Liam's excellent thread outlines Charles Mills’ contribution to philosophy since the 90s. As philtwitter’s resident Mills stan, I am impressed, and I know he will be when I email it to him (us youngins have to keep him up to speed on the latest juicy gossip). A few comments: https://twitter.com/lastpositivist/status/1360700097072349185

Liam's taxonomy of Mills' project is spot on: (1) the metaphilosophical: prioritizing nonideal theoretical approaches; (2) the descriptive: correcting whitewashed/"sanitized" histories and social ontologies; (3) the prescriptive: employing 1 & 2 to reclaim liberal contract theory

This revitalized liberalism, conscious of the realities of oppression (specifically global white supremacy), is what Mills calls "black radical liberalism," the three central thinkers of which are DuBois, Marx, and Kant. Mills' "key normative tool" = "black radical Kantianism."

To elaborate a bit upon Liam's discussion: black radical Kantianism is, interestingly, a lot more like Kant's actual moral thought than most philosophers' reading of Kant, which largely neglects *The Metaphysics of Morals* and puts forth a highly formal, abstract ethical system.

As we can see, however, Kant thinks the ethical life (for specifically *human* rational beings requires great attention to particulars; morality requires us to take social categories into account. Here both Mills and Kant reject the so-called "colorblind" approach to ethics.

In his essay "Black Radical Kantianism" Mills does this by explicitly building race into the formula of humanity. R1s (privileged races) have specific duties to themselves & others qua R1s, just as R2s (subordinated races) do qua R2s; R1s have duties to R2s qua R2s & vice versa.

Mills' black radical Kantianism manifests in the political domain as a black radical Rawlsianism. Unsatisfied with Rawls' ahistorical conception of society as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage & his ideal theoretical orientation, Mills adjusts Rawls' thought experiment:

Rather than selecting principles of distributive justice for an ideal society, we step behind the veil of ignorance to select principles of corrective justice for a deeply historically unjust (racist) society, one shaped by white supremacy in fundamental ways (like ours!!!)

Mills argues we'll converge on 3 principles of corrective justice: (i) end racially unequal citizenship; (ii) end racial exploitation; (iii) end racial disrespect.

We preserve all the genius in Rawls' thought experiment while making it usable for the pursuit of social justice.