Charles Mills wrote The Racial Contract (1997). According to Mills, the racial contract is an agreement between white people, against Black people and other people of color, which establishes a white supremacist society, or one in which white people control the vast majority of power, wealth, and privilege. White men characterize non-white individuals as subhuman who do not merit similar privileges in the racial agreement, pronouncing themselves with privilege which does not extend to the “others.” The racial contract creates a society run by whites, for white people, and divides humanity by color. Class awareness was sabotaged in this way as “race” overpowered class and explains the reason whites supported the slave owners during the Civil War even though most owned no slaves. The end of slavery would have meant loss of white superiority. This system for white people is justified by the racist belief that non-white people are inferior.
Mills said that there is a global system of white supremacy that is behind modern political thought and action. It has been refined over centuries of European cultural, economic, political, and social domination. Mills states that when political theorists developed various political philosophies, they did so to protect white privilege. At the core is the concept is non-whites being considered non-human, and hence civilization it is for white men only. Under this umbrella of racism, there is no effort to account for past misdeeds. The Racial Contract will not allow for any decline of white control. The crimes committed during the colonial period, slavery, torture, mass murder, and genocide are ignored and pushed aside as unimportant. Likewise, the “New Jim” is the prison system and police abuse, very seldom results in police or prison guards being convicted of abuse. Moreover, people of color are given harsher prison sentences than whites.
This social, political, cultural, and economic white privilege was based on the legacy of slavery and colonial conquest by the European colonial powers but is disguised in proclaimed contradictory statements by the Western World. Mills understands that in order to create a non-racial society, it would be necessary to acknowledge its racist past and present existence, as well as the social, political, economic, psychological, and moral repercussions it has had. This is why they want to outlaw Black studies in public schools so as to continue the false histories of white supremacy.
Perhaps Frantz Fanon, in his book The Wretched of the Earth, summed it up best, when he described that the Racial Contract is a device used to avoid being accountable for oppression, exploitation, racism, and injustice. Fanon believed that the majority of people in communities of color face the same poverty across the globe. It is a world that has not developed, an inhumane world, in ghettos everywhere, in its poverty while the European nations sprawl with abundance, in front of this poverty. European wealth and prosperity are based on slavery, which was fed with brutal slave labor. All of the grand structures of Europe and America can directly be traced to the slave trade and racism. The blood, sweat, and the remains of Africans, Arabs, Indigenous People, Asian people, and others who have contributed to Europe’s progress and well-being but are denied a role in their development. There is no universal or “neutral” interpretation of the past, contrary to popular belief. For instance, the standard historical account of the United States is frequently distorted into narratives that reinforce racial stereotypes and undervalue the contributions of people of color. This was done with intent in a world that was poisoned by white supremacy.
