Critical race scholars lost a true comrade with the passing of renowned philosopher, Charles Wade Mills, on September 20, 2021. Along with his larger corpus, Mills’ landmark text, The Racial Contract, remains a beacon to scholar-activists across many disciplines, sociology included. Here, I reflect personally and sociologically on our inheritance from Mills’ incredible legacy. Beyond core concepts that will (and should) live on in sociologists’ work, Mills’ life and practice impart invaluable lessons. These include attuning to one’s embodiment and pleasure, using mainstream tools for radical ends, and recognizing the need for transdisciplinarity in ongoing resistance to white supremacy.
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MillsCharles W.1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
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MillsCharles W.2002. “Red Shift: Politically Embodied/Embodied Politics.” Pp. 155–76 in The Philosophical I: Personal Reflections on Life in Philosophy, edited by YancyG.. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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MillsCharles W.2003. From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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MillsCharles W.2005. “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology.”Hypatia20(3):165–84.
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MillsCharles W.2007. “White Ignorance.” Pp. 13–38 in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by SullivanS.TuanaN.. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
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MillsCharles W.2017. Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
MillsCharles W.2018b. “Righting Racial Wrongs: A Reply to My Commentators.”Ethnic and Racial Studies41(3):557–63.
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MillsCharles W.2022. The Racial Contract. 25th Anniversary ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
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MuellerJennifer C.2017. “Producing Colorblindness: Everyday Mechanisms of White Ignorance.”Social Problems64(2):219–38.
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MuellerJennifer C.2020. “Racial Ideology or Racial Ignorance? An Alternative Theory of Racial Cognition.”Sociological Theory38(2):142–69.
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MuellerJennifer C.WashingtonDyAnna K.. 2022. “Anticipating White Futures: The Ends-based Orientation of White Thinking.”Symbolic Interaction45(1):3–26.
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PatemanCarole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
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SiddiqiArjumandSod-ErdeneOdmaaHamiltonDarrickCottomTressie McMillanDarityWilliam. 2019. “Growing Sense of Social Status Threat and Concomitant Deaths of Despair among Whites.”SSM-Population Health9:100449. doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100449.
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SteinbergStephen. 2007. Race Relations: A Critique. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
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ThomasJames M.2007. “Re-upping the Contract with Sociology: Charles Mills’s Racial Contract Revisited a Decade Later.”Sociology Compass1(1):255–64.
