inquiry in medias res. There is no herme-

neutic perspective from nowhere. Every perspective (etymologically, “to

look”) is a partial, unfi nished look, a beckoning for one to look again.

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african american philosophy 195

the interpretive matrix of struggle

By foregrounding the social and historical struggle of Black people, African

American philosophy reconfi gures certain perennial assumptions about the

nature of philosophy and the philosopher as conceived within the context

of mainstream Western philosophy. Theorizing African American phi-

losophy within the social matrix of anti- Black racism situates philosophical

refl ective thought within the concrete muck and mire of raced embodied

existence, thus deconstructing the myth of philosophy and the philoso-

pher as Olympian. Within the context of discussing the preponderance of

African American philosophers who deal with issues in the area of value

theory and political and social philosophy, Robert Birt argues that “the

leisure and liberty to dwell on metaphysical concerns with Olympian com-

posure . . . isn’t so easy for an outcast and denigrated people.”1 Bodies that

suffer, bodies in pain, lynched bodies, and mutilated bodies constitute the

existentially lived reality of Black people in America. I argue that it is within

the context of such pervasive suffering that African American philosophy

articulates its normative concerns. In stream with Cornel West, any really

serious philosophy that grapples with life must make sense of what he calls

the “guttural cry.”2 For my purposes, African American philosophy is a

critical process of rendering that cry, that scream, and that struggle visible

and intelligible. Charles Mills is also cognizant of the “rage . . . of those

invisible native sons and daughters who, since nobody knows their name,

have to be the men who cry ‘I am!’ and women who demand ‘And ain’t I a

woman?’”3 Within this context, Mills explicitly emphasizes the importance

of this rage in terms of its meaning for persons of African descent who have

been deemed sub- persons. In stream with Mills, I theorize the meaning of

African American philosophy within the context of Black sub- personhood.

After all, Black people have had to struggle to redefi ne themselves against

longstanding historical racist acts of dehumanization.

My discussion of African American philosophy is defi ned in relation to its

explicitly non- Cartesian or anti- Cartesian assumptions. This is not a novel

approach, but it transcends the familiar and familial “Oedipal confl ict”

subtext that is often associated with so many thinkers who eagerly unseat

the patriarch of modern philosophy. To think of the history of Western

philosophy as constituting a family with cross- generational (monochro-

matic) ties, it is important to note that Black people were never even part of

the family; they were always already outsiders, deemed permanently unfi t

to participate in the normative philosophical community.4 A non- Cartesian

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196 african american studies

approach to African American philosophy is conceptually fruitful given

the oppression of persons of African descent during European moder-

nity. Blacks are those who occupy the underside of modernity. Because

various Cartesian epistemological assumptions and moves are crucial to

modernity, the Cartesian predicament becomes, as Mills demonstrates,

“a kind of pivotal scene for a whole way of doing philosophy and one that

involves a whole program of assumptions about the world and (taken-

for- granted) normative claims about what is philosophically important.”5

Given the materially and ideologically reinforced sub- personhood status

of Black people in America, African American philosophy is referentially

this- worldly; it is a site of conceptualizing the world that looks suspiciously

upon and rejects the a- historical nature of the epistemic subject. African

American philosophy’s point of critical embarkation is not preoccupied

with “the danger of degeneration into solipsism, the idea of being enclosed

in our own possibly unreliable perceptions, the question of whether we can

be certain other minds exist, the scenario of brains in a vat, and so forth.”6

To get a sense of the non- Cartesian, this- worldly constitution of African

American philosophy, consider a few philosophical assumptions by René

Descartes.

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes assumes the posture

of a skeptic. After describing what he depicts metaphorically as having

fallen into a whirlpool, a vortex that has tossed him around and thrown

him off his epistemological footing, he reaches his Archimedean point, the

indubitable insight that “‘I am, I exist’ is necessarily true every time I utter

it or conceive it in my mind.”7 Knowing incontrovertibly that he exists,

Descartes will shut his eyes, stop up his ears, and withdraw all of his senses

in order to uncover the nature of the self. As he says, “I will attempt to

render myself gradually better known and more familiar to myself.”8 This

approach has embedded within it the assumption that the self can be better

known through withdrawing from (or radically doubting) the social world,

thus challenging the notion that the self is fundamentally socially transver-

sal, constituted dialectically, and thereby inextricably linked to the reality

of the social world, its dynamism, and its force of interpellation.

The Cartesian approach also presumes that the predicament of the

Cartesian self is a universal (decontextualized) predicament,9 one unaf-

fected by the exigencies and contingencies of concrete history. In short,

Cartesian epistemic subjects (denuded, as it were, of historical and cor-

poreal particularity) are substitutable pure and simple, and faced with the

same epistemic global problems. This substitutability assumption places

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african american philosophy 197

under erasure important markers of African American philosophy, how

African American philosophy, with its questions, problems, and dilem-

mas, evolves out of a context where raced embodied subjects undergo

shared existential crises of struggle within the context of anti- Black racism.

This does not mean that African American philosophy does not share

philosophical concerns with other philosophical traditions and paradigms.

However, to understand African American philosophy one must reject the

substitutability assumption in favor of a perspective that focuses on and

highlights the relationship between social ontology and particular aspects

of Black Erlebnis, that is, the range of ways in which Black people make

meaning within the context of various occurrences or experiences where,

in this case, anti- Black racism is salient. In this way, African American

philosophy, with its specifi c philosophical concerns and articulations, does

not aspire to forms of universalism that obfuscate modes of particularity.

Moreover, African American philosophy does not presume to speak for

all epistemic subjects simpliciter. Its point of philosophical embarkation

does not rest upon the assumption of a fi xed set of abstract and universal

problems or solutions. Leonard Harris alludes to this when he argues

that “as a genre, it [African- American philosophy] is dominated by issues

of practicality and struggle, which means that it is not committed to a

metaphysics in the sense of having a singular proposition out of which all

other propositions arise.”10 And describing his important fi rst anthology,

published in 1983, a text which was and still is historically pivotal in terms

of gathering together important Black philosophical themes and fi gures,

Harris writes, “Philosophy Born of Struggle is predicated on the assump-

tion that a good deal of philosophy from the African- American heritage

is a function of the history of the struggle to overcome adversity and to

create.”11 It is important to note that the publication of Harris’s text grew

out of struggle. Within a context where “important” philosophical texts are

determined by white consumption and white norms of canon formation,

Harris notes, “There wasn’t anybody who was willing to publish it. Not

a single publisher in philosophy.”12 Even Howard University Press, the

publisher of an important HBCU, would not publish Harris’s text because

of its narrowly defi ned “Negro genre.”13

While the complexity of African American philosophy should not be

reduced to struggle, its historical genesis as a professional fi eld of inquiry,

its salient themes, and its forms of praxes, presuppose a world of White

Supremacy, a world that is fundamentally anti- Black. Unlike Descartes,

Black self- understanding grows out of a social matrix of pain and suffering;

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198 african american studies

a site where the Black body is a site of marked inferiority, difference, and

deviance. To withdraw from the senses as Descartes does, which is a form

of negating embodiment as a necessary condition for self- understanding, is

to presume an abstract subject from nowhere. As such, this move renders

the self incapable of knowing itself, as self- understanding is always already

from a here, a place of lived embodied knowledge, a here that presupposes a

community of intelligibility. Hence, to understand Black lived experience,

and to understand African American philosophy, it is important to begin

with embodiment, history, and lived social context, a context within which

Black people were and are reduced to an epidermal logic that signifi es pure

externality, thus denying any subjective interiority to the Black body. The

Black self, then, is not enclosed within a solipsistic bubble, free of inter-

pellation and oppression. The Black self has struggled to understand and

defi ne itself within a context where whiteness functions as a transcendental

norm, where white embodied others’ ego- genesis is parasitic upon the

ontological distortion and nullifi cation of Black bodies. Hence, whiteness

as synonymous with humanity is purchased not only through opposition,

but through negation. The Black is raced and so rendered non- normative

(i.e., not white). On this score, whiteness is deemed normative and un-

raced. As James Cone notes, “Whites can move beyond particular human

beings to the universal human being because they have not experienced the

reality of color.”14

To understand Black being- in- the- world, and the historical context of

African American philosophy, the self/Other dialectic is crucial. Not only

is it a fundamental assumption of African American philosophy, but the

self/Other dialectic captures the concrete reality of racism. While racism is

not a necessary feature of the self/Other dialectic, the former presupposes

the latter. Hence,

1. the self is dynamically plastic;

2. the self does not exist anterior to the existence of Others, or, the self is

not pre- given or the result of auto- genesis; and

3. the self is always already ensconced within a larger historical context of

prejudices and value- laden assumptions that mediate and shape self-

understanding and the understanding of the world and Others.

In their effort to delineate various generative themes that give rise to

the views of Black philosophers within their text, I Am Because We Are: Readings in Black Philosophy, Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott Lee

emphasize the self/Other dialectic as one important theme. They argue

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african american philosophy 199

that “constitutive of the black philosophical tradition . . . is the idea that

identity of the individual is never separable from the sociocultural environ-

ment. Identity is not some Cartesian abstraction grounded in a solipsistic

self- consciousness.”15 The sum (I am) of the self is not self- constituted;

rather, “I am” presupposes “they are.” The Cartesian self in its self-

certainty has no need for the category of sociality. African American phi-

losophy, however, does not begin with an ego- logically fi xed self for “the

experience of the self with other selves is the meaning of ‘sociality.’”16

And while the we- relationship that constitutes any particular self might be

taken for granted, the we- relationship’s dynamism nevertheless exists and

precedes the performative “I am.” As Maurice Natanson notes, “We are

before I am.”17

Read through the lens of racism, the point here is that African American

philosophy presupposes a social ontology where the self—in this case the

Black self—is positioned by anti- Black racist forces in terms of which the

Black self must contend. In its racially confi gured form, the self/Other

dialectic is captured implicitly by Cornel West where he asks, “What does

it mean to be a philosopher of African descent in the American empire?”18

West’s question raises the issue of philosophical identity beyond the sphere

of pure contemplation and thinking substances. His question presupposes

an identity in context, a situated self, one that is anti- essentialist in its

constitution. Hence, within the context of racist hegemony, the centrality

of the American empire becomes an important axis around which African

American philosophical identity must be defi ned. Lucius Outlaw even sees

the very attempt by Black people to address important meta- philosophical

concerns around the issue of whether or not there can be a Black philosophy

as an outgrowth of struggle. He notes that confronting “this issue of ‘Black

philosophy’ is the expansion of the continuing history- making struggles of

African and African- descended peoples in this country (and elsewhere) to

achieve progressively liberated existence as conceived in various ways.”19

Indeed, while African Americans received PhDs in the fi eld of philosophy

prior to the activism and liberating struggles to establish Black Studies

programs in the 1960s and 1970s, it is important to note that the overall

raising of consciousness during this period functioned as a catalyst for

African Americans who entered advanced degree programs in the area of

philosophy. It is also important to note, however, that African American

philosophy and African American philosophers have been neglected topics

not only in mainstream philosophy, but also in Black Studies. After exam-

ining two early pivotal Black Studies reference books published in the early

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200 african american studies

1970s, John McClendon found both to be wanting. In Black American Writers, 1773–1949, he found that the section on philosophy only included

theologians and psychologists; and in A Bibliography of Doctoral Research on the Negro, 1933–1966, there was a subsection on the humanities, but not

any reference to philosophy.20

The question regarding philosophers of African descent within the

context of the American empire bespeaks the role of power and oppres-

sion as important foci of African American philosophical engagement.

The philosophical selves that are implicated in West’s question are selves

that take seriously “the worldliness of one’s philosophical project.”21 West

also rejects the Cartesian presumption regarding “the absolute autonomy

of philosophy.”22 For West, Cartesians assume that “philosophy stands

outside the various conventions on which people base their social practices

and transcends the cultural heritages and political struggles of people.”23

He concludes, “If the Cartesian viewpoint is the only valid philosophi-

cal stance, then the idea of an Afro- American philosophy would be ludi-

crous.”24 Indeed, any philosophy that takes seriously the importance of

struggle against oppression through the exercise of human agency rejects

philosophy as a practice that transcends the horror, messiness, and joy of

human existence.25 Within the context of this chapter, existential strug-

gle not only denotes the historical matrix out of which African American

philosophy evolved and continues to evolve, but the motif of struggle also

functions as a source for meta- philosophical insight. Hence, struggle, as

used here, is not only descriptive,26 it is also heuristic.

Out of his successful effort to teach an introductory course in African

American philosophy for the fi rst time, Mills shares that he effectively

deployed the unifying theme of “the struggles of people of African descent

in the Americas against the different manifestations of white racism”27

as an important point of critical and insightful inquiry. Mills especially

emphasized how Black people were and are defi ned as sub- persons and

how this sub- personhood is an example of what he terms non- Cartesian

sums. Mills’ approach helps to fl esh out in insightful ways West’s point

regarding the non- Cartesian sensibilities of African American philosophy.

Mills argues that if we take seriously the conception of sub- personhood,

and how such a status presupposes a certain social ontology, then the

morphology of philosophical questions asked, and which philosophical

issues and themes are deemed serious and relevant, will be different. He

contrasts a Cartesian sum with a non- Cartesian sum or the kind of sum that

is portrayed in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Descartes was pained with

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african american philosophy 201

questions about solipsism, whether or not he could know with certainty

that the external world exists, and whether or not he could distinguish

between when he was dreaming as opposed to being awake. These sorts of

questions presuppose a range of implicit assumptions about the self, the

world, and one’s lived experiences. Ellison’s invisible man does not doubt

his existence in the privacy of a stove- heated room; rather, he is made to

feel invisible, insignifi cant, within a public transactional space where whites

refuse to see him, refuse to respect him. The drama of his invisibility takes

place between selves. Of course, the Black self is not deemed a Thou, but an

ontologically truncated self, and in other cases not a self at all. As Descartes

doubts his own existence, Ellison’s invisible man is constantly reminded of

the denial and diminishment of his self/existence. According to Ellison’s

invisible man, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people [in this

case white people] refuse to see me.”28 Think here of Pecola Breedlove, the

young Black female protagonist in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Like

Ellison’s invisible man, she fi nds herself in a white racist world that refuses

to see her, so that while buying some candy from a store owned by Mr

Yacobowski, a European immigrant, he does not see her, “because for him

there is nothing to see.”29 She does not live in a world in which she is philo-

sophically incredulous about her existence. On the contrary, she desires to

disappear in a world that has stereotyped her as “ugly” and “distasteful.”

Because of white gazes30 that refuse to see her, Pecola begins to desire her

own invisibility, her own non- existence as Black. Her internalized self-

hatred already presupposes an external world that refuses her the privilege

of hyperbolically thinking that world away.

Lynch mobs make a mockery of Cartesian hyperbolic doubt. The vitriol

of white racism forces one to be ever cognizant of the existence of other

minds, not in vats, but as embodied and raced. Solipsism has no place in

a world where Black bodies are mutilated and burned for the pleasure of

others.31 Hence, for Black people, the philosophical problem is not whether

one exists or not, but how to collectively resist a white supremacist world

of absurdity where one is degraded, marginalized, humiliated, oppressed,

and brutalized. On this score, taking fl ight into the sphere of a private sub-

jectivity is overwhelmed and mocked by the sheer weight of racial violence.

Within the context of colonization, Fanon suggests that this hermetic turn

inward is an idol that the colonized will abolish. He writes, “The colonialist

bourgeoisie had hammered into the native’s mind the idea of a society of

individuals where each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity, and

whose only wealth is individual thought.”32 For Fanon, the very concept of

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202 african american studies

friend within the colonial context belies subjective withdrawal. Friendship

presupposes an always already preexisting social matrix and signifi es a

centrifugal process of mutual recognition. Fanon notes, “Brother, sister,

friend—these are words outlawed by the colonialist bourgeoisie, because

for them my brother is my purse, my friend is part of my scheme for

getting on.”33

Sociality is the matrix within which racist action takes place. It is within

the mundane everyday world that Black people struggle to be and attempt to make sense of their existence. Existence in Black, then, which is a fl uid site

of identity formation and the articulation and re- articulation of meaning

within the matrix of sociality, presupposes a set of social ills that are

conspicuously absent vis- à- vis an ego that takes itself to exist as an island

unto itself. As socially embedded and embodied, existence in Black speaks

critically to the narrowness of the fi eld of philosophy. To do philosophy in

Black within a social context of white racism, where one’s very existence is

at stake, where one is reduced to a sub- person, even by those white philoso-

phers who have been canonized within the Western philosophical tradi-

tion (Hume, Kant, Hegel, to name a few), one must critically engage and

overthrow Western philosophy’s misanthropy. Moreover, to do philosophy

in Black, one must critique Western philosophy’s thanatonic normative

assumptions. Indeed, one must be suspicious and critical of dead philo-

sophical idols and metaphors, fossilized and existentially inconsequential,

that fail to speak to the lives of Black people. Within this context, West

emphasizes the importance of de- disciplining modes of knowledge. He

writes, “To dedisciplinize means that you go to wherever you fi nd sources

that can help you in constituting your intellectual weaponry.”34 Disrupting

the disciplinary “purity” and marshalling discursive material that speaks to

the lives of Black people is what Angela Davis did as early as 1969. When

she began to teach philosophy at UCLA, she discovered that “there was not

a single course that had anything to do with African- American ideas.”35 She

decided to design a course where she got students to compare Frederick

Douglass’s understanding of the slave- master relationship with particular

passages in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. She notes, “I found that it was

extremely important to legitimate the production of philosophical knowl-

edge in sites that are not normally considered the philosophical sites.”36

Drawing on the work of William Barrett, Outlaw argues that profes-

sional philosophy is a site of deformation “evidenced by the degree to

which the ‘problems’ of philosophy continue to be, even in these very prob-

lematic times, discipline immanent, thus without foundation beyond the

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african american philosophy 203

boundaries of the discipline itself. They have not emerged from the practices of life.”37 The fact that some philosophers of African descent leave “philoso-

phy” or are unwanted in various philosophy departments is linked to the

disciplinary hegemony, philosophical narrowness, and racist practices of so

many Anglo- American departments of philosophy. Not only does Lewis

Gordon point out that he was denied a position in a philosophy department

because it was said that he might attract “‘too many Black people,’”38 but

he argues that even those Black philosophers who primarily do logic and

epistemology are at risk of not being hired by particular philosophy depart-

ments if they raise serious questions about what it means to live in a racist

culture as Black people; that is, questions that counter the legitimating

practices of mainstream philosophy. Gordon argues that if the universities

found this out, “then that person is automatically not going to be consid-

ered at that institution in the department of philosophy.”39 Commenting

on the need to have African American philosophers well placed in depart-

ments of philosophy, Laurence Thomas notes, “I believe that no phi-

losophy department in America would hire a Black who would trouble the

waters.”40 What becomes obvious is that philosophy’s disciplinary myopia

and its prevalent monochromatic membership have militated against the

presence of Black people. Harris describes the case of Broadus N. Butler,

who received his PhD in philosophy as early as 1952 from the University of

Michigan, to illustrate an important point about racism and the profession.

After he received his doctorate, Butler applied to teach in a mostly white

university. According to Harris, Butler found out that his letter of refer-

ence stated, “‘a good philosopher, but of course, a Negro,’ and the one- line

response, ‘Why don’t you go where you will be among your own kind?’”41

Gordon insists upon “raising the question of whether philosophy has

been responsible to itself in terms if what it is.”42 Anita Allen asks, “With

all due respect, what does philosophy have to offer to Black women? It’s

not obvious to me that philosophy has anything special to offer Black

women today.”43 Given this, what becomes especially relevant is West’s

observation that “a relativizing of the discipline’s traditional hierarchies of

importance and centrality thus becomes necessary.”44 The logic and signif-

icance of West’s observation is captured in an example provided by Allen,

where she talks about studying analytic metaphysics at the University of

Michigan. She notes:

Yet as a Black person it felt odd to sit around asking such questions

like “How do you know when two nonexistent objects are the same?”

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204 african american studies

There you are in the middle of the era of affi rmative action, civil

rights, women’s movements, etc., and you’re sitting around thinking

about nonexistent objects and how to tell when they are the same.45

Albert Mosley also experienced this tension after he was invited by

prominent philosopher of science Rom Harré to study with him at Oxford.

Mosley was passionate about issues in the philosophy of science. He applied

for a Fulbright scholarship and received it. “But,” as he says, “1966–1967

found me torn again between scholarship and activism. I almost refused the

Fulbright scholarship because I felt guilty that I was not actively involved

in the civil rights struggle.”46 And while Bernard Boxill was steeped in

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica

and works by Alonzo Church and W. V. O. Quine, he was passionately

attracted to all of the discussions and political upheavals around 1965.

Boxill eventually wrote his dissertation on the Black Power debate through

the lens of Fanon’s work. It is important to note, though, that Boxill did

not abandon the tools of analytic philosophy; rather, conceptual analysis

was used to address signifi cant issues such as social justice and affi rmation

action vis- à- vis the lives of Black people.47

The insights of Mills, West, Outlaw, Davis, Gordon, Allen, Mosley,

and Boxill raise the issue of critically rethinking and transgressing the nar-

rowness of philosophy’s self- image. Concerning the paucity of Blacks in

the fi eld of philosophy, West maintains that philosophy has not been made

attractive enough. The image of the philosopher that we have is “the ana-

lytic philosopher who is clever, who is sharp, who is good at drawing dis-

tinctions, but who doesn’t really relate it to history, struggle, engagement

with suffering, how we cope with suffering, how we overcome social misery,

etc.”48 Linda Selzer is correct where she observes, “Not surprisingly, many

blacks in philosophy found themselves drawn to Marxism, existentialism,

phenomenology, and pragmatism, philosophies whose insights seemed

directly applicable to the economic, historical, and psychological status

of marginalized groups.”49 And even as these philosophical paradigms are

still dominated by white philosophers, they raise important questions—

inter- subjectivity, freedom, responsibility, history, embodiment, agency,

oppression, lived meaning—that are germane to Black people and their

experiences of being defi ned and treated as sub- persons. “The sum here,

then—the sum of those seen as sub- persons—will be quite different.”50

African American philosophy’s point of embarkation, then, will begin

with a different set of existential problematics. W. E. B. Du Bois points

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african american philosophy 205

out that, for whites, Black people don’t simply have problems; rather, they

are a problem people, ontologically. The very wish “to make it possible

for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and

spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed

roughly in his face”51 already raises signifi cant issues around the struggle

for self- defi nition, political power, and survival. The existential weight of

this struggle, which again speaks to the reality and importance of social-

ity, presupposes the capacity of white Others who have the political and

material power to make non- whites suffer. When one shouts a greeting to

the world and the white world slashes away that joy, and one is told “to

stay within bounds, to go back where [you] belong,”52 one must begin with

opposition; one must take a stand, one must rethink and critically evaluate

one’s status within the polity, one must engage in forms of critical thought

that enable one best to navigate the terrain of anti- Black racism. Indeed,

one must take to task the hidden philosophical anthropological assump-

tions upon which the polity was/is founded. One must raise the question

of philosophy’s duty to this world, the world of the “cave,” where white,

ghostly appearances have killed and brutalized Black bodies in the night.

On this score, situated Black bodies within the context of white gazes

generate questions regarding the here of embodied subjective integrity in

ways that are more urgent and immediate than traditional philosophical

discussions regarding the mind/body distinction. Allen notes, “Two very

prominent philosophers offered to look at my résumé (I was fl attered) and

then asked to sleep with me (I was disturbed).”53

Allen was reduced to her Black body; she became the object of their

white sexual fantasies. Here is a context where armchair discussions around

the conundrums of the mind/body distinction are transformed into serious

matters of ethical and political urgency because of the reality of lived

trauma. Through the white male gaze, she is her body. In their eyes, Allen

is a Jezebel, the Black slut whose interiority is nullifi ed through the racist

mythology that Black women are, as it were, solely constituted as lustful

and lascivious. Within the context of white racist myth- making regarding

Black women, T. Denean Sharpley- Whiting notes, “Epitomizing hyper-

sexuality, driven by some racially coded instinct, the black female renders

herself available, even assailable, yet simultaneously unassailable, sexu-

ally invulnerable, in effect, unrapeable, because of her ‘licentiousness.’”54

Dorothy Roberts argues that, in 1736, the South Carolina Gazette depicted

“African Ladies” primarily as women who had a “strong robust constitu-

tion,” capable of long sexual endurance, and “able to serve their lovers

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206 african american studies

‘by Night as well as Day.’”55 There is something profoundly hollow about

philosophers who sit around leisurely discussing Descartes’ bifurcation

between two substances (mental and physical) that are really distinct when

Black women have been reduced to their bodies and raped, when Black

people have been denied Geist. Adrian Piper, the fi rst African American

female philosopher to receive tenure, notes: “I think the primary problem

[facing Black women entering the profession of philosophy] is that every-

body assumes that Black women are basically maids or prostitutes and so

you have a lot to get over when you go into a department.”56 To be hailed

as a prostitute, to be defi ned as sexually insatiable, to be reduced to one’s

genitalia, and deemed a prisoner of a presumed “racial essence,” points

to a radically non- Cartesian sum. Such an experience has no pretensions

to a form of decontextualized universality, where epistemic subjects are

substitutable. In fact, such a false universality does an injustice to the inter-

sectional, heterogeneous, lived reality of Black women and women of color.

Out of the complexity of such experiences grow philosophical categories

that render philosophical homogeneity deeply suspect.57

Contra Plato, the practice of African American philosophy is not one

of death, but of life, of affi rming life in the face of uncertain non- being.

This is not the sort of uncertainty that all of us experience in the face of

our inexorable death because of our fi nitude. The exclamation, “Look, a

Negro!” has the power to objectify. It has the power, as Fanon says, to

cause “a hemorrhage that spattered my whole body with black blood.”58 “A

Black man did it!” has ignited forms of racist fanaticism that have resulted

in unspeakable forms of bloodlust. Within such a context, the love of

wisdom does not simply delight in immutable truths, but embodies modes

of actively engaging in second- order critical refl ection toward the end of

making sense of one’s situational reality and offering engaging critiques of

systems of oppression that militate against freedom. From a Black locus philosophicus, the love of wisdom (philo- sophia) is a form of thought- cum-

action. In other words, given the fact of pervasive and systemic anti- Black

racism (and how this racism is non- additively linked to issues of class and

gender), one way of thinking about African American philosophy is in

terms of a discursive and praxis- oriented activity in which philosophers

engage in second- order critical refl ection on the lived experiences of Black

people as they struggle against racist epistemic and normative orders

that degrade, dehumanize, and militate against Black self- fl ourishing. In

stream with Herbert Marcuse and Outlaw in terms of their characteriza-

tion of critical thought, I would argue that African American philosophy

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african american philosophy 207

is a species of dialectical thought, a mode of critical engagement that refuses

to leave the world unchanged and static in its hubristic and procrustean

ways.59 In this regard, African American philosophy is negative. African

American philosophy strives to destabilize the rigid conceptual terrain

and normative landscape of Western philosophy’s self- constituting and

self- perpetuating narrative that presupposes whiteness as normative. Yet,

understanding Black existence as a site of historically superimposed un-

freedom, African American philosophy deploys its hermeneutic energies

toward the positive aim of liberation struggle, of securing and asserting

lived freedom, and telescoping the various ways in which Black people

create frameworks of meaning that promote and sustain that freedom. On

this score, African American philosophy inspires hope and engages in self-

validating practices, thereby affi rming one’s agency and the restructuring

of social structures of power in the quest for equality and the positive

advancement of social transformation.60

Given the historical facticity out of which African American philosophy

grew and grows, questions of identity, community, resistance, and survival

become philosophically indispensable, themes that get confi gured and

reconfi gured within the context of a collective journey through the crucible

of American racism. Mills notes, “African- American philosophy is thus

inherently, defi nitionally oppositional, the philosophy produced by prop-

erty that does not remain silent but insists on speaking and contesting its

status.”61 In this way, African American philosophy asserts a philosophical

anthropology that opposes misanthropy and calls into question many of the

normative assumptions of modernity—the nature of rationality and who

qualifi es as human. Against the racist procrustean tendencies of modernity,

Blacks have had to engage in “heroic efforts to preserve human dignity

on the night side of modernity and the underside of modernity.”62 Such

efforts are not carried out by monadic subjects, but within the context of

a shared community, a shared sense of we- experiences that ground the

sense of community, but should not stifl e its augmentation and complexity.

Harris is critical of thinking about African American philosophers as con-

stituting a community through a specifi cally shared philosophical vocabu-

lary. After all, there are philosophers of African descent who are Marxists,

existentialists, phenomenologists, and pragmatists who conceptually dwell

within different and confl icting discourse communities. Yet, Harris argues

that there is an overriding aim which African American philosophers

share that constitutes them as a community. It is the engagement “in the

common project to defeat the heinous consequences of racism. That’s the

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208 african american studies

kind of community that it is . . . that binds them together regardless of their

philosophy.”63

There are some African American philosophers who do not see their

philosophical refl ections as primarily informed by the fact that they are

African American philosophers or that their philosophizing is primarily

informed by the concrete lived struggle of being Black in America. For

example, when asked this question, Thomas was explicit: “My answer to

that question is, I would say, no.”64 He does admit, however, that there

are certain sensibilities that can give rise to various complex insights that

are tied to being Black. He notes, “W. E. B. Du Bois talked about double

consciousness and Ralph Ellison talked about invisibility, etc. I think that

those are insights that come with the Black experience.”65 Michele M.

Moody- Adams has written about moral psychology and moral responsibil-

ity without mentioning race. She does not see herself as starting with a set

of fi xed questions/problems that have been defi ned by Alain Locke or Du

Bois. Yet she admits, “I may never mention race but I know that deep down

that what is egging me on intellectually is a set of problems that come out of

my experience.”66 Birt argues that even African American philosophers who

are clearly interested in ontological and metaphysical questions “think and

rethink such questions . . . in social terms.”67 And even African American

philosophy done through an analytical philosophical lens, what Paget

Henry calls “political logicism,”68 constitutes a critical space that involves

“the application of Anglo- analytical philosophy to the study of black prob-

lems, most signifi cantly those that are a function of the impact of race and

racism on the lives of black people.”69 African American philosophy, unlike

Cartesian sums, takes seriously sociality. As a project that takes seriously

human embodiment- cum- others,70 and that thereby emphasizes the impor-

tance of social constitutionality with respect to the self, African American

philosophy avoids abstract pretentiousness, de- contextual assumptions

regarding what constitutes a philosophical problem, essentialist presup-

positions regarding the self, and the bad faith of exclusive transcendence.

Thus, the question of African American philosophy ought to be raised

within a social and historical context of emergence. Not only at the heart of

its discursive concerns is African American philosophy dialectically linked

to struggle, but African American philosophers have also struggled against

various efforts by communities of white philosophers who have refused

to take Blacks seriously as philosophers, and who have characterized

philosophical problems that evolve out of the Black experience as ersatz and

sociological in nature. In other words, African American philosophers, and

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african american philosophy 209

Black people in America more generally, have been isolated and rendered

invisible. Hence, it is important to give attention to early African American

philosophers, which gives concrete historical illustrative testament to the

preoccupations and strivings of “African American philosophy against all

odds.”71 As I will show, from a contemporary perspective the existential

motif of struggling against all odds speaks to the importance of building

intellectual community. Such community efforts are not simply done to

overcome alienation within the fi eld, but such efforts function as a remedy

to the kinds of philosophy undertaken by Descartes. Community build-

ing underscores the point that African American philosophers engage in

endeavors that are inextricably linked to social spaces through the mediation of the body which, as I have argued, is precisely the site of white anti- Black

hatred and vilifi cation.

early pioneer african american philosophers

Philosophers and historians have not given due attention to African

American philosophers who received PhDs in philosophy prior to the

1950s. In fact, in Bruce Kuklick’s A History of Philosophy in America: 1720– 2000, with the exception of Du Bois (who received his BA in philosophy

from Harvard in 1890), there is no mention of a single credentialed African

American philosopher.72 One is left with the impression that Blacks did not

receive advanced degrees in philosophy and did not produce any philoso-

phy in America. One would think that Kuklick would have provided some

space for Cornel West, especially given West’s prominence and visibility as

an American philosopher of African descent.

While there are very important and indispensable contemporary philo-

sophical texts73 that focus upon philosophical fi gures of African descent,

there is still the need to do the important archival work necessary to

ascertain the history and conceptual morphology of African American phi-

losophy. “It is from here,” according to McClendon, “that we can move to

defi nition and interpretation, knowing full well that the limits of our inquiry

into the history of African- American philosophy is empirical research.”74

Some important early fi gures include Richard T. Greener, who became

a professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at the University of South

Carolina as early as 1873.75 He not only taught philosophy, but taught

in the Departments of Mathematics, Greek, and Latin. Greener was

also the fi rst African American to graduate from Harvard with an AB

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210 african american studies

degree. Albert Millard Dunham received his PhD in philosophy from the

University of Chicago in 1933, William W. Fontaine from the University

of Pennsylvania in 1936, Charles Leander Hill from Ohio State University

in 1938, Forrest Oran Wiggins from the University of Wisconsin also

in 1938, Cornelius Golightly from the University of Michigan in 1941,

Eugene C. Holms from Columbia University in 1942, and Francis Monroe

Hammond from the Université Laval in 1944.76

Within the context of delineating the historical origins of African

American philosophy, many scholars and philosophers begin with Alain

Locke who received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard University in

1918. However, at least three African Americans received PhDs in phi-

losophy prior to Alain Locke. Remarkably, the fi rst two African Americans

to receive a PhD in philosophy were born under the legalized system of

institutional slavery.77 Marked as inferior, deemed chattel from birth,

they struggled against racist mythopoetic constructions of the Black body

and fashioned themselves as lovers of wisdom. Patrick Francis Healy

(1830–1910) was the fi rst African American to receive a PhD in philoso-

phy, in 1865, from the University of Louvaine, Belgium (this was prior to

the fi rst PhD granted in philosophy by an American university).78 He also

received an undergraduate degree from Holy Cross in 1850. Healy’s Irish

father, Michael Morris Healy, was his slave owner. His father took Mary

Eliza, an enslaved woman of light complexion, as his mistress. Healy taught

philosophy at St Joseph’s College and Georgetown. He eventually became

President of Georgetown in 1874, the fi rst African American philosopher

to teach at a predominantly white institution of higher learning.

Thomas N. Baker (1860–1940) was the fi rst African American to receive

a PhD in philosophy from an American university. He completed the

degree in 1903 from Yale with his dissertation “The Ethical Signifi cance

of the Connection between Mind and Body.” Baker was born enslaved of

enslaved parents, Thomas Chadwick Baker, a Civil War veteran, and Edith

(Nottingham) Baker, on Robert Nottingham’s plantation in Northampton

County, Virginia. In 1881, Baker entered Hampton Institute in Virginia

where he studied for the next four years (1885). Hampton, founded by

General Samuel Armstrong, was designed to teach Blacks practical indus-

trial education.79 Many white philanthropists would have been doubtful of

the benefi ts of teaching Black people an intellectually demanding subject

such as philosophy. Critical of Hampton, Du Bois wrote, “The diffi culty

of Hampton is that its ideals are low. It is, as it seems to me, deliber-

ately educating a servile class for a servile place.”80 Remarkably, Baker’s

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african american philosophy 211

philosophical spirit was not extinguished by his enslavement or because of

his attendance at Hampton.

After Hampton, Baker attended Mount Hermon, which was founded

by Dwight L. Moody. Struck by Baker’s intelligence, John Denison, who

was pastor of Williams College located in Massachusetts, offered to pay

$100 annually toward Baker’s tuition.81 While Baker was certainly proud

to have attended Mount Hermon, he may have been confl icted around its

lack of concern regarding possible post- Yale academic career options for

him. “Once Baker had earned his doctorate, Mount Hermon offi cials did

nothing to recommend him to academic posts, even in southern institutions

like Tuskegee.”82 This may have led Baker to wonder if the “Color Line”

had infl uenced Mount Hermon. However, in 2002, Northfi eld Mount

Hermon established a Thomas Nelson Baker Fellowship in Baker’s honor.

Before his PhD, around 1890, Baker entered Boston University in

the Liberal Arts School and was graduated in the class of 1893 (BA). He

went on to attend Yale Divinity School where he took a three- year course

(1893–96), graduating with a BD. He became the minister of the Dixwell

Avenue Congregational Church in New Haven, Connecticut, and ordained

there in 1897.

Baker published articles dealing with philosophical themes in the area of

axiology vis- à- vis Black pride and aesthetics. His views concerning Black

aesthetics and Black cultural identity constitute an early and signifi cant

philosophical precursor to the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts

Movement of the 1960s. As early as 1906, before Alain Locke’s The New Negro, which was published in 1925, Baker, in Alexander’s Magazine, forged

a philosophical critique of racism and advanced an aesthetic alternative to

the reigning white aesthetic of beauty. He argued, “Not where we are, but

what we are is the great and fi nal question that should concern us.”83 For

Baker, “It is the perversion of the aesthetical sense of physical beauty that

the American Negro has struck his lowest depths of racial degradation.”84

And in the Southern Workman, suggestive of a critical pedagogy cognizant

of creating representational and semiotic diversity, he argues that various

“pictures of the boys and girls in school are just what the Negro child needs

to see. If there is to be any real race love, the Negro child must be taught to

see beauty in the Negro type.”85 Commenting on the pervasive hegemony

of whiteness, Baker argued:

Everywhere the colored man sees built into the steamboats, trains

and waiting rooms the teachings of Nietzsche: “All that is best is

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212 african american studies

for my folk and for myself. If it is not given us, we take it. The best

land, the purest sky, the best food, the most beautiful thoughts and

the most beautiful women.”86

Baker is concerned with the liberation of Black consciousness from a

state of internalized self- hatred. He argued that the watchword of Black

people should be, “Not Pity but Respect.”87 He launched a direct attack on

the epistemic and aesthetic orders embedded within Jim Crowism. Along

with his work on articulating race- specifi c ideals, there is also a concern

for the material conditions under which Black people succeed or fail. In

his dissertation, where he argues for the independence of the mind and

body in terms of their origin, but emphasizes the interdependence of their

development, Baker writes, “The well being of the body is the condition

for the well being of the mind. Degradation of the body is always accom-

panied by the degradation of the mind.”88 Born enslaved, Baker’s remark

is laden with epistemic credibility. After all, how many Black bodies did

he witness that were torn asunder, bowed by the sheer weight of white

oppression and degradation? When one thinks about specifi c ways in

which the Black body underwent physical trauma and the lack of mate-

rial conditions supportive of the well- being of Black people, Baker’s claim

functions as a subtle critique of the view that Black people are “born” infe-

rior to whites. Through his philosophical efforts to change the discourse

of race pride and race identity, Baker is an important, though neglected,

philosophical fi gure within the context of the history of African American

philosophy.89

Gilbert Haven Jones (1883–1966) received his PhD in philosophy from

the University of Jena, Germany in 1909, six years after Baker. Jones’s dis-

sertation was entitled “Lotze und Bowne: Eine Vergleichung ihrer philoso-

phischen Arbeit” (“Lotze and Bowne: A Comparison of their Philosophical

Work”). Earlier, he received his BSc. from Wilberforce, and a Bachelor of

Philosophy degree at Dickinson College in Carlisle. Jones became Dean

of the College of Liberal Arts at Wilberforce University (1914–24), and

between 1924 and 1932 served as the fourth president of Wilberforce

University. He also chaired the Philosophy Department at St Augustine

Collegiate Institute, Raleigh, North Carolina.90

Jones authored Education in Theory and Practice (1919). He was the fi rst

African American philosopher to write a major treatise on education in

which he theorized the self as a dynamic plasticity. Against the backdrop

of racist theories that supported the “uneducable” nature of Black people,

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african american philosophy 213

Jones argued that the teleological function of education “is to create for

mankind social advantages and opportunities in life by nurture which they

could never hope to attain by nature.”91 Indeed, for Jones, “Great minds,

‘men of genius,’ are not so much born so (by nature) as they are made so

(by nurture).”92

Education in Theory and Practice also embodies a conception of the

mind93 that rejects a form of philosophical idealism that might be deployed

to undercut the efforts of Black people in their struggle. In other words, the

view that the mind has no signifi cant connection to the body/material con-

ditions (given the belief that Blacks are mentally inferior) might be used to

support the belief that Black people possess an inferior mental constitution.

Whites, however, might be said to possess a superior mental constitution

independent of nurture. Jones is doing more than traditional metaphysics

in his discussion of mind and body in his educational treatise. Interrogating

the belief that some of us have a spark of divinity that makes us greater than

others, Jones writes, “If there is such a divinity there it certainly does not

do much for us apart from opportunity and circumstance.”94 While Jones

does not use race- sensitive discourse in his treatise, it is important to keep

in mind that the text appeared in 1919. This was the year, known as the

Red Summer, when at least twenty- fi ve race riots erupted. Jones was aware

that to equalize the opportunity toward an education was to prepare people

to gain greater control over their lives and circumstances. He understood

the importance of the utility function of knowledge in terms of its signifi -

cance to empower. “Nothing,” according to Jones, “has any value for its

own sake, not even knowledge.”95

Critiquing both race and class hegemony, Jones argues that the main

reason for the discourse supporting the difference in the intelligence of

individuals has to do with “a tacit knowledge that the equal opportunity

which education gives will rob them [those in power] of their advantage

and prevent the further exploitation of the ignorant by the intelligent,

of the socially low by the socially high.”96 Within a social metaphysi-

cal framework that recognizes the reality of race as a powerful girder of

social reality, where race is a lived reality, even if ontologically vacuous,

Jones’ philosophy of education stresses the importance of social critique’s

capacity to rethink/re- imagine the normative order, to change the world.

Indeed, born within the crucible of struggle, African American philosophy

valorizes the importance of critical refl ection and engaged praxis toward

the end of transforming the world or as Jones would say, “turn[ing] the

world upside down.”97

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214 african american studies

community building

Within an institutional context where white bodies numerically dominate

the profession of philosophy, and where the image of the philosopher uncon-

sciously signifi es whiteness, African American philosophers have endured

oppressive feelings of alienation, of drowning in a sea of white faces. The

alienation is not simply felt at the level of numerical under- representation,

but at the level of normative (white) philosophical hegemony, at the level of

concepts, interests, and ways of looking at the world that do not speak to

the Black experience. It might be argued that for many Black philosophers

a feeling of philosophical homelessness, a form of disorientation, is experi-

enced within classrooms, at conferences, on committees, editorial boards,

and so on. Through collective praxes, philosophers of African descent

have fought against marginalization and alienation within the profession.

Indeed, despite the fact that Blacks constitute roughly one percent of the

profession, they have forthrightly engaged in efforts to build community

and institutional support for their philosophical efforts.

The Committee on Blacks in Philosophy was founded in the early 1970s

by William R. Jones (the fi rst chair) and others. Jones was aware of the crisis regarding the lack of Black philosophers in the profession of philosophy and

fought to get the American Philosophical Association (APA) to fi nds ways

of remedying this. Jones pointed to the “ominous gravity” of the situation.

“Although blacks constitute more than 10% of the general population, they

comprise less than 1/100 of the personnel in philosophy. Accordingly, to

approximate their proportion in the general population black representation

in philosophy must increase ten- fold.”98 When asked about the response of

the APA to this crisis, Jones notes, “The APA did not see the oppression

in their structures or in their policies because they were not looking at it

from the angle of analysis that would reveal such things as oppression.”99

Howard McGary attests to the APA’s lack of will to create infrastructural

support for the advancement of Blacks in philosophy. He says, “I think

that the APA has done very little as an organization. Very little.”100 The

Committee on Blacks in Philosophy was the fruit of a collective effort on

the part of Black philosophers to achieve self- determination within the

context of a white association that was founded in 1900. Tommy Lott,

who served as chair of the Committee from 1993 to 1996, observed that the

Committee was “necessary to promote the interests of African- American

philosophers by ensuring that they’re included in the program and that the

concerns of the African- American community . . . students in departments,

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african american philosophy 215

professors going through tenure, get represented in the organization.”101

The Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience (NPBE) was later

sponsored by the Committee. The NPBE began in 1991 and was pivotal

in terms of informing readers of the Committee’s efforts, encouraging the

examination of issues that grew out of the Black world, encouraging the end

of racial discrimination, highlighting the various complex traditions and

legacies within the context of the Black world, and providing critical refl ec-

tion on current philosophical works that explored the subject of African

American philosophy and philosophy of the Black experience.

Within a context where philosophical and (white) monochromatic

inertia militates against the creative efforts of African American philoso-

phers to engage issues that are pertinent to their lived experiences, issues

that challenge the Western philosophical canon and its normative assump-

tions, Kujichagulia (or self- determination) functions as an indispensable

axiological principle deployed against continued marginalization. J. Everet

Green experienced fi rsthand this sense of marginalization at APA con-

ferences. Green knew that persons of African descent needed their own

forum. As a result, Philosophy Born of Struggle (PBS), an annual confer-

ence named after Harris’s important text, was conceived by Green and

founded in 1993. According to Green,102 he wanted a space where people

of African descent could come together and where students could fi nd a

voice and mentoring could take place. The choice of name for the forum

was apropos given the struggle of persons of African descent within the

normative (white hegemonic) context of European philosophy. He argues

that it was believed that Black people did not have the intellectual capacity

or tenacity that philosophy required. The presumption is that “real” phi-

losophy grew out of Europe, but originated within Greek culture, which is

believed to be the cradle of civilization and the origin of reason. Philosophy

Born of Struggle is itself a site of struggle; it is a site of resistance to the

longstanding and current assumption that to be a Black philosopher is an

oxymoron, a bizarre creation like Frankenstein’s monster.

For the last thirty years, the Society for the Study of Africana Philosophy

(SSAP, previously known as the New York Society for the Study of Black

Philosophy) has sustained a critical space for challenging the presumption

that the activity of philosophizing is exclusively a Eurocentric phenom-

enon. The group has encouraged a diversity of Africana philosophical

voices to engage ideas pertinent to the Black experience. Such a forum has

been absolutely crucial not only in terms of nurturing philosophical ideas,

but for creating a space for Black philosophical identity- formation and for

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216 african american studies

creating a space for white philosophers who are deeply interested in the

philosophical problematics that grow out of the Black experience. Seminal

to its creation was Alfred E. Prettyman, who both founded SSAP and hosts

its meetings out of his apartment. Asked about the importance of SSAP,

West says, “Well, for me, it was crucial. It was monumental in terms

of facilitating a context in which persons concerned with philosophical

refl ections of the Black experience could meet regularly at Al Prettyman’s

place there in New York.”103 During the meetings, papers were given and

critically discussed. Also, encouragement was nurtured. There was a real

sense of community building. For West, they “constituted an intellectual

neighborhood, a real community of inquirers wrestling with the construct

of race to philosophical traditions.”104 Howard McGary also remembers

SSAP as a place “where people could come and give papers and many

books and chapters of books were tried out in that forum.”105

More recent critical spaces created for the purpose of examining the

critical refl ections of philosophers of African descent include the Caribbean

Philosophical Association (CPA) and the Collegium of Black Women

Philosophers (CBWP). CPA was founded in 2002 by a collective, which

included George Belle, B. Anthony Bogues, Patrick Goodin, Lewis Gordon,

Clevis Headley, Paget Henry, Nelson Maldonado- Torres, Charles Mills,

and Supriya Nair. A central theme is to engage in shifting the geography

of reason. This is an important move as it deconstructs the presumption

that reason is the property of one group and one place. Indeed, it counters

the hegemonic epistemic and axiological orders that privilege whites as the

sole inheritors of reason. As a result, the organization debunks the myths

supporting the racist philosophical anthropology that sees whites as those

who stand at the apex of human history. The group is not limited to those

with degrees in philosophy and encourages South- South critical dialogue.

As such, CPA emphasizes a genuine interdisciplinary critical conversation,

thus avoiding various forms of interdisciplinary hegemony. The Diaspora

is treated as a rich confl uence of ideas and epistemic practices that grow

out of and speak to issues of colonialism, sexism, racism, global suffering,

and questions of freedom and creative expression. CBWP was founded

by Kathryn Gines in 2007 while she was at Vanderbilt University. This

annual conference/organization is particularly important to community

building among Black women in the fi eld of philosophy, especially as there

are currently fewer than thirty Black women in the profession. As a critical

community, CBWP has a number of objectives that are designed to nurture

Black woman at various stages in their development as philosophers. The

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african american philosophy 217

organization provides an important space within which Black women are

able to militate against the sense of dissonance felt within predominantly

white and male philosophical spaces. In the spirit of Black women who

have struggled mightily for their own voices, CBWP is designed to help

burgeoning Black women philosophers fi nd and cultivate their philosophi-

cal voices, to help with the often intimidating process of fi nding a teaching

position, of moving up within academia, of completing the PhD, and of

creating a critical space to share ideas that can lead to publication of articles

and books. The organization also engages in proactive efforts to locate and

nurture Black women at the undergraduate stage who might be interested

in pursuing philosophy as a career.

CBWP is grounded in the bold spirit of the efforts of early African

American women who received a PhD in philosophy. The following are

some notable examples. Joyce M. Cook (1933- ) was the fi rst Black woman

to receive a PhD in philosophy, which she received from Yale University

in 1965. She was also the fi rst Black woman to teach philosophy at Howard

University (September 1970- June 1976). In the 1970s, within the context

of various conferences and panel discussions, Cook was actively involved

and instrumental in articulating the conceptual parameters of what con-

stitutes the nature of Black philosophy. For example, in 1974, Cook

presented “Prolegomena to a Black Philosophy,” an address to Springhill

College, Mobile, Alabama. She presented a paper entitled, “The Concept

of Black Experience” to the American Philosophical Association (Western

division meeting in Chicago, Illinois) in 1975. Additionally, in 1976,

Cook, along with William R. Jones and Robert C. Williams, participated

in a radio broadcast conversation regarding the meaning of Black phi-

losophy.106 Angela Davis (1944- ) received an honorary doctorate in 1972

in philosophy from Lenin University. As mentioned earlier, she taught

a philosophy course at UCLA as early as 1969, entitled “Recurring

Philosophical Themes in Black Literature.” At the time, this was unprec-

edented at UCLA.107 Blanche Radford Curry (1949– ) received her PhD

in philosophy from Brown University in 1978. She was among a group

of early Black philosophers108 who worked together “to defi ne a place for

[themselves] within the philosophy profession, socially and intellectually,

on terms that took into account and expressed [their] consciousness of

being black.”109 She continues to address philosophical issues relevant to

the lives of Black people. Adrian M. S. Piper (1948– ) received her PhD in

philosophy from Harvard University in 1981 and, as noted earlier, has the

distinction of being the fi rst tenured Black woman philosopher.110 She is a

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218 african american studies

Kantian scholar and a leading contemporary artist. Her philosophical and

artistic work explores issues of racism and sexism. Her work on Kant and

xenophobia relates to the concrete problems of Black people. For example,

while arguing that Kant’s “conception of the self affords potent resources

for understanding xenophobia as a special case of a more general cognitive

phenomenon”111 that has to do with resisting anomalous data to preserve

a unifi ed sense of self, Piper is aware that xenophobia “is of particular

concern for African Americans. As unwelcome intruders in white America

we are objects of xenophobia on a daily basis.”112 There is much work to be

done detailing the lives, career journeys, and philosophical scholarship of

Black women in the fi eld of philosophy.

notes

1. George Yancy, “Robert E. Birt,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, ed. George Yancy (New York: Routledge, 1998), 351.

2. George Yancy, “Cornel West,” in African American Philosophers, 38.

3. Charles W. Mills, Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1998), 10 (emphasis added).

4. And while it is true that white women were excluded from this normative philosophical

community, they were nevertheless literally part of the monochromatic family.

5. Mills, Blackness Visible, 8.

6. Mills, Blackness Visible, 8.

7. René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, transl.

Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1637, 1641, 1998), Meditations on First Philosophy, sec. 25.

8. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, sec. 34.

9. Mills, Blackness Visible, 8.

10. George Yancy, “Leonard Harris,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, ed. George Yancy (New York: Routledge, 1998), 214.

11. Norm R. Allen, Jr., “Leonard Harris on the Life and Work of Alain Locke,” in

African- American Humanism: An Anthology, ed. Norm R. Allen, Jr. (Amherst, MA:

Prometheus Books, 1991), 273.

12. Yancy, “Leonard Harris,” 218–19.

13. Yancy, “Leonard Harris,” 219.

14. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1986, 1990),

86.

15. Fred Lee Hord (Mzee Lasana Okpara) and Jonathan Scott Lee, “‘I Am Because We

Are’: An Introduction to Black Philosophy,” in I Am Because We Are: Reading in Black Philosophy (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 7.

16. Maurice Natanson, The Journeying Self: A Study in Philosophy and Social Role

(Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley, 1970), 47.

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african american philosophy 219

17. Natanson, The Journeying Self, 47.

18. Cornel West, “The Black Underclass and Black Philosophers,” in I Am Because We Are, 356.

19. Lucis Outlaw, On Philosophy and Race (New York: Routledge, 1996), 23.

20. African American philosopher John McClendon’s article “The Afro- American

Philosopher and the Philosophy of the Black Experience: A Bibliographic Essay on

a Neglected Topic in Both Philosophy and Black Studies,” in Sage Race Relations Abstracts, vol. 7, no. 4 (November 1982), in my opinion, is the fi rst serious and

thorough research piece written on early professional African American philosophers

and philosophy of the Black experience. It was published in 1982, a year before

Harris’s important text. McClendon holds a seminal place in the history of efforts to

document and theorize African American philosophy and the philosophy of the Black

experience.

21. West, “The Black Underclass and Black Philosophers,” 357.

22. Cornel West, “Philosophy and the Afro- American Experience,” in A Companion to African- American Philosophy, ed. Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman (Malden, MA;

Blackwell, 2005), 8.

23. West, “Philosophy and the Afro- American Experience,” 8.

24. West, “Philosophy and the Afro- American Experience,” 8.

25. West’s prophetic pragmatism shares this anti- Cartesian approach to philosophy. Not

only does his prophetic pragmatism reject a form of epistemological foundationalism,

but it highlights the importance of history, the tragic, and the hopeful; it “affi rms

the Niebuhrian strenuous mood, never giving up on new possibilities for human

agency—both individual and collective.” See The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989),

28.

26. There is no attempt to obfuscate the fact that there are many African American

philosophers who, while they see themselves as doing African American philosophy,

conceptualize the dynamics of struggle differently. Keeping abreast of this avoids

eliding the political differences (Marxist- Leninist, liberal, conservative, etc.) that

differentiate African American philosophers along signifi cant ideological lines.

Philosopher Stephen Ferguson is thanked for emphasizing this point in personal

correspondence.

27. Mills, Blackness Visible, 6.

28. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1947; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 3.

29. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 48–50.

30. For a sustained philosophical analysis of the white gaze vis- à- vis the Black body,

see George Yancy, Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Signifi cance of Race (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2008).

31. Outlaw has suggested that Black people were bombarded with such overwhelming

racist absurdity that the issue for some Blacks became: “Should I continue or should

I commit suicide.” Under the weight of white racism, the disjunction became viable.

32. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 47.

33. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 47.

34. West, “The Black Underclass and Black Philosophers,” 357.

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220 african american studies

35. George Yancy, “Angela Y. Davis,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 23.

36. Yancy, “Angela Y. Davis,” 23.

37. Outlaw, On Philosophy and Race, 25 (my emphasis).

38. George Yancy, “Lewis R. Gordon,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 112.

39. Yancy, “Lewis R. Gordon,” 112.

40. George Yancy, “Laurence Thomas,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 293.

41. Leonard Harris, “Introduction,” in Philosophy Born of Struggle: Afro- American Philosophy from 1917, ed. Leonard Harris (Dububue, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1983), ix.

42. Yancy, “Lewis R. Gordon,” 112.

43. George Yancy, “Anita L. Allen,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 172.

44. Mills, Blackness Visible, 10.

45. Yancy, “Anita L. Allen,” 168.

46. George Yancy, “Albert Mosely,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 145–55.

47. See Bernard Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, revised edn. (Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefi eld, 1992).

48. Yancy, “Cornel West,” 38.

49. Linda Furgerson Selzer, Charles Johnson in Context (Amherst, MA: University of

Massachusetts Press, 2009), 27.

50. Mills, Blackness Visible, 9.

51. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; reprint, New York: New American

Library, 1982), 45–6.

52. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York:

Grove Press, 1967), 115.

53. George Yancy, “Situated Black Women’s Voices in/on the Profession of

Philosophy,” in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, vol. 23, no. 2 (2008), 155.

54. T. Denean Sharpley- Whiting, “Thanatic Pornography, Interracial Rape, and the Ku

Klux Klan,” in A Companion to African- American Philosophy, ed. Tommy L. Lott and

John P. Pittman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 410.

55. Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1999), 11.

56. George Yancy, “Adrian M. S. Piper,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 59.

57. See Alison Bailey’s “On Intersectionality and the Whiteness of Feminist

Philosophy,” forthcoming in George Yancy, The Center Must Not Hold (Lanham,

MD: Lexington Books).

58. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 112.

59. Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy, 29–30.

60. I would like to thank philosopher Clarence S. Johnson for suggesting that the

negative/positive distinction that I draw here be made more explicit.

61. Mills, Blackness Visible, 9.

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african american philosophy 221

62. Yancy, “Cornel West,” 39.

63. Yancy, “Leonard Harris,” 216.

64. Yancy, “Laurence Thomas,” 291.

65. Yancy, “Laurence Thomas,” 291, 292.

66. George Yancy, “Michelle M. Moody- Adams,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 126.

67. Yancy, “Robert E. Birt,” 352.

68. Paget Henry, “Afro- American Studies and the Rise of African- American

Philosophy,” in A Companion to African- American Studies, ed. Lewis R. Gordon and

Jane Anna Gordon (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 238.

69. Lewis R. Gordon, An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2008), 111.

70. The reader will note that within the context of the history of African American

philosophy, Charles Johnson and Tom Slaughter wrote seminal pieces deploying

a phenomenological approach to Black body. These were two early and formative

pieces in the tradition of what is now termed Africana philosophy of existence.

Johnson’s “A Phenomenology of the Black Body” was written as early as 1975, and

was subsequently published in the Winter 1976 issue of Ju- Ju: Research Papers in Afro- American Studies. Johnson’s article appeared prior to Thomas F. Slaughter Jr.’s

“Epidermalizing the World: A Basic Mode of Being Black,” which was included as

a chapter in Leonard Harris’s Philosophy Born of Struggle. For the fi rst edited text

to engage Africana philosophy of existence, see Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, ed. Lewis R. Gordon (New York: Routledge 1997).

Describing two features that run throughout the chapters within that text, Gordon

notes, “The interesting thing about all of the essays is that all of them featured

arguments (1) rejecting essence as a feature of human being and (2) supporting the

importance of recognizing the sociohistorical context in which we theorize.” See

Yancy, African American Philosophers 17 Conversations, p. 105. It is important to note

the meta- philosophical features that I have identifi ed within this chapter regarding

African American philosophy and the two salient lines of argument that Gordon

identifi es within his text.

71. Philosopher Clarence S. Johnson is thanked for this point.

72. Kuklick’s reference to Du Bois appears to be limited to the former as a public

intellectual.

73. See I am Because We Are: Readings in Black Philosophy, ed. Fred Lee Hord

(Mzee Lasana Okpara) and Jonathan Scott Lee (Amherst, MA: University of

Massachusetts, 1995); Refl ections: An Anthology of African American Philosophy, ed.

James A. Montmarquet and William H. Hardy (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson

Learning, 2000); and, A Companion to African- American Philosophy, ed. Tommy L.

Lott and John P. Pittman (Malden, MA: Blackwell).

74. John H. McClendon, “The African American Philosopher and Academic Philosophy:

On the Problem of Historical Interpretation,” in The APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience, vol. 4, no. 1 (Fall 2004), 8.

75. See McClendon, “The African American Philosopher and Academic Philosophy,” 7;

and www.essortment.com/all/richardgreener_pws.htm.

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222 african american studies

76. I would like to thank John McClendon for information about the work of Francis

Monroe Hammond. See McClendon’s “On the Politics of Professional Philosophy:

The Plight of the African American Philosopher,” in George Yancy, Latin- American and African- American Philosophers on the Profession of Philosophy (New York: SUNY

Press, forthcoming).

77. The reader will note that Frederick Douglass, also born enslaved, is a pivotal fi gure

within the context of African American philosophical thought and tradition, and

wrestled with poignant philosophical issues such as the self- Other dialectic, religious

hypocrisy, freedom, struggle, and social progress. See Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, ed. Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999).

78. Yale University was the fi rst American university to grant the PhD in philosophy in

1866. See www.pragmatism.org/dmap.

79. It is important to note that Booker T. Washington also attended Hampton and came

under the infl uence of Armstrong’s pedagogical philosophy regarding the education

of Blacks. In fact, it was Armstrong who made Washington head of Tuskegee

Institute in Alabama.

80. William M. Banks, Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life (New

York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 42.

81. www.nmhschool.org/magazine/2003_fall/no_slave.php. See Peter Weis, “No Slave

to Fortune,” 1978.

82. See Weis, “No Slave to Fortune.”

83. Thomas Nelson Baker, “Not Pity but Respect,” Alexander’s Magazine, vol. 2 (May

1906), 111.

84. Thomas N. Baker, “Ideals” (Part 1), Alexander’s Magazine, vol. 2 (September 1906),

28.

85. See Baker File at Hampton University Archives under “Items of Interest,” Southern Workman (April 1908).

86. “Rev. Dr. T. Nelson Baker Says Hampton Institute Is Doing A Miraculous Work,”

The Berkshire Eagle (October 30, 1919). See Baker fi le at Hampton University

Archives), n.p.

87. Baker, “Not Pity but Respect,” 112.

88. Thomas N. Baker, “The Ethical Signifi cance of the Connection Between Mind and

Body” (unpublished dissertation, 1903).

89. For a more detailed treatment of the thought and life of Baker, see George Yancy,

“On the Power of Black Aesthetic Ideals: Thomas Nelson Baker as Preacher and

Philosopher,” The A.M.E. Church Review, vol. CXVII, no. 384 (2001), 50–67.

90. www.jtamec.org/gilbertjones.htm.

91. Gilbert H. Jones, Education in Theory and Practice (Boston, MA: The Gorham Press,

1919), 14.

92. Jones, Education in Theory and Practice, 38.

93. For a more detailed treatment of Jones’ life and work, see George Yancy, “In the

Spirit of the A.M.E. Church: Gilbert Haven Jones as an Early Black Philosopher and

Educator,” The A.M.E. Church Review, vol. CXVIII, no. 388 (2002), 43–57.

94. Jones, Education in Theory and Practice, 38.

95. Jones, Education in Theory and Practice, 216.

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african american philosophy 223

96. Jones, Education in Theory and Practice, 39.

97. Jones, Education in Theory and Practice, 274.

98. William Jones, “Crisis in Philosophy: The Black Presence,” in Radical Philosophers’ News Journal (August 1974), 40.

99. From an unpublished interview with Jones, spring 1997.

100. George Yancy, “Howard McGary, Jr.,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 85.

101. George Yancy, “Tommy L. Lott,” in African American Philosophers, 17 Conversations, 195.

102. This information was obtained through a personal correspondence. During this

time, Green was infl uenced by Roy D. Morrison after taking his course on Søren

Kierkegaard. Morrison taught at Wesley seminary in Washington, DC, where he

explored issues around Black philosophy of culture and religion. At the time, Green

was at Howard University where he was obtaining a Master’s degree in religion and

a doctorate in divinity.

103. Yancy, “Cornel West,” 46.

104. Yancy, “Cornel West,” 46 (emphasis added).

105. Yancy, “Howard McGary, Jr.,” 84.

106. It was sponsored by the Johnson Foundation: Wingspread Conference Center in

Racine, Wisconsin.

107. It was in this course that Davis got students to compare Douglass’s understanding

of the slave- master relationship with particular passages in Hegel’s Phenomenology.

108. Within this historical context, Outlaw mentions Howard McGary, Jr., Leonard

Harris, Joyce Mitchell Cook, Bernard Boxill, William Jones, the late Robert C.

Williams, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Robert Chemooke, Albert Mosley, John Murungi,

Tom Slaughter, Laurence Thomas, Cornel West, Bill Lawson, George Garrison,

and Johnny Washington. See Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy, xxix. The reader

will note that Charles Johnson, the prominent philosopher- literary fi gure, was a

student of Tom Slaughter at Southern Illinois University. In her groundbreaking

text Charles Johnson in Context (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press,

2009), Linda Selzer notes, “But in 1974 both Slaughter and Johnson entered

the Ph.D. program in philosophy together at SUNY Stony Brook.” Within this

remarkable text, Selzer does an excellent and insightful job of situating Johnson

within the historical context of African American philosophy.

109. Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy, xxix.

110. Yancy, “Adrian M. S. Piper,” 61.

111. Adrian M. S. Piper, “Xenophobia and Kantian Rationalism,” in African- American Perspectives and Philosophical Traditions, ed. John P. Pittman (New York: Routledge,

1997), 189.

112. Piper, “Xenophobia and Kantian Rationalism,” 189.

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