White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today. You will not find this term in introductory, or even advanced, texts in political theory. A standard undergraduate philosophy course will start off with plato and Aristotle, perhaps say something about Augustine, Aquinas, and Machiavelli, move on to Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Marx, and then wind up with Rawls and Nozick. It will introduce you to notions of aristocracy, democracy, absolutism, liberalism, representative government, (...) socialism, welfare capitalism, andlibertarianism. But though it covers more than two thousand years of Western political thought and runs the ostensible gamut of political systems, there will be no mention of the basic political system that has shaped the world for the past several hundred years. And this omission is not accidental. Rather, it reflects the fact that standard textbooks and courses have for the most part been written and designed by whites, who take their racial privilege so much for granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination. Ironically, the most important political system of recent global history-the system of domination by which white people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people-is not seen as a political system at all. It is just taken for granted; it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political are highlighted. This book is an attempt to redirect your vision, to make you see what, in a sense, has been there all along. (shrink)

Charles Mills makes visible in the world of mainstream philosophy some of the crucial issues of the black experience.

This essay tries to develop a “black radical Kantianism”—that is, a Kantianism informed by the black experience in modernity. After looking briefly at socialist and feminist appropriations of Kant, I argue that an analogous black radical appropriation should draw on the distinctive social ontology and view of the state associated with the black radical tradition. In ethics, this would mean working with a (color-conscious rather than colorblind) social ontology of white persons and black sub-persons and then asking what respect for (...) oneself and others would require under those circumstances. In political philosophy, it would mean framing the state as a Rassenstaat (a racial state) and then asking what measures of corrective justice would be necessary to bring about the ideal Rechtsstaat. (shrink)

This previously-unpublished essay by the late Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) seeks to demonstrate the racially-structured character of the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Written long before the popular film series, the essay critically examines Tolkien's novels and comments on the nature of fictional creation. Mills argues that Tolkien designs a racial hierarchy in the novels that recapitulates the central racist myth of European thought.

‘Racial justice’ is a term widely used in everyday discourse, but little explored in philosophy. In this essay, I look at racial justice as a concept, trying to bring out its complexities, and urging a greater engagement by mainstream political philosophers with the issues that it raises. After comparing it to other varieties of group justice and injustice, I periodize racial injustice, relate it to European expansionism and argue that a modified Rawlsianism relying on a different version of the thought (...) experiment could come up with suitable principles of corrective racial justice. (shrink)

After a brief summary of the 17 essays in Sally Haslanger’s (2012) collection, Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, I raise questions in two areas, the defense of constructionism and the definition of gender and race in terms of social oppression. I cite Robin Andreasen’s and Philip Kitcher’s essays arguing (in different ways) that races are both biologically real and socially constructed, and also Joshua Glasgow’s claim that constructionist arguments ultimately fail. I then cite Jennifer Saul’s critique that “oppression” (...) definitions of gender and race run into problematic counterexamples, and add some other points arising from the different histories of gender and racial categories and realities. As someone sympathetic to constructionism myself, my aim is not a critique of Haslanger but rather an inquiry as to how she thinks (we) constructionists should answer such challenges. (shrink)

The Racial Contract pone la teoría clásica del contrato social occidental, sin ambages, al servicio de un uso radical extraordinario. Con una mirada arrolladora sobre el expansionismo y el racismo europeos de los últimos quinientos años, Charles W. Mills demuestra cómo este peculiar y no reconocido "contrato" ha dado forma a un sistema de dominación europea global: cómo da lugar a la existencia de "blancos" y "no blancos", personas de pleno derecho y subpersonas, cómo influye en la teoría (...) moral y la psicología moral de los blancos; y cómo este sistema se impone a los no blancos mediante el condicionamiento ideológico y la violencia. The Racial Contract sostiene que la sociedad en la que vivimos es un estado continuado de supremacía blanca. Levantando un espejo ante la filosofía dominante, este provocativo libro explica el esquema evolutivo del contrato racial desde la época de la conquista del Nuevo Mundo y el posterior colonialismo, pasando por el contrato escrito de la esclavitud, hasta el sistema de segregación "separados pero iguales" en los Estados Unidos del siglo XX. Según Mills, el contrato ha proporcionado la arquitectura teórica que justifica toda una historia de atrocidades europeas contra los no blancos, desde las afirmaciones de David Hume e Immanuel Kant de que los negros tenían un poder cognitivo inferior, pasando por el Holocausto, hasta el tipo de imperialismo en Asia que se demostró con la guerra de Vietnam. Mills sugiere que la guetización del trabajo filosófico sobre la raza no es accidental. Este trabajo desafía la suposición de que la teoría dominante carece en sí misma de raza. Al igual que la teoría feminista ha revelado el sesgo invisible de la filosofía política hacia los hombres blancos, la explicación de Mills del contrato racial expone sus fundamentos raciales. (shrink)

The “Occupy Wall Street!” movement has stimulated a long listing of other candidates for radical “occupation.” In this paper, I suggest the occupation of liberalism itself. I argue for a constructive engagement of radicals with liberalism in order to retrieve it for a radical egalitarian agenda. My premise is that the foundational values of liberalism have a radical potential that has not historically been realized, given the way the dominant varieties of liberalism have developed. Ten reasons standardly given as to (...) why such a retrieval cannot be carried out are examined and shown to be fallacious. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

There has been a dramatic increase over the past decade in the volume of Anglo-American philosophical writing on Marxism, with the 1978 publication of G.A. Cohen’s trail-blazing Karl Marx’s Theory of History being a convenient landmark. What has come to be called ‘analytical Marxism’ is now well-established, and valuable clarificatory work has been done on such traditionally murky subjects as the theory of historical materialism, the nature of ideology, Marx’s views on ethics, the character of Marx’s epistemology, the ‘scientific’ status (...) of Marxism, and the problematic interface between Marxism and normative liberal political theory. (shrink)

This article focuses on the contribution Robert Bernasconi has made to the critical philosophy of race. I look at some representative samples of his work under four categories: his racially informed critiques of canonical Western philosophical figures; his expositions/reconstructions/recuperations of racially informed theory from canonical Western philosophical figures; his reflections on race/whiteness/imperialism and their implications; and his views on race as it has shaped the historic and current realities of philosophy as a discipline.

In his pioneering Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Paget Henry points out that because of the region's colonial history, Caribbean philosophy is far more often found ‘embedded’ in other discourses, such as literature, than in explicit theorising. Following Henry's lead, I seek to find the philosophical ‘moral of the story’ of Voices Under the Window, the 1955 first novel of the late Jamaican writer John Hearne, which some critics regard as his best work. In a novel with significant autobiographical elements, (...) Hearne, a ‘high-brown’ or ‘red’ Jamaican, recounts the story of Mark Lattimer, likewise a ‘red man’ positioned at the upper edge of the ‘brown’ stratum of the white/brown/black Jamaican social pyramid. Lattimer moves from a race-denying attempt to ‘pass’ in World War II Britain to a Marxist social activism upon his later return to post-war Jamaica, but is killed in a black protest riot. His tragic fate raises important philosophical questions about race, colour, class, and personal and social transformation that remain very relevant today, especially considering the failure of 1970s Anglo-Caribbean radicalism to fulfil its revolutionary promise. (shrink)

The “Occupy Wall Street!” movement has stimulated a long listing of other candidates for radical “occupation.” In this paper, I suggest the occupation of liberalism itself. I argue for a constructive engagement of radicals with liberalism in order to retrieve it for a radical egalitarian agenda. My premise is that the foundational values of liberalism have a radical potential that has not historically been realized, given the way the dominant varieties of liberalism have developed. Ten reasons standardly given as to (...) why such a retrieval cannot be carried out are examined and shown to be fallacious. (shrink)

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 60-70.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

There has been a dramatic increase over the past decade in the volume of Anglo-American philosophical writing on Marxism, with the 1978 publication of G.A. Cohen’s trail-blazing Karl Marx’s Theory of History being a convenient landmark. What has come to be called ‘analytical Marxism’ is now well-established, and valuable clarificatory work has been done on such traditionally murky subjects as the theory of historical materialism, the nature of ideology, Marx’s views on ethics, the character of Marx’s epistemology, the ‘scientific’ status (...) of Marxism, and the problematic interface between Marxism and normative liberal political theory. (shrink)

Starting from Thomas Hobbes's distinctively materialist version of social contract theory, I argue that Hobbes can assist us in theorizing the racialized body politic of the white LEVIATHAN that is the United States. However, we will need to go beyond his own qualified materialism to recognize the social materiality of race, a materiality not to be reduced to, though incorporating, the body.

Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform is a major contribution to black political thought and the theorization of racial justice more generally. In these brief comments, I begin by situating Shelby’s work both in the Anglo-American political tradition and the Afro-modern political tradition. While praising the accomplishment that Shelby’s book represents, I nonetheless go on to point out some obstacles to his project arising from the tensions between these traditions. Using the concept of “dark mores”, I argue that (...) Shelby’s racially revisionist Rawlsianism is pre-empted by Rawls’s own restrictions on the scope of his theory, while Shelby’s invocation of “reciprocity” as a key norm is undermined by the structural asymmetries of a racist society. (shrink)

In this paper, I differentiate “two Enlightenments,” the mainstream Enlightenment and what I call the “radical Enlightenment,” that is, Enlightenment theory (rationalism, humanism, objectivism) informed by the fact of social oppression. Marxism can be seen as the pioneering example of radical Enlightenment theory, but it is, of course, relatively insensitive to gender and race issues, so we also need to include Enlightenment versions of feminism and critical race theory. I defend the radical Enlightenment against (on one front) the mainstream Enlightenment (...) criticism that it is either already included in the latter, or if excluded, justifiably so, and (on the other front) against anti-Enlightenment criticisms (poststructuralism and some multiculturalists) that in whatever form, Enlightenment theory cannot adequately address social oppression. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The publication of George Yancy's latest book, Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher (2020), provides a welcome opportunity to reflect not just on the book itself but on ‘Black’ public philosophy and how it should be conceptualised. In the first part of the essay, I look at public philosophy as a recent self‐conscious exercise in the profession and then – citing Critical Theory's coinage from decades ago of the idea of a ‘counterpublic’ – raise the (...) question of whether the concept of a ‘Black counterpublic philosophy’ might not be a better designation. The second part defends this claim by enumerating some of the key obstacles facing Black philosophers in the field: a minuscule population, a stigmatising identity shaped by the legacy of racial slavery in modernity, the denial of a recognised philosophical tradition, and a racial research focus at odds with the discipline's self‐conception as removed from the corporeal. Finally, the third part situates Yancy's work and achievement against this background, while warning (as illustrated by the virulent backlash he has encountered) of the dangers of such an enterprise. (shrink)

In this paper, I differentiate “two Enlightenments,” the mainstream Enlightenment and what I call the “radical Enlightenment,” that is, Enlightenment theory (rationalism, humanism, objectivism) informed by the fact of social oppression. Marxism can be seen as the pioneering example of radical Enlightenment theory, but it is, of course, relatively insensitive to gender and race issues, so we also need to include Enlightenment versions of feminism and critical race theory. I defend the radical Enlightenment against (on one front) the mainstream Enlightenment (...) criticism that it is either already included in the latter, or if excluded, justifiably so, and (on the other front) against anti-Enlightenment criticisms (poststructuralism and some multiculturalists) that in whatever form, Enlightenment theory cannot adequately address social oppression. (shrink)