Anthony Appiah's Take on Pan-Africanism and Racism

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Research Project for Philosophy Class
Introduction
Kwame, British-born American philosopher and novelist Anthony Appiah, was born in London, England, on May 8, 1954. Appiah is best known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of culture; he is also a writer and a researcher of African and African American studies. 'Appiah' was the son of Ghanaian-born lawyer Joseph Appiah and British nobleman Sir Stafford Cripps's daughter Peggy. In 1982, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Clare College, Cambridge, studying at Bryanston School. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (1992) is one of his best-known works, and this talk will focus on that book. Focusing on Appiah's ideas on African identity and how the world views Africa, I will provide two critical themes based on In My Father's House.
Pan Africanism
To set the stage for what follows, Appiah begins with an examination of the emergence of Pan-Africanism while also laying out his reasons for rejecting the race-based ideology that he regards as the underpinning Pan-Africanists' efforts to unite Africa and its people. "The Invention of Africa," as the essay's title suggests, is a reference to A. P. Piah's need to create a context to answer the question, "what is Africa? " (Appiah, 26). For this, Appiah examines how many sub-Saharan African countries adopted the languages of their European occupiers to provide context for the study of post-Independence African politics. When discussing African countries, he cleverly elaborates on the variety of languages and cultures that exist within them to emphasize some of the complexity surrounding the goal of Pan-Africanism.
As Appiah tries to reconcile Pan-Africanism based on "intrinsic racism" with what he believes to be the real desire of all Africans to join, the complexity and variety of Africa's people, languages, cultures, and even landscapes that keep resurfacing for him. But even if he rejects prejudice as a tool of unity, I agree with his statement that race does not play a vital part in estimating the unification of Africa and the Pan-African vision. Simply put, I believe that the situations of African colonies' independence, including the continued influence of European colonizers, the strange circumstance of underdevelopment the continent faced, and the reality of a seemingly perpetual political ecology defined by fragmented relationships and dysfunctionality, necessitate the need for Pan-African unity as a means of progress for the continent.
If you want to understand Appiah's stance on race-based unity, it may be helpful to analyze the two sorts of racism he refers to as intrinsic and extrinsic. ( At the outset of his examination of the growth of Pan-Africanism, Appiah argues that the racism he encounters in the works of early Pan-Africanists like Alexander Crummell and W. E. B. Du Bois differs from, say, Nazi-style racism. When it comes to those who use racialized rhetoric to unite disparate groups to promote self-determination in Africa and the continent's diaspora, Appiah describes intrinsic racists as "people who differentiate morally between members of different races because they belie...