Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Racial Contract, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Global White Supremacy
Racism in Philosophy
Cognitive Distortion and White Ignorance
Racism’s Historical Evolution
Summary
Analysis
Mills argues that political theorists should replace the social contract with the racial contract, which paints a more accurate picture of the world. This means that it can better show how to improve the world, which Mills argues is the real purpose of political philosophy. Even when mainstream theorists insist that their view is purely theoretical and objective, it’s still implicitly based on a whitewashed vision of the word, in which racism, colonialism, and slavery are insignificant. In contrast, the racial contract theory accurately sees this history. It shows how the social contract’s race-blindness is actually a part of white supremacy.
Whereas social contract theorists claim objectivity, Mills points out that no philosophical theory is totally objective: that’s why there’s disagreement in philosophy. All philosophy is written from some perspective, and white scholars claiming to be objective fail to see that their perspective depends on their specific circumstances. Rather than choosing a theory based on objectivity, Mills instead bases his theory on what is most politically useful for contemporary people. As he has shown that white supremacy is a dominant global political system, it’s only logical that he proposes a racial contract theory that adequately explains it.
Themes
As philosophers throughout history have known, people’s social position affects the ideas they pursue and the theories they develop. This is why philosophers often examine their predecessors’ social biases to understand where they went wrong. Similarly, Marxist and feminist theorists have shown how social hierarchy distorts people’s thinking, which in turn prevents them from seeing the hierarchy around them in the first place.
Mills again shows how his critique of mainstream philosophy and his critique of the racial contract work together: philosophers tend to be blind to the way their social position influences their work, because the racial contract generally prevents white people from adequately understanding the political and economic structure of the world. By demystifying this structure, the racial contract theory can hopefully show philosophers what they have been missing.
Themes
In this vein, Mills thinks that white people fail to understand their privilege because of that privilege. Therefore, they tend not to understand the main political issues that are urgently important to the majority of the world’s population. This explains why white philosophers almost entirely ignore abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and Indigenous thinkers. This would require them to first recognize that white supremacy is a global political system worth challenging.
Mills believes that white academics fail to understand non-white people’s important contributions to philosophy, and they also fail to recognize the full extent of white supremacy. In other words, they remain stuck in social contract theory, in which it’s possible to talk about a fair and just society without talking about race, because people of color simply do not enter the equation.
Themes
Next, Mills argues that the racial contract theory is useful because it shows that race is both a powerful political force and a social construction. This provides an alternative to the assumption that race is either doesn’t exist or is a biological essence that people can’t help. Instead of labeling white people as evil, Mills’s theory gives them the choice to either denounce or perpetuate political white supremacy.
Mills offers his theory as a middle ground between two popular positions that often come up in popular conversations about racism. On one hand, many anti-racists see that racism has powerful impacts on society, so they assume that race must represent some significant truth about people’s inner identities. Ironically, just like white supremacists, they end up believing that race is a biological essence. On the other hand, many others assume that, because race is merely a social construct with little to no biological basis, it cannot be as powerful as it really is. Mills’s view takes the advantages of both these interpretations by showing that race is a social construct and has powerful effects.
Themes
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The racial contract theory also shows that European racism is the product of a particular history, but the world could look very different under different circumstances. For instance, Japan challenged white supremacy in the 20th century, as Japanese imperialism was also based on an ideology of racial supremacy. While the white racial contract has been the most powerful, it hasn’t been the only one.
Again, Mills emphasizes that he doesn’t think anything is inherently wrong with white people: their power and privilege is the cumulative result of history, not of anything distinctive about them. Racism largely depends on the idea that inherent racial differences exist, but Mills doesn’t believe that they do.
Themes
Next, Mills clarifies that he’s not a postmodernist or deconstructionist. Instead, he considers himself “pro-Enlightenment” and “antipostmodernist.” His problem isn’t contract theories, but rather the way white people have restricted such theories to themselves. In short, Mills is looking at the real world, comparing it to ideals of equality and justice that it hasn’t realized, and theorizing in order to help achieve those ideals. Meanwhile, the social contract uses illusions and abstractions to distract people from the real world. Mills isn’t against all abstraction, just “abstract[ing] away from the things that matter,” meaning the things that actually determine the way society functions.
It may seem strange that Mills considers himself “pro-Enlightenment,” given that he spends much of the book criticizing Enlightenment philosophers. His point is that the racial contract is really what prevents society from achieving these philosophers’ stated values (like freedom, equality, and justice). Therefore, Mills agrees with the Enlightenment’s stated values—he just doesn’t think Enlightenment philosophers actually wanted to extend them to all human beings. Furthermore, he believes that these philosophers’ theories actually make those values harder to achieve by covering up the truth.
Themes
Lastly, Mills contextualizes his work in the “long, honorable tradition of oppositional black theory,” through which Black people have reclaimed their ability to theorize in a society that treats them as subpersons who are incapable of free thought. Black theorists often had to educate themselves and work outside of white universities. They have long seen how white supremacy maintains power and privilege for white people through domination and exclusion. The racial contract threatens this power and privilege by theorizing in the same way as white thinkers. Thus, it can connect Black thought to mainstream white thought, and mainstream white thought to reality. Meanwhile, global inequalities continue to deepen, and ending them remains an urgent concern. Many people pretend they don’t exist, and the racial contract thrives on their ignorance.
Given his continual emphasis on the history of white supremacy and non-white people’s resistance to the racial contract, it only makes sense that Mills closes his book by paying homage to the “long, honorable tradition” that has influenced him. In addition to acknowledging his sources and helping guide his readers to important works of Black philosophy, this nod to history is Mills’s way to counteract some philosophers’ tendency to treat philosophical questions and ideas as though they were timeless and unchanging. In reality, ideas are marked by the people, places, and time periods that produce them. This is why Mills proposes the racial contract as a useful idea for the present era of informal white supremacy and growing global inequality.
Themes
