The Racial Contract

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.

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.

An important and timely reminder of the ways in which a philosophy which ignores race is bound up with the privileging of whiteness.

This book is a testament to Mills's expertise as a philosopher, a scholar, and a downright intelligent writer.

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.'

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.