Race, Intellectual Racism, and the Opened Door

Edwin Etieyibo

Critical Philosophy of Race, Volume 11, Issue 2, 2023, pp. 309-338

(Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

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 race, intellectual
racism, and the
opened door

edwin etieyibo
critical philosophy of race,
University of the Witwatersrand vol. 11, no. 2, 2023
Copyright © 2023 The Pennsylvania
State University, University Park, PA
https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.11.2.0309

Abstract
There are forms of discriminations that are not defensible, and
unjustified discriminations manifest in different forms. One
such manifestation is racism, which involves the use of morally
arbitrary natural and moral constituents (characteristics, abilities,
qualities) to demarcate racial or ethnic groups and consequently
designate some groups as superior and others as inferior. In this
article, I discuss one form of racism (intellectual racism), namely,
racism in relation to color, as a way of highlighting how the notion
of superiority and inferiority of racial or ethnic groups (Caucasian
and Africans) play out in the intellectual landscape and discourse.
Ultimately, my motivations are threefold: one, to signify and
engage with some views of racial coloring and color eliminativ-
ism; two, to make and extend the position that color eliminativism
is not defensible; and three, to highlight and emphasize the claim
that given the notion of a “one-colored humanity,” racial groups
ought not to be classified as superior or inferior.
310 ■ critical philosophy of race

Keywords: Africa, African, Black, color, color eliminativism,

Caucasian, humanity, race, racism, racial eliminativism, white

Introduction

Africa is replete with many hospitality or generosity proverbs, but a par-

ticular one that emphasizes the homeowner’s obligation of generosity is
the following Urhobo proverb:1 “The person of the house warmly welcomes
those who knock on the door at night.” This proverb speaks of the hospi-
tality of the homeowner (or host) who is prepared and willing to open the
door to any guest who calls at night. So, although the proverb highlights
the spirit of generosity in Urhoboland, it is a spirit typical of many in tradi-
tional African societies.2
There are several ideas or philosophical nuggets that emerge from
the proverb (which I will get to in a moment), and these nuggets concern
what I want to do in this article—the opened door and intellectual racism
in connection with shadeism or colorism. I begin by looking at the proverb
in the context of hospitality, and then quickly move to assessing the colo-
nial project as a way of contextualizing the literal and metaphorical sense
of the opened door and making sense of intellectual racism. This is fol-
lowed by a discussion of what racism involves. After this, I look at race and
racial eliminativism, followed by an examination of racial coloring, race,
and color. I conclude by making a move toward the view that racial hierar-
chy and hierarchical boundaries do not signpost inferiority and superiority.
My ultimate aim is to step away from color eliminativism and to suggest
that coloring may in some sense be appropriate designators of racial/ethnic
groups or individuals insofar as one uses colors not to denote superiority
or inferiority but to pick out aspects of people or individuals that are part of
their natural or personal identity.

I. The Proverb, Hospitality and Generosity

Of the philosophical nuggets concerning the proverb, I present three. The

first relates to the host’s generosity, which is assumed (expected, unqualified,
and unconditional). In saying this, I’m mindful of the famous assertion by
Julius Nyerere, the former president of Tanzania, about the hospitality of
hosts in African communal society.
311 ■ edwin etieyibo

Those of us who talk about the African way of life and, quite rightly,
take a pride in maintaining the tradition of hospitality which is so
great a part of it, might do well to remember the Swahili saying:
‘Mgeni siku mbili; siku ya tatu mpe jembe’—or in English, ‘Treat
your guest as a guest for two days; on the third day give him a hoe!’
In actual fact, the guest was likely to ask for the hoe even before his
host had to give him one–for he knew what was expected of him, and
would have been ashamed to remain idle any longer. Thus, working
was part and parcel, was indeed the very basis and justification of this
socialist achievement of which we are so justly proud.3

Elsewhere, I have discussed how to understand this claim in the light of

Ujamaa and African communalism or socialism.4 But the point I want to
highlight here is that Nyerere seem to suggest that the host’s hospitality is
always expected to be reciprocated by the guest. The second nugget is that
the spirit of generosity is one that has to be displayed even when it incon-
veniences the host. Third, that if one is called upon as a host, one should
be a sanctuary for guests. But it seems to me that there is something the
proverb does not take into account. This can be stated in terms of the fol-
lowing general principle: One should not answer every knock on the door.
I think there are two points that emerge from the general principle.
First, that not every knock on the door is a knock from a genuine guest.5
In this way the principle can be said to challenge at least the first point
above, namely, the assumed unqualified host’s generosity. Simply stated,
since some guests may pretend to be guests and are not true guests, one
has to be weary of treating them prima facie as guests. The second point is
that one should be sophisticated when relating with every guest, and that
failure to do this could be consequential.
Both points then not only serve as a cautionary tale but also underpin
what I take to be important considerations when it comes to thinking about
how the colonized have been treated both during colonialism and subse-
quently—a point that I will elucidate in my discussion of the colonial proj-
ect. By stating the principle viz-à-viz a cautionary tale about knocks on door,
one is underlining the fact that while hospitality may be quintessential of
Africans in traditional societies, the notion that hosts and guests always felici-
tate or ought to felicitate in some bond of brotherhood and sisterhood is not
completely true. It is not because the colonial project showed us how naïve it
could be for one to open the door to everyone who comes calling as a guest.6
312 ■ critical philosophy of race

I commenced my discussion with the opened door because I wanted to

use it as a segue into my discussion of the colonial project and intellectual
racism. It is important for me to point out that my engagement with intellec-
tual racism relates to racial coloring and this builds on what I have discussed
elsewhere in terms of colonialism and racism in African philosophy.7 My dis-
cussion there focused on the denial or rejection of African philosophy or the
rejection of rationality/logic in African philosophy or Eurocentric views that
took African thought as inferior. I called these attitudes racist and manifes-
tations of Eurocentric not rational or lacking rationality. One might say that
such racist attitudes toward African philosophy showcase some power rela-
tions between the West and Africa whereby the former triumphantly positions
itself as producers and gatekeepers of knowledge and knowledge paradigms,
and the latter is described as consumers or recipients of knowledge produced by
the West.
In conclusion, let me point to the connections between the various parts
of my article. Firstly, the definition I provide for intellectual racism and my
discussion of colorism, racial/color eliminative takes colorism, racial/color
eliminativism to be aspects of intellectual racism. Secondly, my discussion of
racial eliminativism is meant to draw some parallel between it and color elimi-
nativism. And thirdly, the discussions of the opened door/hospitality and the
colonial project are used to highlight the point that the colonial project is a car-
rier of racism with broad implications for colorism/color eliminativism.

II. The Colonial Project

I will understand the colonial project to include colonialism and its justifi-
cations. The justifications are intellectual in nature and one such justifica-
tions is the notion of the “civilizing mission of colonialism” (CMC) and the
argument provided for it, thereof. The CMC pitches the colonized as the
inferior and the colonizer (West) as the superior. For CMC, the idea of the
superiority of Caucasians and the inferiority of non-Caucasians (or Africa/
Africans) is meant to perpetuate the triumphant narrative of “Western civi-
lization” and to justify civilizing the latter. The summary of the argument
goes thus:
1. Humans share the capacities for reason and self-government (a core
doctrine of liberalism).
2. A society that provides better quality of life (well-being, breadth of
opportunities, extended longevity) is better than one that doesn’t.
313 ■ edwin etieyibo

3. The capacities for reason and self-government are realizable in com-

mercial societies and not in precommercial (“uncivilized”) societies
(i.e., their realization is at a certain stage of civilization).
4. Precolonial African societies were precommercial.
5. Colonialism brought commercialism to Africa.
A. Therefore, colonialism helped Africa get to the stage of
commercialism.
6. Colonial and postcolonial African societies provided better quality of
life compared to precolonial African societies.
B. Therefore, colonialism “helped” foster a better quality of life in
African societies.
7. Therefore, colonialism, although paternalistic, was in the interest of
the peoples of Africa.8
The CMC seems blind to the fact that although colonialism manifested
itself differently in different contexts, colonialism was for the most part
marked by violence. If the colonial project constitutes “knocking on the
door,” then one opens the door by virtue of accepting CMC. Such accep-
tance continues the perpetuation of different forms of discrimination, such
as the colorism we see today. In the case of the colonial project, the opening
of doors, naïvely, I will say, did bring with it all sorts of catastrophes, evils,
and destructions—the consequences of which are still being felt today all
over Africa and the world at large.
The point then is that by opening the door (the “front door”) to the
colonial project in Africa, racism visited Africa through the “back door.”
One need not look too far to understand that the colonial project is but
one cultural carrier of racism. CMC tells the story that it is—racism,
for the notion of civilizing Africa/Africans is to invoke the idea of infe-
riority and superiority (the “superior” and “civilized” West/Caucasians
and the “inferior” and “uncivilized” Africa/Africans). Thus, Europe’s
entrance into colonial territories brought along institutionalized form
of racism, which has now manifested itself in different forms of rac-
ism in Africa (and other parts of the world). It is one of these forms of
racism—intellectual racism—that I engage with in this article.
The connection between racism and the colonial project, in general, and
the point about CMC in particular, which I am harkening to above, has some
similarities to Anibal Quijano’s and Michael Ennis’s (2000) idea of race and
how its modern meaning has no history before the colonization of America.
They suggest that the notion of race originated in reference to the phenotypic
differences between conquerors and conquered, and that it was constructed
314 ■ critical philosophy of race

to refer to the supposed differential biological structures between both

groups. They further note that following such codification of the phenotypic
trait of the colonized, color was added and taken to be an emblematic char-
acteristic of racial category, and with this the classification of superiority and
inferiority on the basis of this assumed phenotypic differences.9
Ramón Grosfoguel (2013) has also discussed the racial undertone
underlining not only the movement of colonialism but also views about
Africans as “peoples without a soul” and debates that came along with colo-
nialism, such as the theological debate of the sixteenth century with regard
to whether or not Indians had souls. Grosfoguel notes that this debate
about “having a soul or not had the same connotation of the 19th century
scientificist debates about having the human biological constitution or
not.”10 This is because both debates are about “the humanity or animality of
the others articulated by the institutional racist discourse of states such as
the Castilian Christian monarchy in the 16th century or Western European
imperial nation-states in the 19th century.”11 One implication of all this is
that Africans as enslaved peoples in Americas were considered biologically
and socially inferior, below the line of the human and lacking intelligence.12
In a nutshell, then, insofar as the possibility of conversion was made avail-
able for the conquered and enslaved peoples or victims of these discrimi-
natory discourses, CMC was held high and kept alive and, accordingly for
Grosfoguel, “with the colonization of the Americas, these old medieval dis-
criminatory religious discourses mutated rapidly, transforming into mod-
ern racial domination” such that although “the word ‘race’ was not used at
the time, the debate about having a soul or not was already a racist debate
in the sense used by scientific racism in the 19th century.”13

III. Understanding Racism

Racism discourse or debates throw up a plethora of ideas and views. In gen-

eral, racism is used to designate some attitude or belief about individuals
or groups in relation to other individuals or groups. This attitude or belief
and the relationship that is established exposes some prejudice, antago-
nism, and discrimination and leads to the construal of certain groups or
individuals as superior and others as inferior. In a sense, then, the belief
that is revealed in racism is one where races or racial groups are classi-
fied or placed in hierarchies such that the different racial groups are said
to possess discrete natural constituents (characteristics, abilities, qualities)
315 ■ edwin etieyibo

and these constituents are used to demarcate some groups as superior and
others as inferior.
Jiannbin Shiao and Ashley Woody (2020) have identified a number of
meanings of racism in the sociology of race/ethnicity. They argue that soci-
ologists use “racism” to refer to four constructs: individual attitudes, cul-
tural schema, racial dominance (or preexisting consequential inequalities),
and processes that create or maintain racial dominance.14 Regarding the
first construct—that is, racism as individual attitudes—Shiao and Woody
direct us to consider the ideas of Hochschild et al. (2012), according to
which racism may best be seen as racial attitudes or negative perceptions
of non-Caucasian groups or people.15
And as part of their explication of the thoughts of Levi-Strauss on
racism, Robert Bernasconi and Sybol Cook identify a number of elements
making up the term “racism.” First, as a doctrine, but a doctrine that seeks
to establish false claims. Second, the false claims concern some moral attri-
butes and mental characteristics of a racial group as a whole and the indi-
viduals who are representative of the group.16
From the above, we can take racism to basically mean certain preju-
dicial or discriminatory beliefs and attitudes against some racial or ethnic
group. And the circulation and perpetuation of these beliefs and attitudes
may generally be backed by some form of dominance and power. The defi-
nition of racism above provides us with a number of elements. First, there
is a prejudice (or discrimination or antagonism). Second, the prejudice is
perpetuated by an entity A (individual, group, institution, or community).
Third, the prejudice is directed at or against another entity B. Entity A often
has the power and B is marginalized or typically a minority. Fourth, the
prejudice that B suffers is on the basis of membership in a particular racial/
ethnic group. In the next section, I will show how some of these elements
show up in color branding or racial coloring—an area that I refer to as intel-
lectual racism.
Since my focus is on intellectual racism, it is important for me to
unpack the concept. When the term “intellectual” is used, it is generally
contrasted with emotions or the emotional and employed to stand for
the mental/intellect, theoretical, academic, or rational. The intellectual or
academic in the definition points to something scholarly or educational.
In this sense, I should be understood to be using intellectual racism as
the sort of racism that undermines any aspect of research or scholarship
or regarding a people’s experiences, institutions, values, and presence.17
On this understanding, intellectual racism can be said to involve certain
316 ■ critical philosophy of race

intellectual or scholarly or institutional prejudices or simply racism in the

academia and research or around experiences, values, and ideas that reveal
or implicate inferiority and superiority and how racial or ethnic groups,
peoples, and individuals are understood and defined in relation to other
racial/ethnic groups, peoples, and individuals.
Along this line, the cluster of ideas around intellectual racism that
Andrew Billingsley has presented is helpful in understanding the concept.
He notes:

Intellectual racism is the manner in which some learned men and

women conceive of, and perceive, Black people and Black institutions
in negative terms. It is the way foundation executives treat Black
scholars and Black institutions as though they were inferior, not as
worthy or as qualified and competent as white ones. It is the way
white-dominated sociology departments refuse to change the char-
acter of their curricula in order to embrace the Black presence in
America. It is the manner in which social science studies continue to
grow out of the subjective experience of the investigators rather than
out of the objective realities of the existing conditions.18

First, Billingsley remarks that intellectual racism implicates a particular

behavior, namely, one that is discriminatory. Second, the discriminatory
behavior is negative and involves conceiving, perceiving, and treating mem-
bers of a different racial group (non-Caucasian) in an inferior way or as
inferior to another racial group (Caucasian). Third, the discriminatory, neg-
ative, or prejudicial behavior is intellectual because it involves undervaluing
and undermining the intellectual work, scholarship, institutions, curricula,
experiences, presence, values, and beliefs of non-Caucasians on the ground
that they are inferior to Caucasians. The consequence of all of these is that
much of the scholarship and intellectual work on parade reflect the subjec-
tive experiences of Caucasian scholars or worldview rather than the objec-
tive experiences and realities of existing conditions and things as they are.
In this article, my discussion of intellectual racism is in relation to
color, what one might call colorism or racism about skin tone. It is racism
insofar as the attitude is prejudicial and based on skin color. And because
such prejudice is usually one of a marked preference for lighter-skinned
people, such as Caucasians, they are generally viewed as superior to those
with darker skin, for example, Africans (or non-Caucasians). Colorism
is a form of intellectual racism because people with darker skin are
317 ■ edwin etieyibo

conceived, perceived, and treated as inferior to lighter-skinned people or

Caucasians. Their presence as well as their bodies are valued both less and
negatively because, unlike Caucasians, they are not light skinned.
This way of construing intellectual racism helps us to distinguish it,
for instance, from other forms of racism in some other distinct spheres
such as epistemic racism, employment, work or labor racism, social racism,
and sports racism. So, for example, when someone is denied employment
because of membership in a particular racial/ethnic group, that is labor or
employment racism. We may say that there is social racism when someone
has been racially profiled, say, by the police or when he or she is pulled over
because they belong to a particular racial/ethnic group or in cases of racially
induced and sensitive police brutality or when the police in Western societies
kill unarmed Africans or African Americans or people of darker skin color,
such as in the case of George Perry Floyd, who was murdered in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, on 25 May 2020, by the former police officer, Derek Michael
Chauvin, who knelt on him for over eight minutes—an act he likely would
not have done were Floyd Caucasian and not African American).19 And we
have a case of sports racism when one’s participation in sports is curtailed
and handicapped because one belongs to a particular racial or ethnic group,
such as the case of Colin Rand Kaepernick, who played six seasons for the
San Francisco 49ers in the National Football League as a quarterback and
became famous for kneeling during the singing of the US national anthem
at the start of NFL games as a show of protest against police brutality and
racial inequality in the United States. Kaepernick became a free agent after
the 2017 season, and no football club has signed him since then, a move
that many analysts and observers believe is linked to political reasons.20
As a way of further illustrating the idea of intellectual racism, let me
take a famous example in the area of research in medicine. In discussing
this example of intellectual racism, Patricia Huston (1995) remarks that
this case doesn’t seem like an isolated instance or outlier, and that racism in
the area of research in medicine may be happening more than we think.21
She talks of a First World researcher or scientist who is skeptical of the
discovery of a malaria vaccine by a Third World researcher or scientist. In
Huston’s view, this skepticism may be warranted given the lack of conclu-
sive evidence backing this assertion. However, she notes that it “may also
hides less appropriate reactions such as envy, disbelief and prejudice.”22
The Third World scientist in this example is Dr. Manuel Elkin Murillo
Patarroyo (a Colombian professor of pathology and immunology), who
faced all kinds of prejudices after he reported in Nature in 1987 that he had
318 ■ critical philosophy of race

discovered or made the world’s first synthetic vaccine against a parasite

called the protozoa Plasmodium falciparum, which causes severe malaria.23
Patarroyo’s discovery was dismissed and not accepted by the scientific/
medical community, and all sorts of biases were directed against him—all
due to the fact, as Huston puts it, that at that time, the common wisdom was
that no vaccine can be developed until well into the twenty-first century, and
here a Third World researcher, a non-Caucasian (from Colombia, a Third
World country), is claiming to have developed a vaccine for malaria. The
short story, as Huston reports, is that an ad hoc committee of the World
Health Organization that investigated Patarroyo’s allegation of prejudices
and intellectual racism “concluded that although there were legitimate
shortcomings in his [Patarroyo’s] research, there had also been prejudice
against it.”24 Huston notes that this case “raises the issue of ‘intellectual
racism [and that it] is highly unlikely that Patarroyo’s experience is an iso-
lated incident.”25

IV. Race and Racial Eliminativism

Before I talk about racial coloring or color and racism and color eliminativ-
ism, let me first discuss race and racial eliminativism. Racial eliminativism
is the broad view that race or the use of race in our discourse be eliminated
or dispensed with. That is, it takes race terms to be meaningless and the
need for any race talk to be eliminated from public and private racial dis-
course because there are no natural racial referents. Although racial elimi-
nativists (REs) adopt different stances concerning the idea of jettisoning
race, they subscribe to some or most of the following claims:
• Abandoning the use of the term race in order to achieve holistic identity
formation (a fear that without race one has no meaning or worth)
• The elimination of race is warranted, and it is possible to do so because it
has been proven to be a genetically inaccurate and relatively unimportant
in explaining biological differences
• Racial identification rests on nothing neutral or factual so individuals
have the right to disassociate from it (deracination or self-emancipation)
• Racialization, because it is constructed could be practically transcended
or neutralized.
• The non-abandonment of our racial makeup and seeing race as an
illusion.
319 ■ edwin etieyibo

• We should purge racial terms from public discourse and abandon

practices relying on them
• Race thinking should be eliminated entirely.26
From the above, an RE could be said to hold a view on two philosophi-
cal claims about race and language that trades in racial terms or makes use
of racial notions: a metaphysical and a normative claim. The metaphysi-
cal claim is about the existence of race, namely, whether race does indeed
exist. And the normative claim is about eradicating or dispensing with the
language of race. The metaphysical and normative claims may be related,
but their relationship is much a debate among REs. Equally, there is a range
of views that REs take regarding the nature of both claims. So, while some
REs claim that race doesn’t exist and thus should be eliminated from our
linguistic landscape, others hold that race does exist but argue nevertheless
that we should do away with race talk on the ground that race talk is some-
how harmful to society or morally problematic.27
Some of the most notable REs include Kwame Appiah, Lawrence Blum,
Tommie Shelby, Paul Gilroy, J. Angelo Corlett, Cristian Delacampagne,
Ashley Montagu, and Naomi Zack.28 REs are in some sense racial skeptics,
not only because they believe in the elimination of race or defend the posi-
tion that race ought to be eliminated, but because they argue also that “race”
ought to be replaced, if at all, with terms such as “ethnicity.” One of the fol-
lowing provides a ground for REs’ defense of the claim about eliminating
race talk: race is not scientifically or biologically grounded; it causes harm
to society; it is morally problematic; it has baggage of historical genealogy.29
For the most part, the following underline some of the reasoning of
REs. The term “race” is useful only if it is applied to one or more discrete
groups of people who alone share certain biologically significant genetic
features. This is because such exclusivity with regard to certain genetic fea-
tures is only possible or could only emerge within or under certain lim-
ited conditions. First, the group has to be isolated and has to have some
sort of limited contact with other groups. Second, it has to practice a high
degree or level of inbreeding that will allow for its genetic isolation and to
pass its genes on only within itself (the isolated group). Groups that are
typically deemed races—such as Africans, African Americans, Caucasians,
Asians, Native Americans, etc.—do not meet these conditions. Groups
such as the Amish in America may meet the conditions because they
are generally isolated genetically, but we commonly don’t apply the term
“race” to them. What this shows is that there seem to be an incongruity
320 ■ critical philosophy of race

or logical incoherence between the concept of race and its typical referent.
Accordingly, then, the concept of race, REs argue, must be eliminated.30

V. Racial Coloring or Color and Racism

I’ll begin by making a clarification with respect to racial coloring and

racism. My discussion of racial coloring and racism should not be con-
strued as exhausting discussions of color racism, which is sometimes
called colorism. While the former (racial coloring and racism) refers to the
attachment of particular cultural meanings to skin color of members of
different ethnic groups or attaching some negative cultural meanings to
certain skin colors, the latter (colorism) refers to discrimination based on
skin color or a form of prejudice that takes or perceives or treats differently
and negatively people who have certain skin color or who share similar eth-
nicity traits and characteristics based on the social implications that come
with the meanings attached to their particular skin color.
One important discussion of color or the use of colors to designate
racial or ethnic groups—in this case “Blacks” or Africans—is Kwesi Tsri’s
two recent works: “Africans Are Not Black: Why the Use of the Term ‘Black’
for Africans Should Be Abandoned” (2016a); Africans Are Not Black: The
Case for Conceptual Liberation (2016b). In both works, Tsri not only signi-
fies his interest in situating discussion of “Black” and “Blackness” within
some broader discourse of racism but moves toward color eliminativism in
respect of the use of the color “black” to designate Africans or peoples with
darker skin hue or pigmentation. Jonathan Chimakonam picks up on these
discussions and conversations in his 2019 article, “Why the Racial Politic
of Colour-Branding Should Be Discontinued,” by looking at the broader
aspect of the use of color and racism but more specifically within the con-
cept of politics and political discourse.
Consequently, one can say that Tsri and Chimakonam are proponents
of color eliminativism, where color eliminativism advocates for the elimi-
nation of color in our language or the language that we use to describe peo-
ple or requires us to abandon the use of color to designate or classify racial
or ethnic groups or individuals. Both have raised important and legitimate
issues around the use of the term “Black” to describe people of darker skin
color that are worth considering. For Tsri, it is wrong to call Africans “Black”
hence, it is apropos to abandon its use. Chimakonam makes a similar point
321 ■ edwin etieyibo

by referring to the question he asked in his 2018 review of Tsri’s (2016b)

work: “Is there any human in the world whose skin pigmentation could
be described as black or white or yellow or brown or coloured or red?”31
Chimakonam (2019) answers in the negative. In addition to this answer,
he makes an interesting point for how the use of “Black” in particular and
color-branding of humans in general, constitute a dangerous phenomenon
and “politic” for a number of reasons, not least because of the symbolic
meanings that are attached to different colors and which do not correctly
describe the attributes and attitudes of those they are used to categorize,
and the racial underpinnings that are associated with such color-branding.
And like Tsri, color-branding (as the last frontier of racism, as Chimakonam
describes it) or the use of color to describe humans must be abandoned.
I want to make two points regarding Tsri’s and Chimakonam’s obser-
vations. The first is that while I’m in broad agreement with both for the
most part, and in present times the use of “black” has largely carried nega-
tive connotations and symbolisms, it is important for us to be nuanced
about making such claims if we are not to suggest that throughout history,
black has always had negative connotations and symbolisms. The second
point has to do with the issue of color eliminativism, and the question
that I engage with is the following: Should we discontinue, in our dis-
course, the use of color as a marker of skin and racial group? Let me begin
with the first point, which I will enter by presenting expressions and use of
color or black in history.
That the use of black and any other color carries with them symbols,
positive or negative, cannot be denied. So, in the main, the color black has
been used to symbolize all things negative. It has carried meanings ranging
from evil to bad, death to somber or mourning, impurity to degradation, and
evoked strong and negative emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, and aggres-
sion.32 The negative symbolism conveyed by black has no limit, as can be
seen in some expressions or phrases in many languages. Take, for example,
the following: black widow,33 black market,34 black mood,35 blackball,36 black
sheep,37 blackmail,38 black hole,39 Black Monday,40 Black-hearted,41 black-
out,42 black magic,43 Black Plague.44
Amid all of these, there is one phrase that involves the use of the term
black that means something positive. This is the expression or use of black
in business or bookkeeping or accounting to mean profitability or to sug-
gest that for a given financial period, a going business entity produced
positive earnings after deducting costs or all expenses. Thus, when, the
322 ■ critical philosophy of race

expression “in the black” is used to refer to a company’s financial records or

position, it denotes profitability or to simply say that the company’s finan-
cial situation is healthy. By contrast, when the color red is used to denote
the company financial status, such as when its account is said to be “in the
red,” it means the company is unprofitable or has negative earnings.
The reference to the use of black in accounting to signify something
positive suggests that black does not and has not always had a negative
connation or meaning. St. Clair has noted that black was one of the first
colors used by artists in Neolithic cave paintings, and during the Roman
Empire it was used as the color of mourning, and years later it came to be
linked to witches, evil, magic, and death.45 Additionally, according to Eva
Heller, black is frequently used either symbolically or figuratively to repre-
sent darkness in Europe and North America; it is associated with a number
of different things from elegance to secrets and magic, from evil to the end,
and from force to violence.46
And in a comprehensive overview of colors, Michel Pastoureau (2000,
2001, 2008, 2017), the French historian and symbolist has traced the his-
tory, etymology, symbols, and meanings of colors. What is of concern to me
here is his examination of the color black in contrast to other colors. So,
for example, in terms of the history of color in general, and the color black
in particular, Pastoureau’s discussion of the ancient, medical, and modern
worlds presents the following:
1. ancient world/ages: in Ancient Egypt, black was used positively as the
color of fertility and that of the rich soil flooded by the Nile River;
2. medieval world/ages: black carried different symbols and meanings
throughout this period and in different areas and spaces, both positive
and negative;
3. modern world/ages: black carried different symbols and meanings
(some positive and others negative).
I now come to the second point, namely, the question of whether we
ought to abandon the use of color to designate humans. Tsri’s two works and
that of Chimakonam clearly tell us what they think concerning the problem
of using color to designate humans in general, and the color black to char-
acterize Africans in particular. I agree with the claim that the use of color is
problematic historically (they carry lots of historical baggage) and scientifi-
cally (biologically) and politically incorrect. As Chimakonam rightly observes,
there is hardly anyone who can be said to have the color black. The same can
323 ■ edwin etieyibo

be said about white, namely, that there is hardly anyone who can be said to
have the color white. If this is the case, then why are we still using colors
to designate humans? Chimakonam’s calculation and reasoning is that the
use of colors to designate humans is flourishing because it serves some very
expedient or cultural, social, and political purpose for racism, namely, it helps
and facilitates the interests of Caucasians, or those in the West who want to
continue to maintain the illusion of superiority. Chimakonam notes,

Even though Theodore Allen (1994), in his The Invention of the White
Race, explains that the idea of the concept of race is to create and sus-
tain hierarchical boundaries in human species, those hierarchies are
not real; they are mere illusions and as such constitute an immoral
strategy. So, in essence, the Western world feeds on illusion to sus-
tain the perpetuation of the evil of racism on other peoples. The
immorality associated with colour-politic is exactly the main reason
colour-branding of humans should be discontinued.47

It is partly for this reason that Chimakonam contends that racial coloring
ought to be abandoned. Again, I do want us to be nuanced here.
While I agree with the claim that using some color or a monocolor to
represent an entire people or racial/ethnic groups, as for example, reference
to African people as “Black” or their being designated by the color black or
speaking of Caucasian/Europeans as “white” is problematic and mislead-
ing, and thus should be abandoned. However, given the variety in racial and
ethnic groups and the differences in color, one is best served to use a more
general color descriptor to designate the groups, for example, Africans as
people of dark or darker skin and Caucasians/Europeans as being of light or
lighter skin colors. Furthermore, one has to be clear that the use of “black”
or “ebony” or “brown” to describe someone of a particular skin pigmenta-
tion may not be wrong or problematic if such persons do exhibit such colors.
These remarks make me an anticolor eliminativist. My nuanced
position is that color may in some sense be appropriate designators of
racial or ethnic groups or individuals in those groups insofar as such color
picks out aspects of people or an individual that is part of their natural
or personal identity. In other words, racial coloring has to be abandoned
in a context where some monocolor like “black” is applied to an entire racial
or ethnic group or where color is used to pick out racial categories in terms
of superiority and inferiority. But racial coloring in the context of individual
324 ■ critical philosophy of race

description or where color is used to describe and designate some person

(as part of his or her natural constitution) seems to me appropriate.
The point I’m gesturing toward is simply that people have different
skin colors, which in the color spectrum could range from brown to vanilla,
namely, one can talk of skin pigmentations in the range of different color
shades, for example, mahogany, ebony (even black or dark black), burgundy,
cream, eggshell, ivory, vanilla, etc. All of these are colors and if one of these
colors does designate one, then one is colored as is designated by that color.
And in reference to such skin color, one could say this is a brown person
or a vanilla- or a creame-colored person. Additionally, the claim that we
should not color-brand seems problematic because given that people have
different skin pigmentation, requiring us to abstain from labeling people
by the color that they possess seems to ask us not to designate them by
something essential about them or that is part of their identity. It is almost
like asking us to stop saying that a person is blond or brunette or has black
or brown hair, or his or her eye color is gray, brown, or blue.
The point I am making is that we should stop calling racial or ethnic
groups “Black” or “white” for two reasons. First, no one is white and not
every member of that group has that color (black or white). Second, there is
the problem of the historical baggage, racism, etc., that comes with using
the colors black and white to designate an entire racial or ethnic group.
Nevertheless, given that people or their skin pigmentation occupy different
parts of the color spectrum, and given that color is part of their being or
who we are, it is unproblematic to refer to them by their particular color or
to say of them as having this and that skin pigmentation the same way we
would refer to them as having particular eye or hair color. Indeed, the point
to note is that as humans, we are all colored—that is, “colored humans or
human beings” since we occupy some color in the color spectrum (what-
ever that color is or may be). As colored humanity or humans, we should
thus not be designating anyone as “white” or “Black” (for reasons already
discussed) but as dark/darker in color or light/lighter in color or, if we want
to be specific, as a brown person, a darker/light brown person, a vanilla- or
cream-color person, etc.
Let me now conclude this section by saying something briefly about
racial eliminativism and color eliminativism. Both concepts are connected
to racism. As well, both hold that something ought to be done about some-
thing or something should be eliminated: race (for racial eliminativism)
and color (for color eliminativism). However, they are both not coextensive
325 ■ edwin etieyibo

and do not denote the same referent even though they may pick out
certain features that are shared by the same entities. This is important in
that while racial discourse on race and racism may implicate color dis-
course or discussions of racism and vice versa, saying that race does or
doesn’t exist or that race talk should be eliminated or not eliminated is not
the same as saying that color does or doesn’t exist or that color talk should
be eliminated or not eliminated. And importantly, for racial eliminativism,
race may not exist biologically, but for color eliminativism, color does exist
biologically—all of us, as humans, do have some color. Furthermore, it is
possible to dispense with race talk, but we will still be saddled with color
talk precisely because they are not coextensive and do not have the same
ontological or metaphysical grounding and the motivations for their elimi-
nations are different. Finally, color may sometimes be used as a placeholder
or marker for race and therefore open up the space for racism, but elimi-
nating color will generally not lead to an end to race or racial discourse or
racism if it is the case that color is just one feature or marker of race.
So, it may be the case that in our world as it is presently constituted,
the continued privileging of light/lighter skin over dark/darker skin will
continue to serve as the most obvious or visible criterion used to determine
how a person is evaluated and judged. And one may attribute this partly to
deeply entrenched racism, whereby the darker a person’s skin is, the more
one is demonized or considered less valuable, and the lighter one’s skin is,
the more one is considered more valuable. This should not lead us to move
toward color eliminativism. For as I have shown, a person’s skin color is an
unquestionable visual fact of that person; it is a brute fact, but race is a con-
structed, quasi-scientific classification of a person. The point then is that if
racism didn’t exist, we will still recognize the existence of color and have
discussions about varying skin hues—discussions that may center on the
aesthetics of the different colors or how to effectively distinguish one hue
from another.

VI. Racial Groups, Difference, Superiority, and Inferiority

Whatever the motivations are for racial classifications, racism, and racial
discrimination, the notion that one will think of some racial groups as
superior and others as inferior is clearly false. I have highlighted above the
point that Allen (1994) made in The Invention of the White Race regarding
326 ■ critical philosophy of race

the motivation for creating the concept of race, namely, as a means to

create, nurture, and sustain some hierarchies, especially hierarchical
boundaries in human species. But as Chimakonam has reminded us, such
hierarchies are not defensible because they are illusions and not real.48 The
wrongfulness of such racial hierarchies/hierarchical boundaries viz-à-viz
notions of superiority and inferiority seem evident in the reflection of the
darker-colored boy in William Blake’s poem, “The Little Black Boy.”49 A few
lines (of the first stanza) illustrate this.

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

Blake’s poem on the dark-skinned boy speaks to racial discrimination.

Although the boy accepts being different from the lighter-colored boy, he
(as we should) does not take such color to denote superiority or inferior-
ity. One will be mistaken then to employ racial differences to signpost
superiority and inferiority given that when all is said and done, we are all
humans, one humanity or simply colored humanity. We are many peoples,
belonging to many racial or ethnic groups, but we are one humanity. So,
no matter what differences (racial, ethnic, natural, social, cultural, political,
economic, etc.) that exist among us, we are a collection or a “bouquet of
humanity.”50 Because we are humans or one humanity who have different
degrees of abilities and characteristics, including color, any move to divide
humans along some superior or inferior line is patently mistaken. This
idea of one humanity is brought out by the following four lines of the sixth
stanza of “The Little Black Boy.”

Thus did my mother say and kissed me,

And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

I conclude by quoting the poem, “I Am Different But Not Inferior.”51

Who am I?
I am not you
327 ■ edwin etieyibo

I am me
You are you

We are different
But we are not superior and inferior
You say you are superior to me
And I say you are inferior to me

Where does that idea come from?

How do you argue for the idea?
What support do you give it?
How has the idea been known?

I am different but not inferior

You are different but not superior
We are what we are
But not of that which is inferior and superior

Superiority and inferiority hate and divide

The inferior or superior is injury
Us as inferior or superior is death
You and I as inferior or superior is against human.

One significant point to note in the poem is the concluding stanza,

which outlines the consequences of treating or taking differences in terms
of superiority and inferiority. These consequences—hatred, division, harm,
and even death—have been borne out by history. But as the poem con-
cludes, differences steeped in the notion of inferiority and superiority are
against human—that is, unhuman—by which I mean racism or racial divi-
sions and discrimination are outside the realm of humanity.

Conclusion

Racism in our world is endemic or a global pandemic with a long history.

While discussions on racism could take any direction, the focus of this arti-
cle is narrow—it is on intellectual racism. Part of my twofold claim is that
we ought to move away from color eliminativism, and that the use of colors
328 ■ critical philosophy of race

to designate racial or ethnic groups is apposite as long as the colors pick out
certain aspects of people or individuals that are part of who they are.
Thus, I can be taken to be claiming, on the one hand, that the term
“Black” has not always had the negative meaning it has today and to
side, on the other hand, with those who valorize Africa and (like Tsri and
Chimakonam) oppose the term “Black.” But overall, I am suggesting that
while color can’t be eliminated since every person has some shade of
color, I agree with Tsri and Chimakonam that the use of “Black” to desig-
nate Africans is misleading, since most people in the world and from the
continent are not “black.” Therefore, I should be understood to be engaged
in a conceptual rather than some practical project, which makes some
recommendations on how to end racism. By that I mean that my project
is a response to the prevalence of racism and how color does or doesn’t
serve as one cultural maker of racism and why it is conceptually wrong to
make the case that color should be abandoned. For all one cares, my project
may have no practical consequences for the perpetuation or ending of rac-
ism, but I do believe that this does not diminish its value and relevance.
I now conclude by making some comments that are the upshot of all
that I have done in this article regarding racism and color eliminativism.
First, as humans, we are different in many ways and aspects, and you are
you and I am me. Second, although we are different, we are a “bouquet of
humanity.” Third, as a “bouquet of humanity,” we are one humanity—a
colored humanity. Fourth, as a one-colored humanity, there are no superior
or inferior racial or ethnic groups, or superior and inferior humans. Fifth,
as a one-colored humanity, we are all colored peoples. What follows from
this then is that it is wrong and misleading to classify racial or ethnic groups
or humans into two groups—Caucasians or “white” people and “colored
people.” Since all that exists is a colored humanity, we are all colored peo-
ple no matter what the racial grouping or ethnicity we belong to, whether
Aboriginals, Africans, African Americans, Asians, Berbers, Caribbeans,
Caucasians, Creole, Hispanics, Jewish, Indians, Latinos, Pacific Islanders,
etc. Sixth, in describing any member of the colored humanity, a much more
apposite way of describing them is where they stand in the color spectrum
and in terms of shades of color, such as light/lighter color and dark/darker
color. So, for example, when referring to someone, one may say, “Here
is X from Y racial or ethnic group who is light/lighter colored or has dark/
darker color.”
329 ■ edwin etieyibo

edwin etieyibo is professor of philosophy and teaches at the University

of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and an adjunct professor at the
University of Alberta, Canada. He is the author of A Case for Environmental
Justice (2022, Rowman and Littlefield); coauthor (with Odirn Omiegbe)
of Disabilities in Nigeria: Attitudes, Reactions, and Remediation (2017,
Hamilton Books); editor of Perspectives in Social Contract Theory (2018,
CRVP); Decolonisation, Africanisation and the Philosophy Curriculum
(2018, Routledge); Method, Substance and the Future of African Philosophy
(2018, Palgrave Macmillan); and coeditor of Ka Osi Sọ Onye: African
Philosophy in the Postmodern Era (2018, Vernon Press); Menkiti on
Community and Becoming a Person (2020, Lexington Books); Deciding in
Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa (2020, Vernon Press);
Africa’s Radicalisms and Conservatisms I: Politics, Poverty, Marginalisation and
Education (2021, Brill); Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy
(2022, Springer); African Philosophy in an Intercultural Perspective (2022,
Springer Nature); and Africa’s Radicalisms and Conservativisms, Vol. 2: Pop
Culture, Environment, Colonialism and Migration (2022, Brill). He is the
cofounder and secretary of the African Philosophy Society.

notes

1. The Urhobos are Urhobo-Edoid Kwa language–speaking people of larger Benue

(Niger)-Congo language in southern Nigeria.
2. For a discussion of proverbs in philosophy or the relationship between prov-
erbs and African philosophy, see the following: Campbell Shitu Momoh, 2000.
“Philosophy in African Proverbs,” in The Substance of African Philosophy, 2nd ed.,
ed. Campbell Momoh (Auchi: African Philosophy Project, 2000), 359–76; Ademola
Kazeem Fayemi, “The Logic in Yoruba Proverbs,” Itupale Online Journal of African
Studies 2 (2010): 1–14; Edwin Etieyibo, “African Philosophy and Proverbs: The Case
of Logic in Urhobo Proverbs,” Philosophia Africana 18, no. 1 (2016): 21–39; Keanu
Koketso Mabalane and Edwin Etieyibo, “Universal or Particular Logic and the
Question of Logic in Setswana Proverbs,” in Logic and African Philosophy: Seminal
Essays on African Systems of Thought, ed. Jonathan O. Chimakonam (Wilmington/
Malaga: Vernon Press, 2020), 141–72; Edwin Etieyibo, “African Proverbs,” in
African Ethics: A Guide to Key Ideas, ed. Jonathan O. Chimakonam and Luis
Cordeiro-Rodrigues (London: Bloomsbury, 2022b), 31–49.
3. Julius Kambarage Nyerere, “Ujamaa—The Basis of African Socialism,” The Journal
of Pan African Studies 1, no. 1 (1987): 6. This is an excerpt from Julius Kambarage
Nyerere, Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press,
1977).
330 ■ critical philosophy of race

4. Edwin Etieyibo, “African Proverbs,” in African Ethics: A Guide to Key Ideas, ed.
Jonathan O. Chimakonam and Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues (London: Bloomsbury,
2022), 307–22
5. Although I speak of knock and doors here, which could be taken literally, I could
also be understood metaphorically, say, warmly embracing something. In this
sense, knock, door, and the opening of the door could be taken to mean opening
one’s arms warmly to something, namely, the colonial project. Hopefully, my fur-
ther discussion of the colonial project makes this clearer.
6. I thank the reviewers for helping clarify my thoughts around the nuances of colo-
nialism/the colonial project.
7. See Edwin Etieyibo, “Racism, Colonialism and African Philosophy,” in Africa’s
Radicalisms and Conservativism, vol. 2, Pop Culture, Environment, Colonialism and
Migration, ed. Edwin Etieyibo, Obvious Katsaura, and Muchaparara Musemwa
(Leiden: Brill, 2022a), 256–66.
8. This argument is presented and discussed in Edwin Etieyibo, “Political
Reparationists and the Moral Case for Reparations to Africa for Colonialism,” Africa
Insight 40, no. 4 (2011): 22–34).
9. Anibal Quijano and Michael Ennis, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin
America,” Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 533–80.
10. Ramón Grosfoguel, “The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities:
Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long 16th
Century,” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 11, no. 11
(2013): 82–83.
11. Ibid., 83.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 82.
14. Jiannbin Shiao and Ashley Woody, “The Meaning of ‘Racism,’” Sociological
Perspectives 64, no. 3 (2020): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121420964239.
15. Jennifer Hochschild, Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch, Creating a New Racial Order:
How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in
America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 139. See Shiao and
Woody (2020, 3). Hochschild et al., as well as Shiao and Woody, use the term
“non-white,” but I am using “non-Caucasian” for reasons that will become clearer
later.
16. Robert Bernasconi and Sybol Cook, eds., Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 235.
17. For some discussions of intellectual racism, see Robert Staples, “Racial
Ideology and Intellectual Racism: Blacks in Academia,” The Black Scholar:
Journal of Black Studies and Research 15, no. 2 (1984): 2–17; Andrew Billingsley,
“Intellectual Racism,” New Directions 1, no. 2 (1974): Article 9, https://dh.howard.
edu/newdirections/vol1/iss2/9.
18. Billingsley 1974, 28.
331 ■ edwin etieyibo

19. The killing of George Floyd sparked, in 2020, the Black Lives Movement in the
United States and worldwide. On 20 Apr. 2021, Derek Chauvin was convicted of
Floyd’s murder.
20. See Anonymous, 2018. “Kaepernick, from Super Bowl Quarterback to NFL Pariah.” France
24, AFP, 9 Apr. 2018, https://www.france24.com/en/20180904-kaepernick-
super-bowl-quarterback-nfl-pariah; Kyle Wagner, “Colin Kaepernick Is Not
Supposed to Be Unemployed,” FiveThirtyEight, 9 Aug. 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.
com/features/colin-kaepernick-is-not-supposed-to-be-unemployed/.
21. See Patricia Huston, “Intellectual Racism,” Editor’s Page, Canadian Medical
Association Journal 153, no. 9 (1995): 1219; Clara Osei-Yeboh, “How Queen’s
School of Medicine Barred Black Students for 40 Years,” INKspire, 6 April 2020,
https://inkspire.org/post/how-queens-school-of-medicine-barred-black-students-
for-40-years/-M2ix2zV7yw8Y-V--XUQ; OmiSoore Dryden and Onye Nnorom,
“Time to Dismantle Systemic Anti-Black Racism in Medicine in Canada,” Canadian
Medical Association Journal (11 January 2021): 193: E55-7, DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.201579;
D. R. Williams, J. A. Lawrence, and B. A. Davis, “Racism and Health: Evidence and
Needed Research,” Annual Review of Public Health 40 (2019): 105–25.
22. Huston 1995, 1219.
23. See Patarroyo (1995: 1319–21); Tracy Wilkinson, “Profile: Colombian Tackles
Malaria and Skeptics: Maverick Scientist Has Had to Convince Critics Worldwide
That His Synthetic Vaccine Can Deter the Deadly Disease,” Los Angeles Times, 28
June 1994, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-06-28-wr-9342-story.
html; Marguerite Holloway, “Profile: Manuel Elkin Patarroyo—The Man Who
Would Conquer Malaria,” Scientific American 275, no. 6 (1996): 52–56; Anonymous,
1995. “Malaria Vaccine Offers Hope. International/Africa.” Vaccine Weekly, 13
(Mar. 1995): 10–11. PMID: 12288959; G. Caba, “Patarroyo and the Strategies to
Develop a Malaria Vaccine,” Microbiologia 13, no. 1 (1997): 89–94, PMID: 9106187.
24. Huston 1995, 1219.
25. Ibid.
26. See Laura Bestle, “Racial Eliminativism,” Critical Race Theory, 16 July 2018, http://
www.laurabestler.org/racial-eliminativism/.
27. For some discussions of race, racial eliminativism, and arguments against racial
eliminativism, see the following: R. O. Andreasen, “Race: Biological Reality or
Social Construct?” Philosophy of Science 67 (Supplement, 2000): S653–66; Adeshei
Jacoby Carter, “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future or Should the Future Have ‘Races’?
Reconstruction or Eliminativism in a Pragmatist Philosophy of Race,” Transactions
of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 50,
no. 1 (2014): 29–47; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Conservation of Races (Washington, DC:
The American Negro Academy, 1897); Joshua Glasgow, “On the Methodology
of the Race Debate: Conceptual Analysis and Racial Discourse,” Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 76, no. 2 (2008): 333–58; Ian Hacking, “Why Race
Still Matters.” Daedelus (Fall 2005): 102–16; W. Steven Halady, “The Reality of Race:
Against Racial Eliminativism” (PhD diss., University at Buffalo, State University of
332 ■ critical philosophy of race

New York, 2010); Sally Haslanger, “A Social Constructionist Analysis of Race,” in

Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012); Sally Haslanger, “Tracing the Sociopolitical Reality of Race,” in What
Is Race? Four Philosophical Views (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 4–37;
K. Lionel McPherson, “Deflating ‘Race,’” Journal of the American Philosophical
Association 1, no. 4 (2015): 674–93; Neven Sesardic, “Race: A Social Destruction
of a Biological Concept,” Biology and Philosophy 25, no. 2 (2010): 143–62; Brett St
Louis, “Can Race Be Eradicated? The Postracial Problematic,” in Theories of Race
and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives, ed. Karim Murji and John
Solomos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 114–37; A. R. Templeton,
“Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective,” American Anthropologist
100 (1998): 632–50.
28. See the following: Christian Delacampagne, “Racism and the West: From Praxis to
Logos,” in Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1990), 83–88; Paul Gilroy, “One Nation under a Groove,”
in Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1990), 263–82; Naomi Zack, Race and Mixed Race (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1993); Naomi Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race (New
York: Routledge, 2002); Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument:
DuBois and the Illusion of Race,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1995): 21–37; Kwame
Anthony Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections.” The
paper was first delivered at the University of California, San Diego, 27 and 28 Oct.
1994, before being published in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 17 (1996):
51–136. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “How to Decide If Races Exist,” Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society 106 (2006): 365–82; Ashley Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous
Myth: The Fallacy of Race (Lanham. MI: Altamira Press, 1997); Lawrence Blum, “I’m
Not a Racist, but . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2002); Lawrence Blum, “Racialized Groups: The Sociohistorical Consensus,”
The Monist 93, no. 2 (2010): 298–320; J. Angelo Corlett, Race, Racism, and
Reparations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); Joshua Glasgow, “On the
New Biology of Race,” The Journal of Philosophy 100, no. 9 (2003): 456–74; Joshua
Glasgow, A Theory of Race (New York: Routledge, 2009); Joshua Glasgow, “Is Race
an Illusion or a (Very) Basic Reality?,” in What Is Race? Four Philosophical Views
(New York: Oxford, 2019), 111–49; Ron Mallon, “Passing, Traveling and Reality:
Social Constructionism and the Metaphysics of Race,” Noûs 38, no. 4 (2004):
644–73; Ron Mallon, “Race: Normative, Not Metaphysical or Semantic,” Ethics 116,
no. 3 (2006): 525–51; Joshua Glasgow and M. Jonathan Woodward, “Basic Racial
Realism,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1, no. 3 (2015): 449–66;
Tommie Shelby, “Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian Considerations,” Fordham Law
Review 72 (2004): 1697–1714; Michael James and Adam Burgos, “Race,” in The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, 2020, https://plato.stan-
ford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/race/; first published 28 May 2008; substan-
tive revision 25 May 2020.
333 ■ edwin etieyibo

29. For a look at some historical baggage or genealogy of racism in the West, see
Delacampagne 1990.
30. See Appiah 1994, 73; Zack 2002, 69; Mallon 2006, 526, 533.
31. Jonathan Chimakonam, “Why the Racial Politic of Colour-Branding Should Be
Discontinued,” Phronimon 20, no. 1 (2019): 1–24.
32. J. L. Sandford, “Turn a Colour with Emotion: A Linguistic Construction of Colour
in English,” Journal of the International Colour Association 13 (2014): 67–83.
33. “Black widow,” used to designate a woman who kills one or more of her lovers,
or a female martyr; and in reference to the black widow spider, a very poisonous
spider that lives in warm areas.
34. “Black market,” which means an illegal, clandestine trade or underground or
shadow economy.
35. “Black mood” denotes sadness, misery, depression, feeling down or gloomy, melan-
choly, having a bad temper, or being angry and irritable.
36. “Blackball” used in reference to negative voting or voting against or to boycott,
ostracize, or exclude socially.
37. “Black sheep” refers to a member of a family or group who is considered an outlier
or a disgrace.
38. “Blackmail” as reference to a criminal act of obtaining financial benefits (money
or material things) from others or forcing them to do something by threatening to
harm them or to reveal some secret of theirs.
39. “Black hole,” in astronomy, means a region of space that has an intense gravita-
tional field that prevents matter or radiation from escaping; and informally, it refers
to a place where money or lost items are said to vanish without a trace.
40. “Black Monday” refers to Monday, October 19, 1987, when there was a massive fall
in the value of stocks on Wall Street, which then caused similar falls in markets
internationally.
41. “Black-hearted” refer to being evil, wicked, or cruel.
42. “Blackout” means loss or absence of lights or electricity or temporary loss of con-
sciousness or a period when all lights are concealed or turned off during an air raid
at night to prevent the enemy from seeing a targeted area.
43. “Black magic” refers to magic involving the invocation or bringing forth of evil
spirits for evil purposes (in contrast to white magic, which is used only for good
purposes).
44. “Black Plague,” sometimes called the “Black Death,” refers to the bubonic plague
or pandemic, which happened in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353 and was consid-
ered the deadliest disease or pandemic recorded in human history.
45. Kassia St. Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (London: John Murray, 2016), 261–62.
46. Eva Heller, Psychologie de la couleur—Effets et symboliques (Paris: Pyramyd, 2009),
105–27.
47. Chimakonam 2019, 18.
48. Ibid.
334 ■ critical philosophy of race

49. William Blake (28 Nov. 1757–12 Aug. 1827) is one of the six prominent poets of the
Romantic Age (which is flanked by the Augustan and Victoria ages; there is a dras-
tic shift in literary ideals among these ages). Other Romantic poets are: William
Wordsworth, Samuel T. Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Lord
Byron.
50. The expression “bouquet of humanity” is credited to Jerry Blackwell, a member of
the prosecution team that tried the murder case of George Floyd. The prosecution
used it to designate the various color/ethnicities (African Americans, Caucasians,
etc.), social statuses, gender, and ages of the people or bystanders, and who are
in a sense all strangers with nothing in common except that they are all part of one
humanity who witnessed the death of Floyd on May 25, 2020 (and some of whom
recorded the events on their electronic devices). Thus, “bouquet of humanity” is
used generally and in this article to refer to all people who are different but who
are of one or the same humanity. See Keith Ellison, “Today’s Verdict Isn’t ‘Justice,’
But Accountability Is a First Step to Justice,” Guardian, 21 Apr. 2021, https://
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/20/keith-ellison-george-floyd-
speech-minnesota-attorney-general; Anonymous, “Bouquet of Humanity,” Urban
Dictionary, n.d., https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bouquet%20
of%20humanity.
51. “I Am Different But Not Inferior” is from a collection of poems by Edwin Etieyibo,
Humanity, unpublished, 2011b.

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