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The Racial Contract

The Racial Contract

by Charles W. Mills

Foreword by Tommie Shelby

Published by: Cornell University Press

Imprint: Cornell University Press

140.00 × 216.00 mm

WEB PDF
9781501764301
Published: April 2022

EPUB
9781501764295
Published: April 2022

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state.

As this 25th anniversary edition—featuring a foreword by Tommy Shelbie and a new preface by the author—makes clear, the still-urgent The Racial Contract continues to inspire, provoke, and influence thinking about the intersection of the racist underpinnings of political philosophy.

INTRODUCTION
1. OVERVIEW
The Racial Contract is political, moral, and epistemological
The Racial Contract is a historical actuality
The Racial Contract is an exploitation contract
2. DETAILS
The Racial Contract norms (and races) space
The Racial Contract norms (and races) the individual
The Racial Contract underwrites the modernsocial contract
The Racial Contract has to be enforced throughviolence and ideological conditioning
3. "NATURALIZED" MERITS
The Racial Contract historically tracks the actual moral/political consciousness of (most) white moral agents
The Racial Contract has always been recognized by nonwhites as the real moral/political agreement to be challenged
The "Racial Contract" as a theory is explanatorily superior to the raceless social 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