Summary of Charles W. Mills's The Racial Contract

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The social contract is actually several contracts in one. The political contract is the foundation of government and our political obligations to it. The moral contract is the foundation of the moral code established for the society, by which the citizens are supposed to regulate their behavior.

#2 The Racial Contract is the set of agreements or meta-agreements between the members of one subset of humans, designated by racial criteria, who agree to categorize the remaining subset of humans as nonwhite and of a different and inferior moral status.

#3 In the Racial Contract, the state is used to partition and then transform human populations into white and nonwhite men. The role of the state is to maintain and reproduce this racial order, securing the privileges and advantages of full white citizens while maintaining the subordination of nonwhites.

#4 The racial contract represents a society’s established morality as just a set of rules for expediting the rational pursuit and coordination of our own interests without conflict with those who are doing the same thing.

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Release date

Ebook: 23 March 2022