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On Race and Philosophy
On Race and Philosophy
is a collection of essays written and published across the last twenty years, which focus on matters of race, philosophy, and social and political life in the West, in particular in the US. These important writings trace the author's continuing efforts not only to confront racism, especially within philosophy, but, more importantly, to work out viable conceptions of raciality and ethnicity that are empirically sound while avoiding chauvinism and invidious ethnocentrism. The hope is that such conceptions will assist efforts to fashion a nation-state in which racial and ethnic cultures and identities are recognized and nurtured contributions to a more just and stable democracy.
- GenresPhilosophyRace
266 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 1996
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April 15, 2026
A SELECTION OF HIS WRITINGS FROM MORE THAN 25 YEARS
Lucius Turner Outlaw Jr. (b. 1944) is professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University; he previously taught at Boston College, Spelman College, Haverford College, and Morgan State University.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1996 book, “The essays in this collection have been selected from writings produced over a period of more than 25 years… In writing each essay I was concerned, in various ways, with matters that involve raciality and the collection of endeavors and traditions of thought that in Western academic institutions, in particular, are called ‘philosophy.’ The persistence of these concerns across the essays provides the thematic focus for the collection.
“The concerns motivating the writings have been with me far more than my years of efforts and involvements as a teacher and scholar in American higher education within the professionalized discipline of philosophy while working and living in several different college and university communities (private and public; historically and predominantly black, historically and predominantly white). Indeed, they have been with me as constant, influential companions all my life beyond the age of innocence. And for a male child of African descent---a ‘Negro’---born (1944) and raised within the hard and fast, sometimes brutal life-orienting strictures of the racial apartheid of segregation in Starkville, Mississippi, the period of innocence had to be short, as those of us of the Emmett Till generation came to know only too well. (This has been true for Negro females as well as for males, and for every generation of descendants of Africans brought to this nation as slaves.)
“This social-historical and autobiographical contexts have provided the sources of the concerns that impelled me to write the essays. Simply put (but, I assure you, much more complicated in the living): while growing up, racial segregation did not MAKE SENSE to me. I could not MAKE it make sense. The pictures of America and its promises, as well as those of Mississippi, that were presented to me in classes in civics and history MADE NO SENSE when compared to my experiences of the sharply drawn, tightly structured, and forcefully maintained race-focused realities of daily life and the scripted limitations on the futures of colored folk. The disparities and contradictions between the two---the pictures and the realities; the high principles and rhetoric of grand promises, and the arrogant, indignant, legalized inhumanity intended to thwart colored folks’ sharing the dreams of opportunity, let alone working to realize them---were painfully obvious, as was intended.” (Pg. xi)
He adds, “I offer these essays as testimonials of hope and modest effort and as invitations to you, kind reader, to join me---and untold others past and present---in the effort to think carefully and clearly about how we might resolve America’s most persistent dilemma. There are already signs of what is possible in Starkville.” (Pg. xxxi)
The majority of the Preface (nearly 20 pages) tells his life story: Family, church background, school years, college at Fisk University (which ‘offered a major in Philosophy and Religion, studies I wanted to pursue,’ but ultimately ‘studying philosophy and … avoiding the study of religion’), the civil rights movement, Vietnam, graduate school/Ph.D. in Philosophy at Boston College, then joining the faculty at Fisk.
He reports “examples of what I have been calling deconstructive challenges to Western Philosophy can be drawn from the various subfields or trends of African Philosophy… I shall … identify those I take to be other ruptures in the history of philosophizing in terms of various thinkers of African descent to reconstruct histories of African philosophizing, efforts that are self-conscious in challenging the received wisdom of white lies about both Philosophy and Africa.” (Pg. 68-69)
He continues, “The reconstructive work of three persons is noteworthy here: First, that of George G.M. James [in his book ‘Stolen Legacy’]. According to his ground-breaking but poorly presented arguments, Ancient African (i.e., Egyptian) philosophy was the precursor to and source of much or all of Greek philosophy. Henry Olela continues this line of argument and adds a second claim, namely that ‘black [American] philosophy’ is (and should be) reducible to African philosophy. Finally, Lancinay Keita proposes the following periodization of African philosophy: (1) the CLASSICAL period---a time, supposedly, when Egypt was peopled and governed by black Africans; (2) the MEDIEVAL period---one of Islamic influence on literate expression in North and Central Africa during the time of the medieval states of Mali, Ghana, and Songhay; and (3) the MODERN period…
“The significance of these works, their limitations and controversial agendas notwithstanding, lies, in part, in the concern of the authors to take up the tasks of reconstructing the history of Western Philosophy in a direct challenge to the dominant narratives which have claimed Greece as the site of Philosophy’s singular origin. In the narrative reconstructions of James, Olela, and Keita, we are taken back to Egypt---AFRICAN Egypt, not the Egypt of Hegel that was annexed to Europe---as ‘source.’
“In light of the untruth racking the embodiment of the mainstream narratives of Philosophy, this possibility is an issue of very real importance. It is to be hoped that it will soon receive the disciplined, systematic attention it deserves and requires. Martin Bernal’s ‘Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization’ has contributed a great deal to our understanding in just this way. It remains to be seen whether professional philosophers will study this provocative text, which seriously disrupts longstanding genealogies of Western philosophy, and revise their understandings, their intellectual genealogies, and thereby their identities.” (Pg. 69)
He reports, “Over the last half-century, a small number of African and African-descended Americans have joined the ranks of professional philosophers… influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in responding to the need and desire to identify and otherwise forge philosophical traditions, literatures, and practices distinctive of black peoples, began the work of calling for and setting out ‘Black’ or … ‘African-American’ philosophy. During annual meetings of divisions of the American Philosophical Association (APA), a number of sessions, organized by the APA’s Committee on Blacks in Philosophy, were devoted to the tasks. (APA recognition of these efforts as having opened a legitimate subfield of philosophy was accorded in 1987 with the decision to include ‘Africana Philosophy’ as a specialty in the discipline.) (Pg. 81-82) He adds, “’The Philosophical Forum’ twice has devoted entire special issues of the journal to philosophical explorations of the experiences of black folks, with African-American philosophers serving as guest editors.” (Pg. 82)
He states, “Martin Bernal’s ‘Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization’ has become a significant addition to arguments long advanced (and long ignored or rejected) by several generations of African scholars of African descent who continue to argue that the intellectual sources of Western philosophy are not to be found in ancient Greece, but in traditions of thought of the high African civilization of ancient Kemet (Egypt). For these scholars (George G.M. James. W.E.B. DuBois, Cheikh Anta Diop, St. Clair Drake, Molefi Kete Asante, Maulana Karenga and Jacob H. Carruthers, and Henry Olela, among others), it was modern European racism directed at African peoples in support of their enslavement and exploitation and the exploitation of the African continent, that required the construction of notions of the superiority of the white race to an inferior black race, and, consequently, required the destruction of the history of the linkage of achievements on the part of peoples of Europe (supposedly the geographical origin of ‘white’ peoples) to achievements by African peoples.
“Within the cauldron of this racism particular scholars of European descent, during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries especially, constructed histories of philosophy that set the origins and informing legacies of philosophy and civilized human development in 5th and 4th century BC Greece. In the process Kemet was displaced as the source of much of what is now regarded as having originated with European civilizations, and African peoples were ejected from the forms of regard reserved for those thought ‘civilized.’” (Pg. 187-188)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying African-American and Africana philosophy.
Lucius Turner Outlaw Jr. (b. 1944) is professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University; he previously taught at Boston College, Spelman College, Haverford College, and Morgan State University.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1996 book, “The essays in this collection have been selected from writings produced over a period of more than 25 years… In writing each essay I was concerned, in various ways, with matters that involve raciality and the collection of endeavors and traditions of thought that in Western academic institutions, in particular, are called ‘philosophy.’ The persistence of these concerns across the essays provides the thematic focus for the collection.
“The concerns motivating the writings have been with me far more than my years of efforts and involvements as a teacher and scholar in American higher education within the professionalized discipline of philosophy while working and living in several different college and university communities (private and public; historically and predominantly black, historically and predominantly white). Indeed, they have been with me as constant, influential companions all my life beyond the age of innocence. And for a male child of African descent---a ‘Negro’---born (1944) and raised within the hard and fast, sometimes brutal life-orienting strictures of the racial apartheid of segregation in Starkville, Mississippi, the period of innocence had to be short, as those of us of the Emmett Till generation came to know only too well. (This has been true for Negro females as well as for males, and for every generation of descendants of Africans brought to this nation as slaves.)
“This social-historical and autobiographical contexts have provided the sources of the concerns that impelled me to write the essays. Simply put (but, I assure you, much more complicated in the living): while growing up, racial segregation did not MAKE SENSE to me. I could not MAKE it make sense. The pictures of America and its promises, as well as those of Mississippi, that were presented to me in classes in civics and history MADE NO SENSE when compared to my experiences of the sharply drawn, tightly structured, and forcefully maintained race-focused realities of daily life and the scripted limitations on the futures of colored folk. The disparities and contradictions between the two---the pictures and the realities; the high principles and rhetoric of grand promises, and the arrogant, indignant, legalized inhumanity intended to thwart colored folks’ sharing the dreams of opportunity, let alone working to realize them---were painfully obvious, as was intended.” (Pg. xi)
He adds, “I offer these essays as testimonials of hope and modest effort and as invitations to you, kind reader, to join me---and untold others past and present---in the effort to think carefully and clearly about how we might resolve America’s most persistent dilemma. There are already signs of what is possible in Starkville.” (Pg. xxxi)
The majority of the Preface (nearly 20 pages) tells his life story: Family, church background, school years, college at Fisk University (which ‘offered a major in Philosophy and Religion, studies I wanted to pursue,’ but ultimately ‘studying philosophy and … avoiding the study of religion’), the civil rights movement, Vietnam, graduate school/Ph.D. in Philosophy at Boston College, then joining the faculty at Fisk.
He reports “examples of what I have been calling deconstructive challenges to Western Philosophy can be drawn from the various subfields or trends of African Philosophy… I shall … identify those I take to be other ruptures in the history of philosophizing in terms of various thinkers of African descent to reconstruct histories of African philosophizing, efforts that are self-conscious in challenging the received wisdom of white lies about both Philosophy and Africa.” (Pg. 68-69)
He continues, “The reconstructive work of three persons is noteworthy here: First, that of George G.M. James [in his book ‘Stolen Legacy’]. According to his ground-breaking but poorly presented arguments, Ancient African (i.e., Egyptian) philosophy was the precursor to and source of much or all of Greek philosophy. Henry Olela continues this line of argument and adds a second claim, namely that ‘black [American] philosophy’ is (and should be) reducible to African philosophy. Finally, Lancinay Keita proposes the following periodization of African philosophy: (1) the CLASSICAL period---a time, supposedly, when Egypt was peopled and governed by black Africans; (2) the MEDIEVAL period---one of Islamic influence on literate expression in North and Central Africa during the time of the medieval states of Mali, Ghana, and Songhay; and (3) the MODERN period…
“The significance of these works, their limitations and controversial agendas notwithstanding, lies, in part, in the concern of the authors to take up the tasks of reconstructing the history of Western Philosophy in a direct challenge to the dominant narratives which have claimed Greece as the site of Philosophy’s singular origin. In the narrative reconstructions of James, Olela, and Keita, we are taken back to Egypt---AFRICAN Egypt, not the Egypt of Hegel that was annexed to Europe---as ‘source.’
“In light of the untruth racking the embodiment of the mainstream narratives of Philosophy, this possibility is an issue of very real importance. It is to be hoped that it will soon receive the disciplined, systematic attention it deserves and requires. Martin Bernal’s ‘Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization’ has contributed a great deal to our understanding in just this way. It remains to be seen whether professional philosophers will study this provocative text, which seriously disrupts longstanding genealogies of Western philosophy, and revise their understandings, their intellectual genealogies, and thereby their identities.” (Pg. 69)
He reports, “Over the last half-century, a small number of African and African-descended Americans have joined the ranks of professional philosophers… influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in responding to the need and desire to identify and otherwise forge philosophical traditions, literatures, and practices distinctive of black peoples, began the work of calling for and setting out ‘Black’ or … ‘African-American’ philosophy. During annual meetings of divisions of the American Philosophical Association (APA), a number of sessions, organized by the APA’s Committee on Blacks in Philosophy, were devoted to the tasks. (APA recognition of these efforts as having opened a legitimate subfield of philosophy was accorded in 1987 with the decision to include ‘Africana Philosophy’ as a specialty in the discipline.) (Pg. 81-82) He adds, “’The Philosophical Forum’ twice has devoted entire special issues of the journal to philosophical explorations of the experiences of black folks, with African-American philosophers serving as guest editors.” (Pg. 82)
He states, “Martin Bernal’s ‘Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization’ has become a significant addition to arguments long advanced (and long ignored or rejected) by several generations of African scholars of African descent who continue to argue that the intellectual sources of Western philosophy are not to be found in ancient Greece, but in traditions of thought of the high African civilization of ancient Kemet (Egypt). For these scholars (George G.M. James. W.E.B. DuBois, Cheikh Anta Diop, St. Clair Drake, Molefi Kete Asante, Maulana Karenga and Jacob H. Carruthers, and Henry Olela, among others), it was modern European racism directed at African peoples in support of their enslavement and exploitation and the exploitation of the African continent, that required the construction of notions of the superiority of the white race to an inferior black race, and, consequently, required the destruction of the history of the linkage of achievements on the part of peoples of Europe (supposedly the geographical origin of ‘white’ peoples) to achievements by African peoples.
“Within the cauldron of this racism particular scholars of European descent, during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries especially, constructed histories of philosophy that set the origins and informing legacies of philosophy and civilized human development in 5th and 4th century BC Greece. In the process Kemet was displaced as the source of much of what is now regarded as having originated with European civilizations, and African peoples were ejected from the forms of regard reserved for those thought ‘civilized.’” (Pg. 187-188)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying African-American and Africana philosophy.
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