Rethinking the concept of race's conundrums in African philosophy.

Abstract

The pattern of discourse in the history of African philosophy resulted from historic events such as slavery, colonialism, race and racism. Historically therefore, the concept of race played a significant part in the existence of African philosophy. Recent years have seen a series of studies on the concept of race, with philosophers at the lead of this research development. These philosophers, including Joshua Glasgow, W. E. B. Du Bois, Lucius Outlaw, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Naomi Zack and Emmanuel C. Eze, among others, undertook to explain the concept of race with articulations on whether it should be conserved or eliminated. Thus Eliminativists and Conservationists standpoints, where the former hold that race is an illusion and race-thinking should be eliminated, while the later contend that race is very real and the concept should be conserved This dissertation is a critical assessment of how the concept of race affects African philosophy and an exploration of how the concept can be transcended. To achieve this objective, the dissertation appraised how the concept of race affects African philosophy. It further discussed the eliminativists and conservationists approaches to race, and how they contribute to and affect the concept likewise, it made an attempt to respectively reconcile the perspectives of the eliminativists and conservationists proponents. In the main, the dissertation explored and considered the possibilities of transcending the concept of race.