Preview

Analysis Of The Racial Contract By Charles W. Mills

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
754 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Analysis Of The Racial Contract By Charles W. Mills
In this section of The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills, the Racial Contract is viewed as the real determinant of most white moral/political practice by nonwhites because the privilege of white signatories defines the existence of race relations. Racism translates as the need for domination of the signatories and for whites to maintain the power of knowledge, which poses as a disadvantage to oppressed minorities. Therefore, the gap that continues to grow from racial differentiation translates into the epistemology. Since western philosophy is considered as the epitome of knowledge, only white consciousness can be justified as logical. As a result, any other model is eradicated from the social paradigm.
The differential experiences between
…show more content…
In the United States, white privilege exists due to the constitution that has been designed by the patriarchal and white elite, which has been pushed by a common ruling rationale. The Founding Fathers shared a rationale of opportunistic privileges that reflects in the constitution as favoring white people. The lack of representation of minorities within the constitution and the philosophical stream serves as a vessel for the illegitimacy of other races. The portrayal of western civilization as the epitome of philosophy suggests that it is the only justified form of consciousness. And since the relevancy of minorities is omitted from the philosophical framework, the rationale that grounds the structural hierarchy is flawed. Hence, the dismissal of the other by white thinkers transpires in the biased political structure.
Mills establishes an understanding of the social contract that highlights the rationale behind white supremacy. He shows how the embedded racism of our social constructs created a racial contract. The argument makes an outline that is philosophical and political as well as social. Mills’ work is fundamental in understanding the racial contract as a political system rather than a theoretical scheme. The dichotomy between our idealistic morality and the inequity of our society exemplifies the fails of our system and highlights the existence of a national white

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In America, the racial divide between whites and blacks is quickly growing. To fully understand racism, it is necessary to look at how power in the hands of white people has consequently led to oppression and racism towards people of color. Many people, particularly whites, believe that racism stemmed from physical differences between whites and people of color; however, if one truly examines racial differences they will see that these so called “differences” are more social than physical. For centuries, white people have held specific biases and prejudices against people of color, claiming that they were inferior to whites. This notion of subordination began because the white men held the highest form of power one can hold; the power of…

    • 735 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “White Like Me,” Thomas Wise discusses the many ways White privilege influences other race’s, from a White male’s perspective. Three of the most interesting point relate to the of “white supremacy” and how the common white citizens unknowingly uses their powers. He expresses the belief that Whites should “guard their white privilege” because the United States, as a capitalist society, honors the majority. Another point he makes is that Whites are able to escape the blame for their unjust actions, whereas people of color would be slaughtered in the media for such things. An impactful example he uses is terrorism. In Oklahoma there were two white terrorists who bombed a government building, killing many. This horrific action was headlined…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this Tim Wise discusses how the so called white privilege came about in the United States and how it was a big joke. He talks about how especially back during the Civil War that the world was off balance. White people were clearly more privileged and they may not have realized it until slavery came about. He mentions that the middle class people were fooled by those of the Elite class. The Elite class made them feel as though they were more important than there servants, which were normally African Americans, even though, the Elite did not care what everyone thought, they just wanted to stay on top. They felt that to stay on top they must create a class system. Elite was better than the Middle and Lower class, the Middle class was better than the Lower class, and if you were in the lower class you were nothing. Whites tended to be in both the Elite class and the Middle class while the African Americans fell in the Lower class, thus creating privilege.…

    • 889 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lopez provides support in his thesis by mentioning the decades of long tales of moral contradiction. He examines tactics that keeps the separation between whites and nonwhites in America. His main idea is that racism has changed substantially since the time before civil rights and evolved racism has become a sneaky but significant tool in the political system today.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    James Balwin, affirms that is the notion of epistemic privilege, which develops as a result of unequal power relationships in societies. While power is often concentrated in the center of society, those individuals on the margins often gain the greatest appreciation of the existence and complexity of various forms of inequality. This appreciation grants them with a type of epistemic privilege. “The trouble about diversity, then, just that people differ from another. The trouble is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference to include or exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit, elevate or oppress, value or devalue, leave alone or harass’.…

    • 200 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Matthew Frye Jacobson’s introduction of his book Whiteness of a Difference Color delves into the topic of race from a very different perspective than what one would might expect. Instead of discussing the topic about people of color, he writes about the history of racial classification of whites in America along with how the conception and perception of race is always changing. The first example he provides us is with a Gentle women and the debate over Jews’ racial identity, although they are white, what white racial sub group do they belong in-- the Caucasian or Semite? This conversation reveals the exact logical fallacies in our perception of race. He then touches upon other groups that immigrated from their homeland to America. These individuals came to america as “free white persons” but due to naturalization laws, they technically were not put into that category. With that noted, over time these immigrants were finally able to be included in the definition of what we know as white today. Jacobson’s argues that although white people come from different backgrounds and have different ethnicities, we are conditioned to recognize…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the United States, racism had been for several hundred years; it’s aslo been a controversial subject for people for a long period of time. Whenever we talk about this subject, it always reminds me about the book called “Race and Manifest Destiny” by Reginald Horsman. This book is one of the greatest books about the racism in the United States from 1776 to 1865. During the early years of America’s history, society was categorized by class rather than skin color. In the early of colonial period, black and white workers who worked together everywhere. However, the crisis of the Norh American owners in the early of sixteenth century has changed the system. Black enslavement had become necessary for the American agricultural economy. There is the first formed an equal human being between blacks and whites. From the beginning of the United State nation to 1865, there was always a distance which separated the White people and Black people or Indian people due to the racial discrimination in the society at that time.…

    • 1285 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    This story begins with the introduction of the idea that America, or white America specifically, believes itself to be exempt from the racial issues it has caused. It cites the many examples where non-whites have been thrown about violently in order for white Americans to gain social and cultural control over them. There are a few different reasons given for why we can be so blind to these atrocities. They all fall into the category of groupthink, where people don’t realize what they are doing is wrong, simply because everyone around them is…

    • 1960 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    McIntosh (1990) asserts how many individuals of the white race an unaware that they attain “white privilege.” As white individuals are taught to not recognize their “conferred dominance,” many of these individuals believe that…

    • 723 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Whiteness studies incorporate aspects such as the cultural, social and historical factors relative to the people identified as the white citizens in the United States. These studies exist around the idea that white privilege is in fact alive in our social world. Meaning the playing field isn’t level between different races and that white individual’s benefit from it. Whiteness Studies were popular in the mid-1990s. During that time there were numerus studies that surrounded whiteness. The authors of those studies were inspired by the concepts of post modernism and society’s racial history including the philosophy of white superiority. Some argue that the principles of the ideologies were specifically intended to justify the concept of racial…

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    First, he uses a lot of instances in daily life to illustrate that nowadays in the United States most whites claim that race is no longer a problem (2), but in fact blacks and other minorities, who receive impolite treatment both economically and politically, are “at the bottom of the well” and suffering from racial inequality (2). Instead of Jim Crow racism, which enforced racial inequality by overt means such as calling blacks “niggers” (3), today color-blind racism behaves in a covert way, “subtle institutional and apparently nonracial”, in order to keep minorities in a subordinate position and maintain “white privilege” (3). For example real estate agents do not show all the available units to minorities in the housing market to “maintain separate communities” (3). Second, Bonilla-Silva compares the four ways in which the “survey community and commentators” explained about changes in whites’ racial attitudes in the post-Civil rights era (4), and demonstrates his arguments by expressing his agreements and disagreements with their thoughts. He argues like them that color-blind racism is characterized by “traditional liberalism”, which criticizes blacks for not working hard (7), and explanations of blacks’ position in terms of culture (7). But in addition he also expresses “one central theoretical disagreement” with others because his model is based on “a…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Racial Contract is the understanding that racism is not the side effect of malicious men in society, but rather the realization that racism is at the very core of society. The heart of the “Social Contract” itself. The explicit underground agreement between the tribes of Europe to promote whiteness, in the form of conquering, and subjugating those who do not belong to the peoples of Europe. This Contract running side by side with time for the latter part of a thousand years. Paying witness to the discovery of the new world, and the removal and genocides of “savages” from their ancestral lands.…

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On White Privilege

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Imagine two job applications came across your desk; one belongs to a Caucasian female and the other belongs to an African-American female. Which one would you choose? The African-American female who has experience in your specific work field or the Caucasian female who graduated from a good school and received a Merit scholarship for college? Would you look at their individual background or their individual skin color? A lot of businesses tend to choose the Caucasian woman. In today’s society, no matter where you go, there will be white privilege. White privilege is an advantage that white people have over non-whites and it is manifested by preferential treatment. By analyzing Difference Matters by Brenda Allen, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh and Jennifer Pozner’s article in Barclay Barrios’ Emerging, we can understand white privilege as an rarely talked about concept but certainly can be recognized when people of other races are treated less fairly as if they are below white people.…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Economic Independence

    • 1506 Words
    • 7 Pages

    During late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in order to reach their goal of equality, literate blacks with sympathetic whites began to fight against Jim Crow and injustice using different concepts-some black leaders urged for equal rights; while some believed that, instead of political rights, economic independence and contribution to the society could improve black people’s social positions gradually (Cuban 79). The economic strategy did not success because it did not associate all the problems in the society where whites were still considering themselves as blacks’ owners. It is impossible to change the situation by conforming themselves to the white social…

    • 1506 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The article begins by the author explaining that men have privilege over women. “Denials which amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages which men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended,” (McIntosh, 1998. P. 1). Then the article proceeds to discuss how whites, whether they realize it or not, have a considerable advantage over other races. She lists twenty-six ways that whites have the upper hand. McIntosh explains that as a white person she had been sheltered from the privileges that she had. “I think whites are taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege,” (McIntosh, 1998, p. 1). She compiled a list of things that she encounters daily that are a privilege to white people that may not come so easily to a person of a different race. For example one item states that she can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper and see people of her race commonly signified (McIntosh, 1998). She then claims that if all these items are true that we are not living in a free country and that certain opportunities are available to whites. She concludes by stating that she thinks that social systems need to be redesigned.…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics