Foreword: The Religious Situation of Black Studies Then and Now

Abstract

ABSTRACT Published in 1995, Victor Anderson’s Beyond Ontological Blackness (Continuum Press) provocatively challenged the racial apologetics of Black scholars in Black Studies, whose arguments, he argued, are predicated on an “ontological Blackness” that perpetuates the very essentialist discourse that they rejected. Anderson’s work continues to trouble the waters of philosophical, political, and religious thought on race, culture, and identity. This essay introduces the special issue of Black Theology: An International Journal in honour of the near-thirtieth anniversary of Beyond Ontological Blackness.