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slate-com-304		Taking the Enlightenment seriously requires talking about race.			.html	text/html	2559	183	60	John Locke precedes Kant, but his work also shows the influence of early modern racial thinking. In "The Contradictions of Racism: Locke, Slavery, and the Two Treatises," Bernasconi and Anika Maaza Mann present the pre-eminent liberal philosopher as an architect of the race-based slavery developing in the American colonies during the mid–17th century. Still, as one of the widely read thinkers of the period, his work remained influential to slaveholders, including the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and the Framers of the Constitution, for whom racial slavery and native expropriation were compatible with natural rights and representative government. For modern-day philosopher Charles Mills, this joint march of liberalism and white supremacy—whether Locke's social contract or Kant's moral theory—supports the notion of an implicit "racial contract" undergirding the Enlightenment project. We still live in a world shaped by Enlightenment ideas of race and white supremacy. By joining Slate Plus you support our work and get exclusive content.	./cache/slate-com-304.html	./txt/slate-com-304.txt