Race has not traditionally been seen as an interesting or worthy subject of investigation for white western philosophers, though it has, of course, been the central preoccupation of black intellectuals in the west.1 such sporadic discussions as have taken place in "white* anglo-american philosophy have usually revolved around moral issues; for example, the debates from t he 1970s onward about the rights and wrongs of affirmative action. but race raises interesting metaphysical issues as well, in terms of who and what we are, that can also properly be seen as philosophical and that deserve more analysis than they have usually received. the modern world has been profoundly affected by race for several centuries, not merely in the united states and the americas, with their history of aborig-inal expropriation and african slavery, but, more broadly, through the shaping of the planet as a whole by european colonialism. in a sense, then, this neglect by western philosophy has .