In "The Racial Contract" Charles Mills defines a race traitor as a white person who rejects the inherent privilege of being white, and who attempts to combat the inequalities of the racial contract.

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                Joseph R Knupp

        In “The Racial Contract” Charles Mills defines a race traitor as a white person who rejects the inherent privilege of being white, and who attempts to combat the inequalities of the racial contract.  Since a white person’s job as a signatory of the racial contract is to propagate white supremacy by working against colored people and for other whites, a person who treats colored people equally or goes so far as to attempt to balance out inequities in society by treating colored people better than whites is a traitor to the racial contract.

        Mills argues that white people in the United States ought to be race traitors.  Since the view the racism is wrong is widely held, once white people realize that they are upholding the racial contract in their daily lives they should attempt to become race traitors.  The problem of dysconciousness often leads white people to not see the racism that exists, but it is there to be seen never the less.

        One way in which whites can be race traitors in the US is by righting the economic inequalities inherent in the racial contract.  Reparations or a redistribution of wealth equally instead of along racial lines would be one step towards destroying the racial contract.  Mills suggests, “wealth is more important than income in determining the likelihood of future racial equalization, since it has a cumulative effect that is passed down through intergenerational transfer, affecting life chances and opportunities for one’s children.” (Mills, 37)  So an evening out of the economic status of whites and non-whites would have a major effect upon overall equality within the United States.  

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        The most difficult to implement aspect of being a race traitor is the demand by Mills that the equality outlined by enlightenment social contract theorists be applied not only to whites, but to all peoples as it actually states.  The white people of the US ought to demand that non-whites be treated in reality as the equals of whites politically, socially, and individually.  As to how this might be accomplished Mills does not say, and one can only speculate.

        Individuals can take action to be race traitors.  By treating others as equal to whites, and not upholding the racial contract ...

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