Diversity in Philosophy

Abstract

In his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, then-senator Barack Obama referred to his relatively fast rise in American politics as an “unlikely story,” yet one that could happen only in America. The remark was understood to refer, among other things, to America’s fi embrace and recognition that a black man could play a key role in helping defi ne and highlight a political course for a white presidential candidate. In his memorable speech, Obama spoke to America’s long-standing self-denial in refusing to recognize the social and historical reality about its social, cultural, and racial complexity, or that this mosaic of its social reality can no longer ignore the different narratives that tell its story. The transformation of the sociopolitical space by the African diaspora is not limited to President Obama’s unlikely story, but it remains the highest level of that infl uence. Besides it, there are or have been others in quite unlikely places: Benin-born Jean Gregoire Sagbo, a council member of Novozavidovo, a town in southern Russia; GuineaBissau-born Joaquin Crima, a well-known Afro-Russian dubbed “Russia’s Obama” by his admirers and detractors alike; Kenyaborn James Atebe, who was elected to two terms (in 2005 and 2008) as mayor of Mission, a town in British Columbia, Canada; and a Nigeria-born member of a town council in Ireland. This list does not include African-American-Russians in nationally visible positions in both the private and public sectors. Their stories, unlikely until recently, defi nitely have brought permanent changes to the histories of the countries whose narratives will no longer afford to leave them out. Yet, despite them, we by no means can claim fito have made a breakthrough, or even come close to living the promises of an inclusive world. In some places the changes come fast, and in others they may take four centuries. Sagbo’s story is particularly captivating. It goes something like this: when he arrived in this small and impoverished Russian town in 1982, people would stop to stare at him because they had never seen a black man. They may have heard stories about the distant continent and its people, but most likely it was the type that usually gets fithrough Africa-unfriendly media. Seventeen years later, only seventeen, they realized that Sagbo may be black in terms of phenotype, but inside he was a