If one is not Black African, one must be cautious when thinking about Black African art. Most of the published work about Black African art that has circulated in the west up until the 1990s was all written by white western scholars. Under the influence of white supremacy and Enlightenment ideology, white western scholars believed that they could understand Black African art better than Black Africans. The continued prejudice in the white western world means that Black African scholarship remains ignored when it pertains to Black African art, philosophy, and aesthetics. White westerners with little or no knowledge of Black African cultures they studied had two things that blocked them from understanding what they studied. ‘First, it relates to embedded prejudice, a social inheritance that human beings sometimes display even if involuntarily. The second aspect pertains to ignorance. The modernist cultural hegemony has yet to acknowledge Africa as a legitimate global force in visual arts.’

To understand Black African aesthetics, art, and culture, one needs to look to Black African scholars who are better informed than their white European counterparts. There is a danger in thinking that Black Africa is a place where everyone has the same cosmology, aesthetics, culture, and language. Africa encompasses over thirteen million square miles, four times the size of the contiguous United States. There are hundreds of languages and groups within Black Africa, so one cannot speak of the area as a homogenous whole. If one thinks about the striking differences between different areas of the United States separated by hundreds of miles, one can imagine the differences that occur in Black Africa. To understand how Black African objects in white western scholarship and art are more representative of white western culture and ideas of Black Africa and less representative of Black Africa itself, one must examine Black African ideas, scholarship, and culture. Even though Black Africa does not have a singular language and culture, there are significant similarities that represent Black African cultural threads.

In this chapter, we will explore major themes and ideas found in Black Africa concerning human existence, Truth, and beauty. This work is not a definitive presentation of Black African thought or aesthetics, but a sample of the key themes and positions Black African scholars have held regarding Black African philosophy, aesthetics, and culture.