In diverse works, I have made a case not merely for the continuing relevance of the Enlightenment project in Africa. I have argued for its necessity if Africa and Africans are to ameliorate, if not overcome, the problems that continue to hobble the continent and its long-suffering peoples. One bulwark against a wider acceptance of this necessity is the racialization of thought, which identifies the Enlightenment with a particular race. Doing so makes it almost illegitimate by definition for those of us outside of that designated racial identity to entertain, much less embrace, the project. In this presentation, I argue that that the racialization of thought goes all the way back to the very period of the Enlightenment and it prevented some of its original philosophers, including Immanuel Kant, from realizing the full force of their discoveries and their implications for humanity across the board. Fast forward three centuries and we encounter Wole Soyinka, one of the most important thinkers of our time, who, in his assessment of the Enlightenment’s legacy, is not hobbled by the racialization of thought. Instead, by historicizing it, he makes its continuing force and relevance incredibly clear. He shares with us how the wisdom of the enlightenment avails us in dealing with some of the problems that its thinkers dealt with and still stalk us today. What was it that Kant got wrong and Soyinka gets right about the Enlightenment? It is universality, period!