American writer James Baldwin in Paris, circa 1970. Baldwin has been called a novelist, an essayist, a social critic but, until now says author Justin Ray, never a philosopher. Sophie Bassouls/Getty Images
Philosophy has a race problem. Less than 2% of members of the American Philosophical Association are Black. This exclusion is harming us all.
By Justin Ray
June 19, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)
James Baldwin dissected the human condition with surgical precision. His essays on race, identity and American democracy didn’t just document injustice — he philosophically dismantled it, revealing profound truths about freedom and what it means to be human. “I would like us,” he once wrote, “to do something unprecedented: to create ourselves without finding it necessary to create an enemy.” That is not just social critique — it is metaphysics. It is ethics. It is philosophy.
Yet we call Baldwin a novelist, an essayist, a social critic. Anything but what he clearly was: a philosopher.
This isn’t a coincidence. It’s intellectual gatekeeping, and it robs all of us of a fuller understanding of wisdom itself.
There’s even a data point: The American Philosophical Association — the primary society for philosophers in America — has 6,985 members, according to its 2024 data. Of them, 116 are Black — a little less than 2%. If we find it alarming that Black people represent less than 6% of doctors and lawyers, why isn’t their near-total absence from philosophy — the field that shapes our understanding of justice, truth and human meaning — treated as equally troubling?
Philosophy has long positioned itself as the domain of pure reason, supposedly above the fray of politics and identity. But scratch the surface, and the bias becomes clear: The very definition of who counts as a philosopher has always been political.
Walk into almost any introductory philosophy classroom in the United States, and you’ll encounter a carefully curated lineage — from ancient Greece to medieval Europe, to Enlightenment Germany and France, and finally to a narrow slice of American white men. That’s not intellectual history. It’s intellectual mythology, one that treats whiteness and maleness as the natural vessels for deep thought.
This is not due to a lack of philosophical insight from Black thinkers. Long before Baldwin or bell hooks, philosophical traditions flourished across the African continent — from the concept of Ubuntu, which emphasizes the interdependence of humanity, to Ethiopian rationalism. Imagine if students learned Ubuntu alongside Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” What kind of society might that produce?
Even in the 20th century, the exclusion persisted. Audre Lorde, who wrote extensively about anger as a vehicle for truth, warned: “We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty.” But Lorde is most often referred to as a poet. bell hooks wrote powerfully about connection and ontology, saying, “When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.” Yet she’s typically described as a feminist theorist or cultural critic. Angela Davis is often introduced as an activist — rarely as a philosopher.
This isn’t just mislabeling. It’s intellectual apartheid.
As George Yancy, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, told me, “For the most part, there still exists the racist assumption that Black people are not philosophers — and cannot be philosophers. There is still the idea that being Black and a philosopher is an oxymoron.”
This isn’t just academic hair-splitting. The people we label as philosophers are given the efficacy to shape ethical frameworks in society. America’s founding fathers were heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophy. Socrates helped shape modern medical education. Immanuel Kant’s thoughts helped construct the idea of the United Nations.
So what might have changed if thinkers like Baldwin had been recognized as philosophers, not just commentators? If philosophy departments taught Baldwin’s meditations on identity and freedom alongside Locke and Rousseau, how might American civic life — or our national conception of liberty — look different today?
When we deny Black thinkers the title of philosopher, we don’t just rob them of recognition — we impoverish ourselves.
Philosophy is supposed to grapple with the biggest questions about human existence. Black thinkers have been wrestling with these questions for centuries, often with more urgency, clarity and moral courage than their white counterparts.
They’ve had to. When your humanity is constantly questioned, you develop profound insights into what humanity actually means. When your freedom is perpetually threatened, you understand liberty in ways that others never could.
James Baldwin was a philosopher. bell hooks was a philosopher. Angela Davis is a philosopher. So are the dozens of Black scholars quietly reshaping the field today, asking the hard questions about justice, identity and human flourishing that our moment desperately needs. One example is Amanda Gorman, who suggested in the poem she recited during Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration that democracy isn’t something to protect, but rather something we must finally accomplish.
“We will rebuild, reconcile and recover / and every known nook of our nation / and every corner called our country, / our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, / battered and beautiful,” Gorman said.
The philosopher isn’t just in the canon. She’s here. She’s speaking. The question is whether we’ll recognize her before it’s too late.
As Lorde wisely observed: “Everything can be used / except what is wasteful.” Let’s stop wasting the brilliance we’ve already been given.
Justin Ray is a Los Angeles-based journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times and the Guardian. He works for the independent, environmental news outlet Grist.
June 19, 2025
Justin Ray