The Racial Contract is a book by the Jamaican philosopher Charles W. Mills in which he shows that, although it is conventional to represent the social contract moral and political theories of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant as neutral with respect to race and ethnicity, in actuality, the philosophers understood them to regulate only relations between whites; in relation to non-whites, these philosophers helped to create a "racial contract", which in both formal and informal ways permitted whites to oppress and exploit non-whites and validate their own moral ideals in dealing with non-whites.[1] Because in contemporary political philosophy, white philosophers take their own white privilege for granted, they don't recognize that white supremacy is a political system, and so in their developments of ideal, moral and political theory never consider actual practice. Mills proposes to develop a non-ideal theory "to explain and expose the inequities of the actual nonideal policy and to help us see through the theories and moral justifications offered in defense of them." Using it as a central concept, "the notion of a Racial Contract might be more revealing of the real character of the world we are living in, and the corresponding historical deficiencies of its normative theories and practices, than the raceless notions currently dominant in political theory."[2][3] The book has been translated into various languages.
Mills argues that racism is at the core of the "social contract", rather than racism being an unintended result attributed to the failings of imperfect men. Specifically, the racial contract is a tacit (and at times explicit) agreement among members of the tribes of Europe to assert, promote, and maintain the ideal of white supremacy as against all other tribes of the world. This intention is deliberate and an integral characteristic of the social contract, a characteristic which persists to the present day. In Mills' words, "...what has usually been taken...as the racist 'exception' has really been the rule; what has been taken as the 'rule'...[racial equality]...has really been the exception."[4]
Mills argues however, that these ideals of the social contract are at worst pure fiction or at best were intended only to apply to a specific group of people, namely members of the tribes of Europe and their genetic descendants. "...when white people say 'Justice,' they mean 'Just Us'."[5]
Central to his discussion of the racial contract is his non-normative of white supremacy. Rather than viewing white supremacy as an ideology or a set of beliefs that renders the rest of the nonwhite world inferior, it is a political system of domination. He writes that “racism (or, as I will argue, global white supremacy), is itself a political system, a particular power structure of formal or informal rule, socioeconomic privilege and norms for the differential distribution of material wealth and opportunities, benefits and burdens, rights and duties.”[6] (3) One should note, though, that his particular system goes beyond the material and extends white domination to the cultural, cognitive-moral, and metaphysical spheres.[7] Thus, the racial contract is a social contract that begins with the idea “we the white people…”[6] and the global society that ensues is marked by domination in all aspects of life. The racial contract also breaks from typical social contract theory, which is a normative tool for determining the ideals of justice (see John Rawls for more contemporary social contract theory), in that it actually attempts to explain how actual society came to be.[8]
Reception
The contributions that Mills makes with The Racial Contract have been largely viewed as positive in philosophy and political philosophy. He expands upon the theories surrounding the social contract to include race, similarly to feminist literature, pointing out the inconsistencies between Western Philosophy and issues of gender and race. Other theorists have agreed, critiqued, and expanded upon Mills' work in short book reviews. Reviews cited in Further Reading include articles published by Edward Johnson, Thomas McCarthy, and Stephen Steinburg, with some criticism from Andrew Valls and Bat-Ami BarOn.
On a positive note, Johnson analyzes the way in which white western philosophers denied Black or non-white people from the social contract, stating: "Thus in Mills' account of the theories he examines, 'non-white' is taken to signify a non-person rather than a specific racial grouping." (Johnson 190). This gave white philosophers the ability to exclude non-white people from the protections the social contract granted since they were a "non-person". McCarthy adds his own analysis of Mills, stating "His book is conceived as an exercise in "critical race theory"...It excavates the racial presumptions underlying mainstream liberal thought to reveal its dark side." (McCarthy 453). In a review done by Edward Johnson, he discusses the color line and difference between "white" and "nonwhite" that Mill's emphasizes throughout the book. He agrees with how Mills characterizes racism as "patterns of moral failure" becoming predictable even though these failures may evolve in the way they present themselves to society. (Johnson 191). "The arguments are worth starting, or restarting, as we struggle toward that unified theory of oppression which would allow us to sort out competing claims." (Johnson 191). Praise of the work emphasizes how traditional western philosophy has lacked serious convserattons about race especially in regaurds to contract theory. In Stephen Steinburg's review, he points out this missing acknowledgment of race, "in this slim, well crafted volume, Mills cuts through the shibboleths and the mystifications that pervade both popular and academic discourse on race." (Steinburg 1227). These reviews done by other philosophers and theorists recognize and appreciate the addition of race into a discussion that had not included it before. Expanding social contract theory to involve race, and in other cases with the Sexual Contract, sex and gender, opens up this discourse for other groups of people.
Others such as Valls, critiqued Mills work saying "still, this reader often wished Mills had sacrificed some of the book's punchiness for greater philosophical depth." (Valls). He pointed out some contradictions he found in Mills writing, stating how he found his claims about Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau to be either unclear or unsubstantiated. Bat-Ami BarOn criticizes the specific notion of consent in his review of Mill's work. He states: "Mills believes...that whites continue to be real signatories to the Racial Contract. Yet, how does one consent to this racial agreement." and adding that "Mills seems to be interested in because he is interested in the assignment of moral responsibility and blame" (BarOn 158-159). Despite his issues with some of Mill's assertions throughout the book, he did end his review on a positive note: "I think that Mill's idea of a Racial Contract is a courageously creative kind of "dessert speech" (BarOn 160). He believes that these ideas need to be tested and discussed more to follow them to their logical conclusions, work out inconsistencies, and discover their limitations. Some find Mill's work inconsistent, and even contradictory, believing it is not a good response to social contract theory. These contrasting claims show a variety of responses to Mills bringing race into the conversation of the social contract and classical western philosophy.
Johnson, Edward (1999). "Review of The Racial Contract". Race, Gender & Class. 6 (3): 189–192. ISSN1082-8354. JSTOR41674902.
Marwah, Inder S. (2022), Levy, Jacob T. (ed.), "Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract", The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory, Oxford University Press
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