(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1997)

by Albert Mosley
Philosophy Department
Ohio University
Athens, OH, 45701

DO NOT QUOTE

Comments Welcomed

For Charles Mills, the "Racial Contract" is a set of meta-agreements between whites to categorize non-whites as subpersons of inferior moral and legal status relative to whites. This "contract" gives whites the right to exploit non-whites and deny them opportunities provided to whites. It portrays non-whites as designated to serve whites much as non-humans were designated by God to serve the benefit of humans. Mills argument helps make clear how, for most of the modern era, whites have had as little obligation to recognize the rights of non-whites as they have had to recognize the rights of non-humans.

Mills acknowledges that gender and class have also determined hierarchical relationships among human beings. All human beings have multiple identities determined by the categories of race, gender, class, religion, locale, intelligence level, talent level, educational level, ect. (white, woman, poor, catholic, rural, SouthEast USA, 1350 SAT, State Champion Banjo player, etc.). But race, Mill argues, is the identity that has been most important in determining vulnerability to exploitation and access to beneficial opportunities. ¹

The purpose of the 'racial contract' and the 'racial state' it engenders rests in "securing the privileges and advantages of the full white citizens and maintaining the subordination of nonwhites". (14) Nonwhites were construed as being unequal by nature. They had instrumental worth insofar as they were useful in achieving objectives set by whites, but no intrinsic worth that whites need respect. Non-whites had little more moral or political standing than dogs, horses, or cattle, because non-whites were considered little more than non-human animals. (16)

For Mills, the Social Contract theory of the origins of the modern state "is purely a prescriptive thought experiment" (19), but the Racial Contract theory "has the best claim to being an actual historical fact" (20). It can be seen in the global extension of European domination and white supremacy, the division of the world into colonizer and colonized, men and natives. "Although no single act literally corresponds to the drawing up and signing of a contract, there is a series of acts...which collectively can be seen...as its conceptual, juridical, and normative equivalent." (20-21) This series of acts includes papal bulls, theological pronouncements, treaties, legal decisions, etc., all imposing the status of inferiority and subordination onto the non-white races of the world. "

Thus, Mill's argues that a category crystallized over time in European thought to represent entities who are humanoid but not fully human ('savages', 'barbarians') and who are identified as such by being members of the general set of nonwhite races. Influenced by...the distinction between full and question-mark humans, Europeans set up a two-tiered moral code with one set of rules for whites and another for nonwhites." (23) "Indian laws, slave codes, and colonial native acts formally codified the subordinate status of nonwhites and (ostensibly) regulated their treatment, creating a juridical space for non-Europeans as a separate category of beings." (26) A hierarchical system based on the racial superiority of Europeans and extended globally was an essential feature of the creation of the modern world. (27)

Mill's argues that, while the Social Contract assumed the relative equality of individuals in a state of nature, and was designed to protect property rights, the Racial Contract assumed that non-whites were unequal to whites in a state of nature, and their exploitation was morally justified by theology, philosophy, and science. The result is that Europeans control wealth and assets throughout the world grossly out of proportion to their percentage of the world's population. (36) Mills concludes that "white people, Europeans and their descendants, continue to benefit from the Racial Contract", and accept their privilege as a legitimate entitlement. (40)

While the Social Contract is an admitted fictional reconstruction of civil society, the Racial Contract is "a 'naturalized' account of the actual historical record". (91) 

The Social Contract makes it appear that racism was and continues to be a deviation from the ideal of a race neutral, color blind society. But the actual historical record makes it clear that racism has been the norm from the beginning of modernity and that "duties, rights, and liberties have routinely been assigned on a racially differentiated basis". (93) Mill stresses that the fiction of the Social Contract masks the centrality of racist activities in the formation of the modern state, making it difficult for whites to see actions, policies, and results for what they are.

Mills accuses European ethical theorists of a continuing complicity in the Racial Contract by their failure to acknowledge the centrality of racist thinking in the development of the modern world. The result is that whites "take for granted the appropriateness of concepts legitimizing the racial order" and the current status quo. (95) Whites assume that they ought to be better off than non-whites, not because of the advantages provided them by the Racial Contract, but because they are naturally better than nonwhites, both cognitively, morally, and physically. (95)

Whites thus have a vested interest in giving the mythical Social Contract greater significance then the actual Racial Contract. And Mills concludes that philosophers and political theorists using the Social Contract model in order to elucidate issues in social and political philosophy should either replace it or supplement it with the Racial Contract model. It is not that the system is sound except for some unfortunate deviations that manifest as racist. Rather, Mills claims that racism is central to the maintenance of the current socio-political system. It is this very centrality that has made its existence so difficult for those who benefit from it to see. (124)

Mills is not seduced by the fallacy that since race is not a valid biological category, it is therefore a nonexistent fiction. To the contrary, "Race", he emphasizes, "is sociopolitical rather than biological, but it is nonetheless real." (126) As such, the reality of race is independent of skull size, skin color, climate, or religion. Being white is not the result of a biological phenotype; rather, it is the result of "a set of power relations". This means that it is the privileges and not the biological phenotype typically associated with white people that determines their behavior. Recognition of the Racial Contract thus makes room for 'white renegades' and 'white traitors'. (127) Recognition of the fact of racial privilege as endemic to the status quo, Mills concludes, is the antidote to "the epistemology of ignorance required by the Racial Contract." (133)

Most of what I have presented of Mills' views, I agree with. Highlighting the centrality of racism in the modern world is an important antidote to orthodox social and political philosophy. But let me now proceed to those aspects of Mills' project that I do not agree with, and indeed, which I believe impede his own desired end of 'genuine dialogue between oppressors and oppressed'. (133)

Mills distinguishes the "political polity" - where individuals in a state of nature are transformed into members of the state - from the "racial polity" - where non-whites are denied their heritage and transformed into subjects ruled by whites. (12)

On the social contract theory interpretation of the establishment of the political polity, all men are assumed free and (relatively) equal in a state of nature, and they enter into a contract with one another to establish government that will secure each of them in their property. On the other hand, Mill argues that the crucial step in establishing the 'racial polity' "is the preliminary conceptual partitioning...of human populations into 'white' and 'nonwhite' men." (12-13) such that only white men are assumed free and (relatively) equal.

But I believe this distorts the manner in which the social contract was presented during the 16th and Seventeenth centuries. For Locke and Hobbes, all men were not equal under the social contract. Only men of property were equal, and then only equal in their interests in preserving the rights of property. Those with more property had more rights, and the social contract was designed to preserve the privileges of property. Those who had no property in land or implements had no right to their use. At best, they were only free to sell their labor to those with property in capital.  Locke argued that the propertyless were reduced to a hands to mouth existence, limited by the competition of cheap labor to achieving only subsistence wages. Because of their circumstance, they were unable to develop their reasoning capacities, and were thus wards of the states rather than citizens of the state. ² Malthus went further, arguing that the propertyless were incapable of rational behavior, not because of their circumstances, but because of their inferior moral and reasoning capacities. In either case, the propertyless were construed as 'humanoids' incapable of the kind of behavior that reflected awareness of both revealed and natural law. ³

Mill's claim that a category crystallized over time in European thought to represent entities who are humanoid but not fully human is true. But it is not true that this category derived from Europeans relationships with non-Europeans. On the contrary, I believe there is substantial historical evidence to show that it is a category which had already developed among Europeans, and only subsequently was applied to non-Europeans. The Irish, Welsh, and Scots were considered to be inferior to Anglo-Saxons long before Africans were considered inferior to Europeans.

Mills argues that the relationship between the white and non-white races "is a phenomenon of the modern epoch" because white people do not preexist the modern era.(63) This, however, is a curious position. In similar fashion, we might claim that 'Humans use ball-point pens to write.' could not have been true before the 20th century, since ball-point pens did not exist prior to then. But this is not to say that the relationship 'Humans use y to write.' did not exist before the 20th century. Nor would we want to deny that a claim of the form "Humans use y to z." could have existed before the invention of writing, or that a claim of the form 'x's use y's to z.' could have existed before the existence of homo sapiens. This point is meant to show how racist relationships may have existed in Europe prior to their manifestation between whites and non-whites.

Mills is not unaware of intra-European racism, and mentions the Nazi attempt to make Aryans the "masters of the master race". He also mentions the Irish, Slavs, Mediterranean, and Jews as "borderline Europeans", pointing out that "these problem cases are useful in illustrating - against essentialists - the social rather than biological basis of the Racial Contract. Phenotypical whiteness and European origin were not always sufficient for full whiteness..". (80) For Mills, such cases merely show "that the membership requirements for Whiteness are rewritten over time, with shifting criteria prescribed by the evolving Racial Contract". (81) But this response simply ignores the central question of which came first, endogenous or exogenous racism. For Mills, exogenous racism was the model for endogenous racism. On the position I am arguing, endogenous racism was the model for exogenous racism.

Mills construes the Nazi drive to establish superiority over all Europeans as simply the application of policies that hitherto had been limited to non-Europeans. (105-106) And he accuses contemporary whites, "By unquestioningly 'going along with things', by accepting all the privileges of whiteness.." of tacitly consenting to the Racial Contract. (107) However, one danger with Mill's way of looking at things is the suggestion that Nazism was the misapplication of a policy that otherwise had produced sound results for whites. It becomes possible, in other words, to construe racist policy as successful when applied to truly inferior species and breeds, and unsuccessful only when misapplied to white europeans. On the view I have suggested, it is important not to replace or supplement the social contract with the racial contract, but rather to recognize the social contract as already incorporating a tacit racial division between the propertied and the propertyless.

Finally, Mills point that being white is not the result of a biological phenotype is well taken, but is unnecessarily distorted by the example he uses to illustrate it: "All peoples can fall into Whiteness under the appropriate circumstances, as shown by the ("white") black Hutus' 1994 massacre of half a million to a million inferior black Tutsis in a few bloody weeks in Rwanda." (129) In fact, it was the Hutus who had been subjugated for centuries by the Tutsi, and who were attempting to eliminate their former masters through an act of genocide. I am certain Mill's would not endorse such as a solution to the racial problems between whites and non-whites. However, his failure to appreciate the endogenous nature of European racism may also impede his ability to appreciate endogenous forms of African racism. 

¹ He insists that "... racial identity has generally triumphed over all others". (*) Race, for Mills, is not the "only axis of social oppression" but it is the most important one. (*)

² see C.B. Machperson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (NY: Oxford University Press, 1962) esp. chpt.5

³see Allan Chase, The Legacy of Malthus- The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism (NY: Alfred Knopf, 1977)

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