Philosophy of Language and the African American Experience: Are There Metaphilosophical Implications?

Abstract

When I first read George Yancy's Geneva Smitherman: The Social Ontology of African-American the Power of Nommo, and the Dynamics of Resistance and Identity Through Language, my initial reaction was amaze ment over the submission of his article to such a strikingly different venue than what is normally the case for philosophical works of this kind and orientation. Intellectual tradition in this country and the academic powers that be would have generally dictated such an essay appear in African American Studies jour nals, where the intended audience are those who have an appreciation for and share similarities with Yancy's core background assumptions. Moreover, this becomes especially evident when we inspect Yancy's culturally anchored method and overall philosophical direction as embodied within an African American ethos. In his affirmation of African American language as a site for philosophy of language, Yancy boldly throws intellectual tradition, professional custom, and personal caution to the wind and these gestures have tremendous historical significance for African American philosophy specifically and professional phi losophy more generally. For instance, I know from my own research that it was not until Carlton Lee wrote his dissertation in 1951?titled Patterns of Leader ship in Race Relations: A Study in Leadership Among American Negroes?that an African American would dare to write a doctoral dissertation on Black people and then reasonably expect to receive the coveted degree in philosophy. Lee earned his doctorate at the highly acclaimed University of Chicago, where John Dewey, among others, established a formidable reputation for its philosophy department (McClendon 1981). I am also cognizant that up until the late 1970s, and on into the early 1980s, there were heated debates about the legitimacy of a Black philosophy. The venerable William R. Jones eloquently wrote in the pages of Philosophical Forum about the dialectics of philosophy as particularity and universality and forged new turf for the philosophy of the Black experience as a legitimate way to pursue academic philosophy (Jones 1977-1978).