Argues that racially structured discrimination is the norm by using social contract theory With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged racial contract has shaped a system of global European domination. Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1(8) Overview 9(32) The Racial Contract is political, moral and epistemological 9(10) The Racial Contract is a historical actuality 19(12) The Racial Contract is an exploitation contract 31(10) Details 41(50) The Racial Contract norms (and races) space 41(12) The Racial Contract norms (and races) the individual 53(9) The Racial Contract underwrites the modern social contract 62(19) The Racial Contract has to be enforced through violence and ideological conditioning 81(10) ``Naturalized'' Merits 91(44) The Racial Contract historically tracks the actual moral/political consciousness of (most) white moral agents 91(18) The Racial Contract has always been recognized by nonwhites as the real moral/political agreement to be challenged 109(11) The ``Racial Contract'' as a theory is explanatorily superior to the raceless social contract 120(15) Notes 135(28) Index 163