The social demands of political equality: Hannah Arendt, Charles. W. Mills, and the limits of formal equality in American public-school racial segregation

Abstract

Mills Racial Contract theory, which he presents in his book The Racial Contract (1997), illustrates how political personhood has historical been restricted through law in United States to a privileged white polity since the country’s founding. This racialized political oppression creates social inequalities, and those social inequalities continue reproducing political inequality to maintain themselves even after discriminatory laws are removed. Therefore, genuine political equality requires movement toward social justice. Arendt’s political framework which she applied to school desegregation efforts in the American South in her article “Reflections on Little Rock” (1959) ignores the political relevance of segregation. She uses her ideal philosophical categories which strictly divide the political and social realms to American school integration despite their inability to fully describe the practical reality of racial domination. This error causes her to come to the false conclusion that political equality can be achieved while social segregation of public schools is allowed to go on. I conclude that Mills offers a stronger framework for understanding how racist social preferences sustain white supremacist racial domination in American political life and therefore cannot be understood as a purely social issue which does not necessitate political interference as Arendt claims in “Reflections on Little Rock”.