Kwame Anthony Appiah delivers the Henry Louis Gates Jr. Inaugural Lecture at Yale University, October 2012.
About the Speaker:
Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
“Of Our Spiritual Strivings” is one of the most-often-quoted pieces of the black canon, and it is one of the first thorough attempts at understanding blackness through a psychological and philosophical lens.
Read More
The error that Appiah denounces is “essentialism”: the theory that members of the same group share some inner essence that explains what they have in common.
Read More
The tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read More
The thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read More
I spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read More
