Black Righs / White Wrongs - The Critique of Racial Liberalism (Broché)

Liberalism is the political philosophy of equal persons, yet it has denied equality to those it saw as sub-persons, Liberalism is the creed of fairness, yet it has been complicit with European imperialism and African slavery. In sum, liberalism's promise of equal rights has historically been denied to blacks and other people of color. In Black Rights / White Wrongs, political philosopher Charles W.
Mills challenges mainstream accounts that ignore this history and its legacy in putatively liberal polities today. Mills argues that rather than bracket racism as an anomaly in the development of liberal theory, we should see it as shaping that theory in fundamental ways. As feminists have urged us to see the dominant form of liberalism as a patriarchal liberalism, so too Mills suggests we should see it as a racialized liberalism.
It is unsurprising, then, if contemporary liberalism has yet to deliver on the recognition of black rights and the correction of white wrongs. These essays look at racial liberalism, past and present : from Immanuel Kant's role as the most important liberal theorist of both personhood and sub-personhood to the evasion of white supremacy in John Rawls's "ideal theory" framing of social justice. Nonetheless, Mills still believes that a deracialized liberalism is both possible and desirable.
He concludes by calling on progressives to "Occupy liberalism !" and develop accordingly a radical liberalism aimed at achieving racial justice.