ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The history that inspires this short book goes back a long way, and I have been thinking about that history, and how to incorporate it into a philosophical framework, for a long time. Along the way I have incurred many debts, some of which I have certainly forgotten, and this list of acknowledgments is only partial.

First of all, of course, to my family: my parents, Gladstone and Winnifred Mills, who brought me up to give equal respect to people of all races; my brother, Raymond Mills, and my cousin, Ward Mills, for consciousness-raising; my uncle and aunt, Don and Sonia Mills, for their role in Jamaica’s own 1970s struggle against the legacy of the global Racial Contract. My wife, Elle Mills, has supported my work from the outset, sometimes having greater faith in me than I had in myself.

Special friends, past and present, should also be cited: thanks to Bobs, for old times’ sake; to Lois, a friend indeed, and a friend in deed; to Femi, fellow Third Worlder, for numerous conversations since our days in grad school together about how philosophy in the academy could be made less academic.

Horace Levy, my first philosophy teacher, and for many years the mobile one-person philosophy unit of the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies, deserves particular mention, as do Frank Cunningham and Danny Goldstick of the University of Toronto, who welcomed me to the Philosophy Department graduate program there more years ago than any of us cares to remember. John Slater’s confidence in me and support of my candidacy, despite my almost nonexistent undergraduate background in the subject, were crucial. To all of them, I am obligated.

I originally started working on these issues on a 1989 junior faculty summer research fellowship at the University of Oklahoma. A first draft was written in my 1993–1994 year as a Fellow of the Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and the final draft was completed during my sabbatical in the spring term of 1997· At both my previous and my present institution, I have been fortunate to have had a series of Chairs who have been very supportive of applications for grants, fellowships, travel, leave, and sabbaticals: John Biro and Kenneth Merrill at the University of Oklahoma; Richard Kraut, Dorothy Grover, and Bill Hart at UIC. Let me say how deeply grateful I am to them for that support. In addition, I have made endless requests for assistance from Charlotte Jackson and Valerie McQuay, the UIC Philosophy Department’s invaluable administrative assistants, and they have been endlessly patient and helpful, greatly facilitating my work.

I thank Bernard Boxill, Dave Schweickart, and Robert Paul Wolff for their letters of endorsement for my application for the UIC Humanities Institute Fellowship that enabled me to begin the original manuscript. It was Bob Wolff’s suggestion, seconded by Howard McGary Jr., that I go for “a short, punchy book” that would be accessible to an audience of nonphilosophers. Hope this is punchy enough for you, guys.

An earlier and shorter version of this book was read and critiqued by members of the Politically Correct Discussion Group of Chicago (PCDGC); I have benefited from the criticisms of Sandra Bartky, Holly Graff, David Ingram, and Olufemi Taiwo. Jay Drydyk read the manuscript and gave valuable input and encouragement. I have also benefited from audience feedback at the following presentations, from 1994 to 1996: the Institute for the Humanities, UIC; the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; a colloquium at Queen’s University; a panel at the annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy; and a conference titled “The Academy and Race” at Villanova University.

I have consistently received special encouragement in the project from feminist theorists: my friend Sandra Bartky, Paola Lortie, Sandra Harding, Susan Babbitt, Susan Campbell, and Iris Marion Young. I have also learned a great deal over the years from feminist political theory and obviously owe a debt to Carole Pateman in particular. My focus on race in this book should not be taken to imply that I do not recognize the reality of gender as another system of domination.

Alison Shonkwiler, my editor at Cornell University Press, was highly enthusiastic about the manuscript from her very first reading of it, and it is in large measure her conviction that persuaded me there was indeed a book here, and that I should write it. For her energy and drive, and the keen editorial eye that has undoubtedly made this a better book than it would otherwise have been, I express my deep appreciation.

Finally, as a stranger in a strange land, I have been welcomed here by the American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Blacks in Philosophy. I would like to single out and thank Howard McGary Jr., Leonard Harris, Lucius Outlaw Jr., Bill Lawson, Bernard Boxill, and Laurence Thomas, for making me feel at home. As a beneficiary of affirmative action, I would not be in the American academy today were it not for the struggles of black Americans. This book is in part a tribute to, and a recognition of, those struggles, and, more generally, of the international black radical tradition of political resistance that they exemplify.

C. W. M.

When white people say “Justice,” they mean “Just us.”

—black American folk aphorism