ABSTRACT
This article explains black nihilism as a philosophical disposition profoundly rejecting antiblack racist ideals. Black nihilism entails a radical response to antiblack racism and traditional ideals and forms of value construction that can be traced to modern European conceptions of ‘Man,’ as a self-proclaimed standard bearer of human reality. Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought on the subject of nihilism, perhaps inadvertently, helps explain modern European attitudes as a pretext for antiblack racism and black experiences of existential invisibility. For example, Nietzsche’s internal critique of modern (European) ‘Man’ exposed a weak nihilistic solipsism, which is at the heart of antiblack racism. This form of European nihilism is a fundamental element of antiblack racism and situates experiences of black existential invisibility, black pessimism, and black nihilism. As a result, antiblack racism confronts black people with a ‘nihilistic threat,’ a consequence of which is the notion that human life is valuable only for those who count as racially ‘white.’ The choices of black optimism and black pessimism, in response to antiblack racism, can be further contextualized within a larger framework of strong, versus weak, black nihilistic responses. Frantz Fanon, for example, highlights black pessimism, and what I call, ‘strong black nihilism,’ by rejecting what can be called the ‘white nihilism’ of antiblack racism. Finally, this article will cite several contemporary philosophers who have written about multiple elements of black pessimism and black optimism, each of whom can also be understood in terms of (strong or weak) black nihilistic responses to antiblack racism.
