By Bryon L. Garner, PhD
Key Insight
America’s civil rights rollbacks under colorblind meritocracy betray Black veterans who risked their lives for a nation that still denies them equality. Politicians are gaslighting the American public about systemic racism while reasserting white dominance—a hypocrisy laid bare through the lens of Black military service. This topic is examined in my new book, Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclusive Patriotism (Routledge)
Background
Through the lens of my Black veteranality framework—the complex intersection of Black identity, military service, and American patriotism—we can see how meritocratic colorblindness employs false logic to undermine decades of progress. Furthermore, American hubris corrupts the very notion of patriotism itself.
Charles Mills introduced the concept of the “Racial Contract” as a critique of traditional social contract theories that ignore race and racism in explaining societal formation. According to Mills, conventional theories suggest that society forms when people voluntarily agree to protect one another’s rights and freedoms. However, these theories are “blind to race, which is a problem, because racial exploitation is the historical foundation of most modern societies”. When philosophers treat racism as irrelevant to society’s structure, they overlook the fact that racism is precisely why societies have failed to meet their ideals.
The Racial Contract is fundamentally “an agreement between white people that creates a white supremacist society, or one in which white people control the vast majority of power, wealth, and privilege”. In this contract, white men declare themselves equals with equal rights while defining non-white people as “subhumans” who do not deserve those same rights. This division establishes governance by and for white people, who rule over non-white people and exploit their land and resources.
Mills identifies three crucial dimensions of the Racial Contract. Politically, it demonstrates how white people use race to seize and maintain power, establishing political structures that favor their interests. Morally, it reserves freedom and equality for white men while excluding non-white individuals from full moral consideration. Most importantly, it involves “an agreement to misinterpret the world,” creating what Mills calls an “epistemology of ignorance” that prevents white people from recognizing the racial foundations of their society.
Unlike traditional social contract theories, which serve as normative guides to an ideal society, Mills’ Racial Contract is descriptive. It explains “the actual genesis of the society and the state, the way society is structured, the way government functions and people’s moral psychology.” This distinction is crucial for understanding how racial inequality persists despite formal commitments to equality.
From De Jure to De Facto: The Evolution of the Racial Contract and the Assault on Substantive Equality
Charles Mills’ Racial Contract theory reveals how systemic racism evolves rather than disappears. This is the naked truth regarding President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy” and the administration’s broader agenda, which weaponizes colorblind rhetoric to erase the legacy of racialized oppression—it is a reassertion of white male privilege. As Zachary B. Wolf notes in his CNN analysis, this represents “the biggest rollback of civil rights since Reconstruction,” systematically dismantling six decades of civil rights infrastructure under the false banner of neutrality.
The Executive Order’s elimination of disparate-impact liability-a legal theory recognizing that facially neutral policies can perpetuate racial inequities-exemplifies Mills’ observation that modern racial governance insists on “equality of opportunity, not outcomes.” By framing disparities as mere differences in individual merit rather than systemic exclusion, the Order enshrines what Mills termed the “epistemology of ignorance”: a collective refusal to acknowledge how centuries of explicit racial hierarchy continue to shape access to power. This legal pivot mirrors post-Reconstruction efforts to replace slavery with Jim Crow under the guise of “states’ rights,” trading overt oppression for structural barriers.
Black Veterans and the Hypocrisy of Meritocracy
The lived experiences of Black veterans-who navigated both military service and civilian racism-expose the hollowness of meritocratic claims. By threatening to defund universities and federal contractors that promote diversity, while simultaneously appointing underqualified loyalists to key roles, the Racial Contract’s double standard becomes clear: meritocracy applies only when it reinforces existing hierarchies. As Medgar Evers and other veteran-activists realized, their battlefield sacrifices earned no credit in a society where merit was racially indexed. This hypocrisy persists: Craig Wellington’s analysis of Pentagon appointments reveals how figures like Pete Hegseth-a white commentator opposed to women in combat-ascend to leadership despite lacking equivalent qualifications to marginalized peers, all while decrying “wokeness” as a threat to military efficacy. For Black veterans, this echoes the betrayal felt when their wartime service failed to translate into postwar equality-a pattern Mills attributes to the Contract’s ability to “rebalance the terms of personhood” to maintain white dominance.
Reasserting White Patriarchy Through Legal Gaslighting
The administration’s focus on “anti-Christian bias” and religious liberty further illustrates the Racial Contract’s gendered dimensions. By framing secularism as anti-American and promoting taxpayer-funded Christian nationalism (e.g., supporting Catholic charter schools), the administration ties patriotism to white patriarchal norms. This aligns with Mills’ argument that the Contract historically conflated whiteness with rationality and moral authority, positioning non white communities-particularly Black Americans-as perpetually suspect. The DOJ’s new “religious liberty task force” operates as a theological enforcer, privileging conservative Christian claims over marginalized faiths while ignoring anti-Black violence in churches.
Wolf astutely connects this to the post-Reconstruction era, when White Supremacist groups masqueraded as defenders of “heritage” while terrorizing Black communities. Similarly, the Executive Order’s rhetoric of “restoring merit” evokes Lost Cause mythology, framing civil rights as a distortion of America’s “true” colorblind essence. Yet as Black veterans’ experiences prove, this alleged golden age never existed: their exclusion from VA loans, redlined neighborhoods, and lynching trees reveals how meritocracy has always been racialized.
The Path Ahead – Our Struggle Continues
The Trump administration’s policies exemplify the Racial Contract’s latest iteration: one that replaces explicit segregation with a gaslit narrative of reverse discrimination. By weaponizing colorblindness to erase history and delegitimize redress, it ensures that, as Mills warned, “white misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion, and self-deception” remain the foundation of governance. For Black veterans, whose patriotism has long been met with state-sanctioned violence, this moment is both tragically familiar and newly perilous. Their struggles remind us that until America confronts its “de facto” hierarchies, the Racial Contract will endure, rebranded but unbroken.
Charles Mills’ Racial Contract theory provides a powerful framework for understanding the current administration’s rollback of civil rights advancements. Through the lens of Black veteranality, we can see how these rollbacks affect those who have demonstrated the ultimate patriotic commitment while experiencing the contradictions of American racial politics. The meritocratic, colorblind ideology driving anti-DEI initiatives relies on flawed logic that confuses formal equality with substantive justice, perpetuating the epistemology of ignorance central to the Racial Contract.
As Mills argued, understanding the Racial Contract is the first step toward dismantling it. By recognizing how colorblind ideology functions to preserve racial hierarchy while denying its existence, we can begin to imagine alternatives based on substantive equality rather than formal neutrality. By rejecting hubris in favor of an honest recognition of national flaws, we can cultivate a critical patriotism that works toward fulfilling American ideals rather than pretending they have already been achieved.
The experiences of Black veterans remind us that patriotism is not about blindly celebrating national perfection but about critically engaging with national contradictions. Their service represents not acceptance of the status quo but a commitment to a more perfect union, one that truly embraces equality and justice for all. By learning from their example, we can move beyond the false logic of colorblindness and the self-defeating pride of hubris toward a more honest and inclusive vision of American patriotism.