Mills on Sociology,Sociology in Mills

Race-Ing Theories

Mainstream philosophy, which has classically been concerned with questions about the universal and the eternal, is remarkably disembodied. Although specific challenges to this way of doing philosophy have been made time and again (consider, for example, Fanon 1967; Locke 1992), the most effective and systematic treatments came from feminist philosophy in the second half of the 20th century (Clark and Lange 1979; Jaggar [1983] 1988; Okin 1989; Pateman and Gross [1987] 1997). As political theorist Carole Pateman argues in The Sexual Contract, the classical social contract is not as universal and inclusive as it was once thought. The history of women’s subjugation shows that the contract takes men as the political subject par excellence, thus excluding women. Works such as Pateman’s and that of other feminist theorists drew attention to issues of particularism disguised as universalism and helped blow fresh air into different subfields of philosophy.

Mills engaged deeply with feminist thinkers. For instance, Mills (2022) acknowledges in the introduction to The Racial Contract, and also on uncountable other occasions, that Pateman’s The Sexual Contract (1998) was a major source of inspiration for his own book:

Carole Pateman’s provocative feminist work of a decade ago, The Sexual Contract, is a good example of this approach (and the inspiration for my own book, though my use is somewhat different), which demonstrates how much descriptive/explanatory life there still is in the contract. (p. 6)

The difference to which Mills alludes in the quotation above is the central topic of Pateman and Mills’s 2007 co-authored book Contract and Domination. In the book, Mills and Pateman explain how each of them understands contract theory, how it relates to real-world problems, and whether contract language is still useful for liberatory purposes. Although the two authors disagree on many points, they agree that sharpening the theoretical tools is part of the struggle. I think that a similar diagnosis is valid for contemporary discussions on intersectionality, which attempt at understanding the mutual and simultaneous action of different oppressive systems. It is interesting to note that contract talk, nonetheless, is rarely found in most intersectional approaches. In my view, pursuing such a path would give us a deeper understanding of the interrelations between various oppressive systems. In that regard, the dialogue between Mills and Pateman would enlighten the theoretical landscape and help us see the potentialities and limitations of different approaches to intersectionality.

While discussions of gender in philosophy picked up steam in the 1970s, a similar deed for race and racism would have to wait one more decade. K. Anthony Appiah’s (1985) work on Du Bois was a turning point, a moment from which race entered the realm of respectable philosophical topics—which, of course, does not mean that such discussions did not exist before, as the question is who is to define what counts as respectable. Using concepts from philosophy of language to investigate race, Appiah made the topic visible on the philosophical radar.

Mills’ “Racial Contract” (here I follow Mills’ convention in the book of using “Racial Contract” to refer to the theory of the Racial Contract) followed a strategy similar to Appiah’s—namely, using well-established accounts to address undertheorized topics. By framing his work in relation to social contract theory—arguably, the most prestigious theory in political philosophy, Mills made it impossible for mainstream philosophy to dismiss his work, at pains of having to dismiss the social contract tradition altogether. Hence, Mills helped solidify a place for race in philosophy as practiced in most English-speaking countries. The book also offered another valuable contribution to the race debate, by stressing the structural, rather than individual, nature of racial oppression, establishing a dialogue with an audience larger than philosophers.

As embodied in The Racial Contract, Mills’s work has proven invaluable to the development of the sociological study of racism, race, and ethnicity. First, it countered the field’s early, mostly individualist explanations of racial inequality (e.g., Moynihan 1965; Myrdal [1944] 1996). Additionally, while Mills’ approach could be then considered a bit unusual for philosophy, given the intense dialogue with, numerous references to, and multiple quotations from works in history and the social sciences, this type of writing was not alien to sociology scholarship. The interdisciplinarity of the work—attested by the fact that the book has been widely read in sociology, political science, and other fields beyond philosophy—is not an accident. Indeed, looking at Mills’ own scholarly trajectory, we see that things could hardly have been any other way.

Interdisciplinarity in Mills’ work goes both ways. Not only has his work influenced other fields, but also Mills himself was influenced by scholarship from disciplines other than philosophy. From approaches in the sociology of knowledge to paradigms such as racial formation, developed by sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Mills engages consistently with sociology. Conversely, his work has also gone on to shape how sociologists think about race and racism.

One example of Mills’ engagement with sociological paradigms on race is the acclaimed essay “White Ignorance.” In the first section of the article, while reconstructing the trajectory of mainstream epistemology, Mills mentions a disciplinary division of labor: “descriptive issues of recording and explaining what and why people actually believed could be delegated to sociology, but evaluative issues of articulating cognitive norms would be reserved for (individualist) epistemology, which was philosophical territory” (Mills 2007:14). Mills goes on to argue that social epistemology troubles this division of labor, as social epistemology deals with both the descriptive and the evaluative dimensions of knowledge production processes. In other writings, Mills repeatedly links sociology to the realm of the descriptive, although connecting philosophy with the normative. Given the criticism Mills directs at ideal theory (Mills 2005), partly on the grounds of its disconnection from the world, it seems to me that Mills used sociology as a tool to help him keep a grip on reality, preventing him from becoming lost in abstraction and doing theory in a fantasyland.

Mills’ respect for and reliance on sociological paradigms did not mean he had no critique of the discipline. He did. Just as he criticized mainstream philosophy for its whiteness, so he did withsociology—and other fields too. He indicted fields in the humanities for being disproportionately white, both demographic and content-wise. Nonetheless, whiteness is not the same everywhere—hence we do have disciplines that are whiter than others. The same joke that Mills would famously make about philosophy—that it was similar to Antarctica in being white and hostile, but unlike the white continent, philosophy was not becoming more brown or black over time—he implicitly made about sociology. As a former Marxist (this is how he described himself in his last years), he understood the relevance of class. Still, he criticized sociological approaches that failed to see the internal partitions of the working class, thus falling short of providing a reasonable explanation for social dynamics in racist societies. He was also critical of sociology’s lateness in recognizing the seminal work of Du Bois, which can only be explained by racism, given Du Bois’ impeccable academic credentials and the depth of his writings.

A lasting legacy of Mills’ work is the discussion of global white ignorance. As Mills discusses in the 2015 essay “Global White Ignorance,” white ignorance is a crucial element of the racial polity governing most of the contemporary world. However, Mills points out, it is a mistake to assume that all white ignorance is created equal. As it is frequently said in the field, “race does not travel,” which means that race is inherently context-dependent. Therefore, instead of white ignorance, we should speak of white ignorances, in the plural. Or, if we will, we can use global white ignorance as an umbrella term, to encompass the different local versions of white ignorance that support distinct forms of racial oppression. To my knowledge, most studies seeking to break down the cogs of white ignorance focus on the U.S. context and the distinct U.S.-American ¹ form of color-blindness. As the world is a bit larger than the United States, we scholars of race must investigate the epistemic elements of forms of racial oppression found in other parts of the globe as well. It is clear that such elements take on radically distinct forms, ranging from the acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the past coupled with mystification of the present to a state of perpetual denial and hiding behind allegedly democratic republican ideals.

Charles, the Mentor

In 2018, five years after I first read The Racial Contract, I found myself in a sociology doctoral program at the University of Campinas, Brazil, where I was studying my own country’s complex relationship with race and racism. It was then that I moved to New York, to simultaneously pursue a PhD in philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. For almost three years, I had the pleasure to be supervised by, learn from, and laugh with Charles Mills. For those who have never heard about Charles the person, know that he had an out-of-this-world sense of humor, always ready to crack a smart joke to make things lighter. Also, people should know about Charles’ generosity. I enormously benefited from his generosity in many ways, in the form of his attention to my ideas, the comments he provided in my essays, and the time he would make himself available to meet with me to discuss various matters. After Charles’ passing, many similar testimonies started popping up. Only then could I see the extent of his generosity—and I still cannot figure out how he could manage time to make himself available to so many people and still be so productive as he was. It is no exaggeration to say that Charles’ academic generosity sets an example for all of us.

As one would expect, Mills’ classes were always packed, but students were not all, or even mostly, from philosophy. There were always students from English, education, sociology, liberal studies, political science, history, and other areas. As discussions in class unfolded, Mills would do his best to welcome insights and points of view from the many disciplines found in the room, and he would frequently be able to push the conversation a bit further, tapping from his large body of interdisciplinary knowledge to comment on a student’s point. And Mills also enjoyed being challenged. (For the moment, let us leave aside the fact that this was a bit unfair for us students as this was like a heavyweight champion challenging a lightweight newbie, but note that the heavyweight was quite generous too.)

So I will end with an invitation for all of us to challenge Mills. Mills claimed that the Racial Contract is a historical actuality and that it is still real today. The challenge consists in striving to bring about a new world in which the Racial Contract becomes meaningless, where the sentence “the Racial Contract is real” is no longer true. If we are successful in our effort—a collective, long-sustained effort—to dismantle the Racial Contract, we will be able to wave a stained, creased copy of The Racial Contract at Mills and say,

Charles, here you wrote that the Racial Contract is a reality today. Your book didn’t age well, my friend! Look, there’s no Racial Contract anymore. We’re moving your book to the “political philosophy of the past” shelf. Sorry to put it this way, but you’re wrong!

Charles Mills’ response? A large, beautiful smile.