Racial Contract

The late Charles Mills (d. 2021) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, after previously teaching at the University of Oklahoma, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University. His books include Blackness Visible and Black Rights/White Wrongs.Tommie Shelby is the Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University.

Mills radically challenges us to reevaluate how we think about social contract theory, the concept of race, and the structure of our political systems. This is a very important book indeed.(teaching philosophy) Mills contends that the ground zero of Western democratic societies is not the mythical social contract that has prevailed among political philosophers but a 'racial contract.'(THE NATION) This book is a testament to Mills's expertise as a philosopher, a scholar, and a downright intelligent writer.(Small Axe) An important and timely reminder of the ways in which a philosophy which ignores race is bound up with the privileging of whiteness.(Women's Philosophy Review)

• INTRODUCTION1. OVERVIEWThe Racial Contract is political, moral, and epistemologicalThe Racial Contract is a historical actualityThe Racial Contract is an exploitation contract2. DETAILSThe Racial Contract norms (and races) spaceThe Racial Contract norms (and races) the individualThe Racial Contract underwrites the modernsocial contractThe Racial Contract has to be enforced throughviolence and ideological conditioning3. "NATURALIZED" MERITSThe Racial Contract historically tracks the actual moral/political consciousness of (most) white moral agentsThe Racial Contract has always been recognized by nonwhites as the real moral/political agreement to be challengedThe "Racial Contract" as a theory is explanatorily superior to the raceless social contract