America's Racial Contract

Charles Mills, PhD
Northwestern

A racial contract is a conceptual metaphor for our philosophy for dealing with each other. The problem is that it is a philosophy vased on white Europeon thought. It asserts:

• We are all equal
• The law treats us all equal
• The government governs equally/no exploitation
• There is transparency in treatment of people
• There is objectivity in threatment of people

John Rawls book, A Theory of Justice, originated the "veil of ignorance" principle which accepted the conceptual metaphor as fact. It was first published in 1971. The claim was that a society is a coopeerative venture for mutual advantage, regulated by rules, that benefits everyone. This assumption was fundamentally flawed.

The conceptual framing for the US portrays racism as an anomoly. Much relied on work of Immanuel Kant and John Locke who on the surface appear to support equality. Deeper research identifies significant racial overtones in their writings.

Mills argues that what we have is not a social contract but a racial contract. We need to accept that and look at how to dismantle the racial contract if we want to procede. Today, there is less individual racism but the system of structural and institutional racism sustains racism. One of his arguments is the systemic white advantage of wealth. As the $9 trillion in wealth is passed down in the next few years it will be passed from whites to whites and thus will sustain white preference. Mills argues that wealth disparity is a connection to the past and, as such, carries forward the racism of the past.

Mills suggests that to create change the interests of African Americans have to converge with the interests of whites. He feels the most likely place for this to occur is between people of color and the working class whites. Income for working class people in the US has been stagnant since the 70's.