Africana philosophy is in the main a philosophy of the present. It is striking, however, that though the present suffuses and saturates the ideas, relationships, and contours of Africana philosophy, the overwhelming registers of the field, its idioms and grounding metaphors, turn on past and future states. The reasons why are worth exploring. This essay suggests that an acknowledgement of Africana philosophy as a philosophy of the present would name what makes that present impossible, and it follows, what must be abolished to make it possible.