The Social Contract and Racial Research Proposal

Namely, the institutions of
slavery and Jim Crow that were used to constrain the growth and advancement
of African Americans are today disregarded as being directly relevant to
the fortunes and opportunities of blacks in America. This is both
unrealistic and unethical, with the denial of its lasting impact casting
American racism in an historical light rather than one which is still
present and problematic. It is thus that the social contract today serves
the interests of dominance even as it feigns to have disavowed these
aspects of itself.
A true resolution to the failures of the social contract may only
really occur when the discourse on America's racialist past and the lasting
effects of this on the current fortunes of African Americans is resolved.
In that regard, Mills regards it as largely a fiction that racial
discrimination ended in any meaningful way after the Emancipation
Proclamation; rather, racial prejudice and systematic subjugation continued
overtly well into the 20th century, continuing still today albeit primarily
covertly and unconsciously.Mills characterizes American blacks as having
been granted the permanent status of "outsiders" in American society from
the standpoint of equal rights and their second-class citizenship. For that
matter, Mills also considers the prevailing social contracts to relegate
women to second-class citizenship through the same process. Essentially,
Mills characterizes the position of racial minorities as enjoying a lesser
type of "equality" than white males that makes them "sub-persons" in
American society.
Ultimately, this speaks to the core racial failures in American
society that have distorted the social contract. If the veracity of the
social contract is to be defended, then it must be removed from a context
in which its primary purpose has become the extension of racial dominance
and a resultant disorder of society.

Works Cited:
Mills, C.W. (2000). Race and….....