The Racial Contract

By: Charles Wade Mills

Narrated by: Jeff Wilburn

The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last 500 years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state.

Holding up a mirror to mainstream philosophy, this provocative book explains the evolving outline of the racial contract from the time of the New World conquest and subsequent colonialism to the written slavery contract, to the "separate but equal" system of segregation in the twentieth-century United States. According to Mills, the contract has provided the theoretical architecture justifying an entire history of European atrocity against non-whites, from David Hume's and Immanuel Kant's claims that blacks had inferior cognitive power, to the Holocaust, to the kind of imperialism in Asia that was demonstrated by the Vietnam War.

Mills suggests that the ghettoization of philosophical work on race is no accident. This book challenges the assumption that mainstream theory is itself raceless. Just as feminist theory has revealed orthodox political philosophy's invisible white male bias, Mills's explication of the racial contract exposes its racial underpinnings.

©1997 Cornell University (P)2016 Cornell University

The perfect soundtrack for walking through the "neutral" streets of the Midwest

Listening to this book while walking the streets of a city like Columbus, Ohio—where the contrast between "progressive diversity" branding and the stark, hyper-segregated reality of policing is on daily display—is a trip.
Having this text narrated directly into your ears transforms it from a political treatise into a gripping, real-time exposure of the world around you. For refugees and immigrants, the audio format hits differently. We are people who have had to learn to read the room, read the subtle shifts in the air, and decode the polite, smiling language of Western institutions just to survive. Hearing Mills’ words performed aloud highlights the sheer irony and dark humor of our political reality.
The narrator captures the razor-sharp, unapologetic cadence that Mills intended. It feels less like a dry lecture and more like a brilliant, late-night strategy session with an elder who has seen it all and refuses to let you be gaslit by the system.
It is the ultimate intellectual armor. Perfect for listening to when you need a reminder that your anger is rational, your observations of systemic bias are correct, and the "impartiality" they demand of you is nothing more than a demand for your silence.
Highly recommended for anyone tired of performance and ready for truth. Turn the volume up, and let the truth ring out.

An important but difficult read

A good thing for us whites to read even though its hard and painful. It pulls back the curtain on our complacency with racialized ideals, philosophy, and world. Its hard to be told point blank how much one is missing when thinking themselves to be the default. please read or listen to this, I know its a bit tricky with the anthropological language, but having it read to me helped a lot. the narrator was very good and clear, but I still want to go in to listen again as well as read along-- I want to take more thorough notes since I KNOW I missed things. its not too long and its a good intro to trying to unfuck your thoughts. I'd write more but just finished at work!

Great but Wordy

He’s really wordy but the book is besides that well thought of and well put together. Great theory and great philosophy. This may have changed my perspective forever.

Listen, then re-listen

Written, it seems to me, in the language of philosophy, it has too many challengingly big words, I.e., not in the language of the people, but in academia-speak. Yet it has a lot to say that the people need to hear. I'm re-listening.

Wow!

Liberating. Good to listen the first time. Better to listen multiple times to really internally conceptualize what he is saying. This should be standard in philosophy and global history studies.