Race and Racism

Posted on 26 May 2019

An introduction to Africana philosophical thought as it emerged from the modern experience of slavery and colonization by Europeans.

Posted on 23 June 2019

Justin E.H. Smith joins us to discuss Anton Wilhelm Amo against the background of ideas about race in early modern philosophy, including Leibniz.

Posted on 7 July 2019

Eighteenth century black authors touch on philosophical themes in autobiographical narratives, poetry, and other literary genres.

Posted on 21 July 2019

Phillis Wheatley astonishes colonial Americans with her exquisite and precocious poetry and reflects on the liberating power of the imagination.

Posted on 1 September 2019

Preacher and Revolutionary War soldier Lemuel Haynes argues that the principles of the American Revolution demand the abolition of slavery.

Posted on 15 September 2019

Ignatius Sancho and Benjamin Banneker make their mark on the history of Africana thought through letters that reflect on the power of sentiment.

Posted on 29 September 2019

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano advance the goals of the abolitionist movement through a groundbreaking political treatise and an influential autobiography.

Posted on 13 October 2019

In an age of revolutions and revolutionary ideas, the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 stands out as the most radical of them all.

Posted on 27 October 2019

The Baron de Vastey unveils the horror of colonialism as a system and defends the monarchy of King Christophe in the tense early years of Haiti’s independence.

Note: this episode repeats some of Vastey's vivid descriptions of violence against slaves, so please think twice before listening to it around kids for example.

Posted on 10 November 2019

An interview with Doris Garraway on the background, intellectual basis, and legacy of the Haitian Revolution.

Posted on 24 November 2019

Building black institutions in early American history, with Prince Hall and the Masons in Boston, and Richard Allen and the Methodists in Philadelphia.

Posted on 8 December 2019

Questions of political autonomy and group identity in the emigration movement led by Paul Cuffe, Daniel Coker, John Russwurm and others.

Posted on 22 December 2019

An interview with James Sidbury about the emergence of a self-conscious African identity in the diaspora.

Posted on 5 January 2020

David Walker defends violent resistance in his incendiary and influential Appeal.

Posted on 19 January 2020

Maria W. Stewart’s public addresses bring the concerns of African American women into the struggle against racial prejudice.

Posted on 2 February 2020

Hosea Easton’s Treatise provides an overlooked but fascinating theory of race and racism.

Posted on 16 February 2020

Melvin Rogers joins us to discuss David Walker, Maria Stewart, and Hosea Easton.

Posted on 1 March 2020

Frederick Douglass' journey from slave to leading figure of 19th century American thought.

Posted on 12 April 2020

He is called a “father of black nationalism,” but Martin Delany also promoted integration in American society. Can the apparent tension be resolved?

Posted on 10 May 2020

Mary Ann Shadd and Samuel Ringgold Ward reflect on what Canada can offer African Americans, differing on the problem of racism.

Posted on 24 May 2020

From his time in Liberia to his later concentration on the reform of African American culture, Alexander Crummell identifies progressive “civilization” as a means of liberation.

Posted on 7 June 2020

Wilson Moses speaks to us about his research into early black nationalism, with reference to Crummell, Douglass, and others.

Posted on 21 June 2020

Africanus Horton looks toward a future of self-government for West Africa beyond slavery and colonialism.

Posted on 5 July 2020

Edward Blyden gains appreciation for Islam in West Africa and gradually moves from political nationalism to cultural nationalism.

Posted on 19 July 2020

T. Thomas Fortune uses newspaper editorials to put forth a theory of civil rights and sets out a plan of political action for protecting them.

Posted on 6 September 2020

Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin debunks racist pseudo-science and argues that inequalities among humans are caused by social, not biological, factors.

Posted on 20 September 2020

John Jacob Thomas argues for self-government in the English colonies of the Caribbean but his fellow Trinidadian Frederick Alexander Durham recommends repatriation to Africa instead.

Posted on 4 October 2020

Abolitionists Luiz Gama and Joaquim Nabuco, and the great novelist Machado de Assis, react to the injustices of slaveholding in Brazil.

Posted on 17 October 2020

Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South, an unprecedented contribution to black feminist theory.

Posted on 1 November 2020

Ida B. Wells, her tireless crusade against lynching, and her analysis of the underlying purpose of racial violence

Posted on 15 November 2020

Brittney Cooper on activists connected to the National Association of Colored Women, including Fannie Barrier Williams, Mary Church Terrell, and Ida B. Wells.

Posted on 29 November 2020

A late 19th-century churchman tries to explain how slavery fit into God’s plan and decide whether the future for African Americans lies in Africa or America.

Posted on 13 December 2020

Was Booker T. Washington’s “accommodationist” approach to race relations a failure to stand up to injustice or a cunning strategy for incremental change?

Posted on 27 December 2020

W.E.B. Du Bois emerges as a historian, sociologist, and innovative philosophical thinker in the 1890s, and introduces his famous idea of "double consciousness."

Posted on 10 January 2021

Co-host Chike joins Peter to look back at series two and ahead to series three.

Posted on 24 January 2021

By exploring the work and activities of W.E.B. Du Bois around the turn of the twentieth century, we introduce some of the themes of our coverage of that century.

Posted on 7 February 2021

The ANA unites leading African American scholars of the early 20th century, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, William Ferris, Archibald Grimké, and Kelly Miller (pictured).

Posted on 21 February 2021

We chat with Tommy Curry about African-American thought between the turn of the century and the Harlem Renaissance.

Posted on 7 March 2021

West African intellectuals like J.E. Casely-Hayford (pictured) and Mojola Agbebi build upon Edward Blyden’s ideas at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Posted on 21 March 2021

Around the time of World War One, Hubert Harrison (pictured), A. Philip Randolph, and other black socialists argue that racial oppression is caused by capitalism.

Posted on 4 April 2021

Vanessa Wills speaks  to us about Marx and his Africana legacy, with a special focus on black women Marxists.

Posted on 18 April 2021

Marcus Garvey leads a powerful movement, inspires racial pride, and feuds with other thinkers like Du Bois.

Posted on 2 May 2021

Marcus Garvey’s two wives, Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey (pictured), establish themselves as activists in their own right and provide feminist voices within the Pan-African movement.

Posted on 16 May 2021

An interview with Michael Dawson, who explains Marcus Garvey's black nationalism and how this and other political ideologies, like socialism and liberalism, have fared from the time of Garvey down to the present day.

Posted on 30 May 2021

The artistic flowering of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance raises important questions about identity and the purpose of art.

Posted on 25 July 2021

Pioneering historian Carter G. Woodson argues for a new approach to education and economic uplift.

Posted on 5 September 2021

Zora Neale Hurston’s interest in Africana folklore feeds into her great novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Posted on 19 September 2021

The career of the multi-talented activist and performer Paul Robeson, and the place of the Negro spiritual in the Harlem Renaissance.

Posted on 3 October 2021

Du Bois moves to the left, and revisits and refines older positions during the latter half of his very long life.

Posted on 31 October 2021

Our first look at the emergence of the Negritude movement in Paris in the 1930s, with a focus on the early leadership of the Nardal sisters and Leon Damas.

Posted on 14 November 2021

Leopold Senghor compares different ways of knowing while developing his theory of Negritude and combining the roles of poet and politician.

Posted on 28 November 2021

Negritude thinkers Aimé and Suzanne Césaire embrace surrealism and reflect on the relationships between poetry, knowledge, and identity.

Posted on 9 January 2022

Two Trinidadian political thinkers: sociologist Oliver Cox analyzes the nature of racial prejudice, and historian Eric Williams connects capitalism to slavery.

Posted on 23 January 2022

Claudia Jones argues that Communism provides the remedy for racism and imperialism.

Posted on 20 February 2022

Famous for his incendiary novel Native Son, Richard Wright responds in his multifaceted writings to sociology, communism, colonialism, and existentialism.

Posted on 6 March 2022

Ralph Ellison provides a new metaphor for the experience of racism in his Invisible Man and tackles topics of art and identity in his essays.

Posted on 3 April 2022

The story of Martin Luther King Jr. up to 1963, focusing on the development of his philosophy of nonviolence.

Posted on 17 April 2022

An interview about the role of the emotions, including anger and feelings of dignity, in the non-violent protest campaign of King.

Posted on 1 May 2022

The life and career of Malcolm X up to 1963, with a focus on his separatist black nationalism and his critique of non-violent protest.

Posted on 15 May 2022

Chike joins Peter to look back at our coverage of Africana philosophy in the first half of the 20th century.

Posted on 29 May 2022

After 1963, the views of Malcolm X and MLK came closer together, on topics including internationalism, political engagement, and economics.

Posted on 12 June 2022

The Cuban activist and author Juan Rene Betancourt urges racial solidarity and reckons with the revolution under Castro and the island’s turn towards Communism.

Posted on 24 July 2022

Frantz Fanon combines psychoanalysis and existential phenomenology to diagnose neuroses deriving from the colonial condition.

Posted on 4 September 2022

Fanon’s incendiary final work explores the violent process of decolonization.

Posted on 18 September 2022

We're joined by a leading Fanon expert to talk about a range of themes in his work: Negritude, psychiatry, and violence.

Posted on 2 October 2022

The author of the famous play, A Raisin in the Sun, explores questions of violence, sexuality, and more during her too brief life. 

Posted on 16 October 2022

How the controversial slogan “black power,” used by activists like H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael (pictured), relates to ideas of militancy, separatism, and the power of language.

Posted on 30 October 2022

The philosophical underpinnings of a “vanguard of revolution” led by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver: the Black Panther Party.

Posted on 13 November 2022

The Pan-Africanist philosopher Maulana Karenga defends the importance of cultural revolution and invents the holiday Kwanzaa.

Posted on 11 December 2022

After Albert Cleage and James Cone propose a liberatory interpretation of Christianity, William R. Jones wonders whether God is a white racist. We also follow Black Theology among “Womanist” authors and in South Africa.

Posted on 5 February 2023

The career and ideas of Nelson Mandela up to the time of his imprisonment, in the context of the founding of the African National Congress.

Posted on 19 February 2023

Abdias do Nascimento, a leader in Brazilian theater and politics, and his theory of Quilombismo.

Posted on 5 March 2023

Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic return to claim the pyramids, and Octavia Butler uses science fiction to confront the brutal past of slavery.

Thanks to Stephan Terre for the creation of the futuristic intro music!

Posted on 19 March 2023

How the Rastafari movement grew from trends within Africana philosophy, and then passed into global popular culture in the music of Bob Marley and other reggae artists.