Charles W. Mills was a U.K.-born and Jamaica-raised philosopher and a distinguished professor in the U.S. Mills has pioneered the study of the social contract theory that focused on the intersection of political philosophy and race. Beyond his influence in critical philosophy of race, Mills was widely known for his work in social and political philosophy, African American and Africana philosophy, ethics, and Marxist thought, according to CUNY. “Throughout his long and fruitful career, Mills worked to show how, despite its pretenses to universalism, liberalism as a political tradition and philosophy has historically been strongly biased toward the material interests of white people and white polities to the detriment of nonwhite peoples and nonwhite polities.