Abstract

The author criticizes efforts to resuscitate W. E. B. Du Bois’s claim that people of African descent have a special obligation to each other premised on race. He concludes that Africana philosophers such as Du Bois, Alain Locke, and Lucius Outlaw do not claim to possess essential knowledge of the human condition but instead propose a story human beings can tell about what they’re doing with their lives. Their story exerts imperative force only when they can convince themselves that it is a better story than all the others they have inherited.