Charles W. Mills (1951–2021)

Excellent survey of the racial nature of the politics of the world and how it infects all our discourse. The first half is more a critique of liberal ideas, showing how they are founded in racist distinctions, while the second half is more about the practise of them and how absolutely essential they are to understanding the world today. Does take seriously the issue of "borderline whites." (although it's still a bit dodgily done to me, at least he tries and doesn't dismiss it) Pretty great all round.

Not perfect though because:
- Uses a lot of unnecessary words. This sounds silly, but it makes it tough if you don't realise that a lot of the words used aren't important. Like I guess it's shitty to be all "ugh ACADEMIC LANGUAGE" because part of the book is addressing academic ideas on their own terms but it's enough to be off-putting.
- Doesn't really move outside the ideas of liberalism. Again this seems unfair considering the point of the book but it's a little weird that at the end he seems to be saying "social contract theory is fine except for the race stuff which perverted it", which sort of runs counter to his earlier arguments. I don't expect a serious critique of capitalism, but he really doesn't touch on the economic at all, which is weird and kind of obscures the reality of race exploitation.

Still a great book and worth reading for an important critique of race and its invisibility.… (mehr)

Torn giving 5 stars or "only" 4 stars. I'm giving 4 because of a few issues/questions.

(1) What exactly do we do with the "racial contract"? Assuming a liberal, classical, American stance of e.g. "all men are created equal," how is this modified? Or does RC only point to and measure the gap between reality and ideal?

(2) Isn't this in some (most) ways the same as taking the social contract and combining it with something like... was it Singer who coined the term... moral circles... In any case, isn't the critique here equivalent to saying the social contact's "coverage" needs to be expanded? And that's it?… (mehr)