How Charles Mills’ Thoughts Should Impact Our July 4th Celebrations

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That’s our social contract laid out by Jefferson, a powerful message of intent and hope. Jefferson however had slaves. He and his compatriots’ cognitive dissonance stems from something deeper. For them, this was somehow in line with that social contract laid out in the Declaration.

This seeming contradiction stems from an understanding of what “men” means. Charles Mills (author of the Racial Contract) argues that this problem is inherent in all social contracts, the ability and option for the majority group writing the contract, to write the minority right out of it. On the surface they look perhaps innocent, decreeing equal rights to all. Surely however we wouldn’t provide those rights to Women, people of color, or natives these colonizers would say. It would be mad to think that a woman would make decisions, or that a slave from Africa could truly be created by God in the same image as the white man.

Oh but that was just the mentality of another time, today we aren’t so foolish some might say. Except that 20 years ago you could still be arrested for being gay in the USA. Except that right now we are treating immigrants as second class citizens, and we are telling our congresswomen of color to “go back to their countries.” What Mills is pointing to, is the ease of abuse. A system built by the oppressors to excuse and allow the oppression.

We solve for this issue Mills believes by introducing realistic rules. We build in restrictions based on the racism and misogyny and abuse we have seen. This would be a realistic theory that responds to problems directly and applies country to country, contract to contract. This all starts, however, with a change in our view of America. We have to take opportunities like July 4th not only to celebrate the distance we’ve come, but see and discuss the length we still have left. Until we, as Americans, can regularly think about both the evil and the good concurrently we will be unable to move on.