Blackness Visible

Charles Mills makes visible in the world of mainstream philosophy some of the crucial issues of the black experience.

Charles W. Mills is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of The Racial Contract, also from Cornell, and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism.

The effort to make the reality of racism and black life visible is achieved— with a great deal of thought-provoking ideas.

According to Mills... racism is not an aberration of an otherwise nearly ideal American democratic political system but is part of the political fabric, inherited from European imperialists. Mills examines emergent critical race theory and its movement beyond the political and sociological arena to the venerable territory of philosophy. Copiously researched and footnoted, it is an outstanding work that addresses one of the many racial issues of our times.

A collection of eight engagingly written, erudite essays.... There are two major themes here: the first concerns the philosophical professoriate, which is predominately—and, the author contends, dominatingly—white; the second is whether or not race moderates philosophical consciousness. These are deep questions, and in dealing with them, Mills address a broad spectrum of issues: black-Jewish relations, gender (the progress of women vs. blacks), white supremacy, racism, genocide, jurisprudence, and much more. The thought of philosophers and others from ancient times to the present is given incisive analyses, as are epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, political, sociological, and literary considerations. The subject of this book is long overdue for airing. Highly recommended for a variety of pertinent academic and larger public library collections.

Lewis R. Gordon, Brown University:

This is an important collection. Its organizing theme is that by analyzing the metaphysics of race-creating we can understand the importance of political analyses of the racial state. This claim is vital not only for understanding of contemporary racial problems, but also for enriching our understanding of philosophical anthropology.

Bernard R. Boxill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

Most philosophy done on racial issues has tended to take up a particular topic such as affirmative action. There is plenty of room for the kind of general strategy that Charles Mills is pursuing in Blackness Visible. The tone of this volume is serious and the argumentation thorough, and Mills displays a formidable mastery of the literature. Yet the essays are written with verve and wit.