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

Foundations of the theory of signs.--Signs, language, and behavior.--Five semiotical studies.

This previously-unpublished essay by the late Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) seeks to demonstrate the racially-structured character of the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Written long before the popular film series, the essay critically examines Tolkien's novels and comments on the nature of fictional creation. Mills argues that Tolkien designs a racial hierarchy in the novels that recapitulates the central racist myth of European thought.

This essay tries to develop a “black radical Kantianism”—that is, a Kantianism informed by the black experience in modernity. After looking briefly at socialist and feminist appropriations of Kant, I argue that an analogous black radical appropriation should draw on the distinctive social ontology and view of the state associated with the black radical tradition. In ethics, this would mean working with a (color-conscious rather than colorblind) social ontology of white persons and black sub-persons and then asking what respect for (...) oneself and others would require under those circumstances. In political philosophy, it would mean framing the state as a Rassenstaat (a racial state) and then asking what measures of corrective justice would be necessary to bring about the ideal Rechtsstaat. (shrink)

‘Racial justice’ is a term widely used in everyday discourse, but little explored in philosophy. In this essay, I look at racial justice as a concept, trying to bring out its complexities, and urging a greater engagement by mainstream political philosophers with the issues that it raises. After comparing it to other varieties of group justice and injustice, I periodize racial injustice, relate it to European expansionism and argue that a modified Rawlsianism relying on a different version of the thought (...) experiment could come up with suitable principles of corrective racial justice. (shrink)

White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today. You will not find this term in introductory, or even advanced, texts in political theory. A standard undergraduate philosophy course will start off with plato and Aristotle, perhaps say something about Augustine, Aquinas, and Machiavelli, move on to Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Marx, and then wind up with Rawls and Nozick. It will introduce you to notions of aristocracy, democracy, absolutism, liberalism, representative government, (...) socialism, welfare capitalism, andlibertarianism. But though it covers more than two thousand years of Western political thought and runs the ostensible gamut of political systems, there will be no mention of the basic political system that has shaped the world for the past several hundred years. And this omission is not accidental. Rather, it reflects the fact that standard textbooks and courses have for the most part been written and designed by whites, who take their racial privilege so much for granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination. Ironically, the most important political system of recent global history-the system of domination by which white people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people-is not seen as a political system at all. It is just taken for granted; it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political are highlighted. This book is an attempt to redirect your vision, to make you see what, in a sense, has been there all along. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.

The new National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy on the Use of a Single Institutional Review Board (sIRB) for Multi-Site Research was adopted primarily to simplify and speed the review of complex multisite clinical trials. However, speeding review requires overcoming a number of obstacles. Perhaps the most substantial obstacle is the time and effort needed to develop reliance agreements among the participating sites. We conducted 102 semistructured interviews with sIRB personnel, including directors, chairs, reviewers, and staff, from 20 IRBs that (...) acted as sIRBs for multisite research, including 6 commercial/independent sIRBs, and 10 university-based academic and 4 federal sIRBs. Almost without exception, the interviewees agreed that reliance agreements were complex, difficult to develop, and time-consuming. A major problem for relying sites was that different agreements specified different responsibilities for the relying sites. Attitudes differed about whether these problems will be resolved as IRB staff and managers become more experienced with sIRBs. However it is clear that the process of developing reliance agreements must be simplified. Federal assistance in standardizing at least some sections of reliance agreements might reduce the difficulties involved. (shrink)

After a brief summary of the 17 essays in Sally Haslanger’s (2012) collection, Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, I raise questions in two areas, the defense of constructionism and the definition of gender and race in terms of social oppression. I cite Robin Andreasen’s and Philip Kitcher’s essays arguing (in different ways) that races are both biologically real and socially constructed, and also Joshua Glasgow’s claim that constructionist arguments ultimately fail. I then cite Jennifer Saul’s critique that “oppression” (...) definitions of gender and race run into problematic counterexamples, and add some other points arising from the different histories of gender and racial categories and realities. As someone sympathetic to constructionism myself, my aim is not a critique of Haslanger but rather an inquiry as to how she thinks (we) constructionists should answer such challenges. (shrink)

The “Occupy Wall Street!” movement has stimulated a long listing of other candidates for radical “occupation.” In this paper, I suggest the occupation of liberalism itself. I argue for a constructive engagement of radicals with liberalism in order to retrieve it for a radical egalitarian agenda. My premise is that the foundational values of liberalism have a radical potential that has not historically been realized, given the way the dominant varieties of liberalism have developed. Ten reasons standardly given as to (...) why such a retrieval cannot be carried out are examined and shown to be fallacious. (shrink)

It is proposed to examine the consequences which ensue if philosophy is deliberately oriented around the methods and results of science. That such reorientation has been more or less unconsciously taking place for centuries is evident; the problem demands particular discussion at this time only because the reorientation has gone so far and with such success as to challenge seriously certain past conceptions of philosophy and to demand of philosophers what, if anything, is left for them to do. For present (...) purposes the revolution indicated will be regarded as a fait accompli, and the sole concern will be with what alternatives remain open. The conclusions differ from those of certain others who accept the same fait accompli only in believing that more alternatives do in fact remain open than they envisage. (shrink)

Institutional Review Boards are mandated to carry out the requirements of the Common Rule, and it is widely agreed that they are appropriate and necessary mechanisms to ensure the ethical conduct of human research. In this paper, we suggest that the changes proposed in ANPRM, although generally helpful, fail to take into consideration how IRBs actually review applications and therefore do not adequately address some of the problems that may be leading to ineffective human subject protection.

The federal Common Rule, which governs the conduct of research with human subjects, specifies the criteria and procedures by which Institutional Review Boards should review such research. Although there is wide agreement that IRBs, or Research Ethics Committees as they are called in most of the world, are essential to assuring that human subjects research meets common standards of ethics, IRBs have always come under considerable criticism. Some have critiqued IRBs for using important resources inefficiently, including the large amount of (...) time researchers put into submitting applications, modifications, and reports and delaying the start of data collection within the limited time that grants and contracts provide. Others have critiqued the inconsistency of review of multi-site projects. (shrink)