We Need Charles Mills More Than Ever

This article uses a no reply racist email I received in 2023 as its point of departure for thinking through the importance of The Racial Contract in theorizing about contemporary ‘post-race’ racism’s cultural life because of the prevalent discourse that Black people can be racist too. It looks at the continuing presence of willful white ignorance on anti-Black racism and the tenacity of global white supremacy’s impact on lines of sight societally and in the academy using understandings from Charles Mills’ (1997) The Racial Contract and his 2007 chapter ‘White ignorance’ on white supremacy, whiteness, racialization, bodies, and epistemologies of ignorance. The discussion of the email reflects some of the impact of Mills’ ideas on my own work within Racism Studies and Cultural Studies. As someone from Stuart Hall’s Black British Cultural Studies tradition who draws on Mills’ work in my meditations on anti-Black racism and white supremacy, I illustrate the generative nature of his work within these (sub)disciplines by also including my own work on institutional anti-Black racism’s affects as part and parcel of the workings of the Racial Contract. This locates racial affective economies within the Contract itself as the glue that binds white ignorance and white supremacy on issues of race and racism even in the face of its refutation.