"Racial Exploitation and the Wages of Whiteness"
by Charles Mills

Mainstream liberal analyses of racism focus on its wrongness as a violation of individual rights, and its detrimental effects on character. In the left tradition, by contrast, systems of oppression are examined with an eye to material benefits. The classic model here, of course, is Marx's analysis of capitalism, with its claims about the ongoing transfer of surplus value from workers to capitalists. But with the discrediting of the labor theory of value--not to mention the general demise of left theory--these claims are no longer taken seriously, and liberalism is globally triumphant. However, a clearcut case can be made that if racial domination is looked at systemically--as white supremacy--then it can be shown to be exploitative by uncontroversial mainstream liberal values. W.E.B. Du Bois's famous phrase, "the wages of whiteness," was in part intended to bring out this usually unacknowledged reality. In this paper, I will explore the idea of racial exploitation, and its implications for normative theory.