Charles W. Mills

Agora

Charles W. Mills

1951–2021

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

The social contract of modern political philosophy was in practice a “racial contract” among white people – and theories of justice must face this history instead of ignoring it.

Placement

Political Philosophy & Ethics (20th–21st c.) · Northern Europe · Politics & Law, Society & History, Epistemology

Jamaican-raised philosopher at Northwestern and CUNY: the social contract of modern political philosophy was in fact a “racial contract” among whites – and theories of justice must confront white supremacy and “white ignorance”.

Key ideas

The Racial Contract
White ignorance
Critique of ideal theory
Black radical liberalism

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Influence

Influenced by 4

Frederick Douglass

influenced by
Mills read Douglass’s Fourth of July speech (1852), with its antislavery reading of the Constitution, as a test of America’s liberal ideals (‘Whose Fourth of July?’, 1998). C. W. Mills, “Whose Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass and ‘Original Intent’”, in Blackness Visible (1998); F. Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852)
Evidence: AI draft
Frederick Douglass › 1818–1895
Karl Marx

influenced by
Mills wrote his doctorate on ideology in Marx and Engels (1985) and adapted historical materialism to race as a system of domination (From Class to Race, 2003). C. W. Mills, From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (2003); The Racial Contract (1997)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
W. E. B. Du Bois

influenced by
Mills took up Du Bois’s ‘color line’ as a global structure of white supremacy (The Racial Contract, 1997) and later read him as a ‘Black radical liberal’ (2018). C. W. Mills, The Racial Contract (1997); “W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Liberal”, in N. Bromell (ed.), A Political Companion to W. E. B. Du Bois (2018)
Evidence: AI draft
W. E. B. Du Bois › 1868–1963
Carole Pateman

influenced by
Mills modelled The Racial Contract (1997) on Pateman’s The Sexual Contract, which he called its inspiration, and later wrote Contract and Domination with her (2007). C. W. Mills, The Racial Contract (1997); C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract (1988); C. Pateman and C. W. Mills, Contract and Domination (2007)
Evidence: AI draft
Carole Pateman › b. 1940

Criticism

Criticizes 5

Thomas Hobbes

criticised
Mills noted that Hobbes, denying that the state of nature ever generally existed, located it among ‘the savage people in many places of America’ (The Racial Contract, 1997). C. W. Mills, The Racial Contract (1997); T. Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), ch. 13
Evidence: AI draft
Thomas Hobbes › 1588–1679
John Locke

criticised
Mills argued that Locke’s theory of property through labour let Native American land appear as vacant waste – part of a ‘racial contract’ (The Racial Contract, 1997). C. W. Mills, The Racial Contract (1997); J. Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689), ch. V
Evidence: AI draft
John Locke › 1632–1704
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

criticised
Mills argued that Rousseau’s ‘savages’ are always non-Europeans, and that his account of Europe’s lead through metallurgy and agriculture is historically inaccurate (The Racial Contract, 1997). C. W. Mills, The Racial Contract (1997); J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité (1755), part II
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Jacques Rousseau › 1712–1778
Immanuel Kant

criticised
Mills argued that Kant’s theory of personhood, read together with his racial theory, in practice treated non-whites as ‘sub-persons’ (‘Kant’s Untermenschen’, 2005). C. W. Mills, “Kant’s Untermenschen”, in A. Valls (ed.), Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy (2005); Black Rights/White Wrongs (2017)
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
John Rawls

criticised
Mills objected that Rawls’s ideal theory, assuming a well-ordered society, has little to say about racial injustice and its correction (Black Rights/White Wrongs, 2017). C. W. Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology”, Hypatia 20 (2005); “Rawls on Race/Race in Rawls”, Southern Journal of Philosophy 47 (2009); Black Rights/White Wrongs (2017)
Evidence: AI draft
John Rawls › 1921–2002

Works

1997The Racial Contract
The social contract of modern political philosophy read as it worked in practice: an agreement among whites that made non-whites less than full persons – sustained by an “epistemology of ignorance”.

Position

“The Racial Contract” turned social-contract theory against itself. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant described a contract among free and equal persons; Mills argues that the real contract underlying modern European expansion was a “racial contract” among whites, which classified non-whites as less than full persons and legitimised conquest, slavery and segregation. The contract is not a metaphor for prejudice but a political system, “global white supremacy”, which mainstream political philosophy has passed over in silence. Part of it is an inverted “epistemology of ignorance”: a “white ignorance” that leaves those who benefit from domination unable to see it. In later work Mills criticised Rawls and his successors for their “ideal theory”, which assumes a well-ordered society and therefore has little to say about correcting historical injustice. His answer was not to abandon liberalism but to transform it into a “Black radical liberalism” that puts race and the legacy of racial domination at the centre of the question of justice.

Life & context

Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) was born in London and grew up in Kingston, Jamaica. He studied physics at the University of the West Indies and taught it in Jamaica before turning to philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he completed a doctorate on the concept of ideology in Marx and Engels in 1985. He taught at the University of Oklahoma and for seventeen years at the University of Illinois at Chicago, then at Northwestern University as John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and, from 2016, as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and died of cancer in 2021.