The Racial Contract

The theory that Charles Mills puts forth in The Racial Contract constitutes a philosophical bridge between two well-known and highly influential traditions in political thought—Social Contract Theory (SCT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT). While SCT is considered one of the oldest philosophical traditions, with arguments about a social contract being put forth by ancient philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle, it is associated with modern moral and political philosophers who gave the theory its full explanation during the Age of Enlightenment (Friend). In short, SCT refers to the idea that the legitimacy of political authority and moral norms are derived from mutual agreement and consent between those governed by the state and the moral norms, i.e., the parties to the contract. While the articulations and contents of various theorists differ, they share two fundamental elements: a state of nature that exists prior to the agreement and the establishment of civil society and the assumed rationality and motivations of those who enter the agreement to establish civil society (Cudd, Ann and Seena Eftekhari. “Contractarianism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021). The former presupposes the latter.

The most well-known classic social contract theorists include