Twenty-Five Years of Charles Mills’s Racial Contract in Sociology

Abstract

How have sociologists engaged the late philosopher Charles Mills’ landmark The Racial Contract (1997) in the twenty-five years since its publication? I first synthesize and periodize the corpus of sociological research citing The Racial Contract into two chronological and epistemological waves. The first wave (1997-2009) is distinguished by the scholarship of a vanguard who drew on the text, and direct engagement with Mills himself, in a paradigmatic shift away from the sociological study of race relations to the study of racism. The second wave (2010-present) is characterized by a fivefold increase in the text’s citation, tied to a resurgence of Du Boisian sociology and the early-career projects of a new generation of sociologists, as the text diffused from the sociology of race into other subfields of the discipline. I then go on to describe the influence of The Racial Contract on theory, data, and method in my own scholarship on racialization, first during my graduate studies in the United States, and later, as Sociology faculty in Canada at the University of Toronto, Mills’ alma mater. I end the essay with proposals for how a third wave of sociological engagement with The Racial Contract can more rigorously engage the text’s originating relationship to feminist political theory, as well as more actively be in dialogue with a new generation of critical philosophers who are already speaking back to us by centrally drawing on the work of sociologists.

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“…In The Racial Contract, Charles Mills (1997) specifically theorizes what he calls "white ignorance," which he defines as "white misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion and self-deception on matters related to race," protecting Whites and the unjust systems from which they benefit (p. 19). White people may produce racial ignorance to minimize the achievements of people of color and/or to minimize their suffering; to reinforce ideas of White superiority, entitlement, and meritocracy; to deny structural inequalities and evade responsibility for the impact of racism; and to justify material advantages/disadvantages and maintain White supremacy (Maghbouleh 2022;Mueller 2022). 1 But racial ignorance may also be cultivated by oppressed groups-whether due to internalized racism, as a strategy of survival, or both.…”

Centring anti‐oppressive justice: Re‐envisioning dentistry's social contract

“…By examining the social contract as a racial contract, Mills 'ultimately proposes a seriously reworked, radicalized (anti-racist, feminist, Third World) vision of liberalism'. 19 Mills charges that 'the Racial Contract is an exploitation contract' that centres white supremacy and global European domination. 20 To this end, justice and equality, which serve as a basis for the social contract, still means that Black people and other people of colour can be classified as sub-persons and excluded by race from 'the liberal project of modernity'.…”

“…In the United States, for example, if ‘we the people’ in its Constitution really meant ‘we the white people’, and society is formed as Hobbes stated for safety in a state a war, or to protect private property as Locke argued, how is the social contract not just a contract between white people to achieve their ends? By examining the social contract as a racial contract, Mills ‘ultimately proposes a seriously reworked, radicalized (anti‐racist, feminist, Third World) vision of liberalism’ 19 …”