A rich and varied field of study, Africana philosophy focuses not only on the diagnosis and ethical violations of social inequality but also on the normative values and ethical prescriptions necessary to advance the social and intellectual culture of democracy in the United States. The black experience serves as a critique of the present and as an aspiration for the unrealized possibility of American society and humanity more broadly. Africana philosophy concerns itself not only with the social and political manifestations of racism, but with the ethical dilemmas that emerge from failure to realize political and anthropological equality of human groups. Properly understood, Africana philosophy articulates the human possible. It concerns itself with the denial of the humanity of African peoples the world over and with Western/European theories of the human that obscure the actualities of nonwhite people.