Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race Book

I've read a lot of philosophy but this made me realise that black philosophy I have not read. This is part of Mills' point - philosophy (which I tend to separate from crit theory, feminism etc) assume it doesn't need to think about race. So he builds this case to say that racial distinctions (and therefore racism) are tightly coupled to the big boys (usually boys) - Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Kant etc etc. Not just on the level of their forays into surface level racism (eg x are less human) - which he does well to excavate - but actually submerged within their constitution of humanity in moral, epistemic, metaphysical terms.

Can't recommend it enough really - should form part of philosophy curriculum and probably sit next to something like Agemben's Homo Sacer in terms of articulating historical constitution (and, importantly, exclusion) of human polity. But also it's not, imo, that kind of philosophy that's excruciating - carefully, slowly articulated but not showy or assuming you know liberal (etc) philosophy well. Good.