The Racial Contract, published in 1997 by Cornell University Press, is a seminal text from moral and political philosopher Charles Mills (1950-2021). In the text, he argues that the truth of the original social contract is the Racial Contract, an agreement between European/white men to establish a white supremacist polity characterized by the subordination and exploitation of non-European/nonwhite people on global, national, local, and micro levels of society. He discusses historical evidence that the series of large-scale social contracts and subsidiary contracts have established and reinforce white supremacy. The Racial Contract won the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. This guide refers to the Cornell University Press 25th Anniversary Edition.

Summary

Mills’s argument is, in part, an indictment of Rawlsian-inspired mainstream contract theory discourse. By pointing out the silence of mainstream philosophical discourse on the subject of race/racism and its reliance on idealized abstractions rather than historical and contemporary realities, Mills posits that the Racial Contract remains in effect, specifically the inverted epistemology that precludes white people’s recognition and accurate interpretation of the white supremacist environment and social realities that they create and sustain. Mills asserts that those who are objects to the Racial Contract, non-European/nonwhite people who have been deemed subpersons, share a more accurate view of historical and social realities, and thus, are better able to prescribe the means by which society reaches towards the ideals that Western philosophy purportedly advocates. 

As an example of Critical Race Theory and the tradition of oppositional Black theory, The Racial Contract uses the language of Social Contract Theory to situate Mills’s discussion in the dominant academic conversation. He engages with the work of four well-known classic contract theorists—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant—as well as other mainstream theorists, and he presents an alternative perspective that centers and names white supremacy as the dominant political system of the modern polity that these theorists envision.

The book is divided into three chapters, each containing theses where Mills builds his argument about the racially based truth of the original social contract. In Chapter 1, “Overview,” Mills illustrates the moral, political, epistemological, and economic dimensions of the Racial Contract, as well as the historical actuality of the Contract. Chapter 2, “Details,” more explicitly articulates how these dimensions contribute to the norming and racing of spaces and individuals, based on the crucial distinction between personhood and subpersonhood. Mills explains the Racial Contract’s relationship to the social contract, as well as how the Racial Contract is established and reinforced through coercive means. In Chapter 3, “‘Naturalized’ Merits,” Mills discusses the moral and political consciousness prescribed by the Racial Contract and the perspectives of non-European/nonwhite people who have always recognized and pointed out the cognitive dysfunction that white supremacy prescribes to its beneficiaries. Finally, he makes the case for why his theory should enter and supplement mainstream discourse.