Funding from Emory University made it possible to open this publication to the world throughtheir participation in the TOME initiative.xi, 220 pages : 23 cm The author intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. The author uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. by pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with non-Being - a logic which reproduces anti-black violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks - the author urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of way of existing that are not predicated on grounding in Being Includes bibliographical references (pages [201]-210) and index Acknowledgments -- The free Black is nothing -- The question of Black being -- Outlawing -- Scientific horror -- Catachrestic fantasies -- Adieu to the human -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index