In his recent account of 'radical black liberalism,' Charles Mills appropriates the category of the moral person from Rawls and employs it as a normative basis for countering white supremacy. I argue that the category of a moral person is too weak to accomplish the latter task and advance a tripartite basis for social critique, where the category of moral person is relegated to a person's legal standing within the state as a rights bearer. I additionally appeal to non-alienated black labor and the social basis for self-respect in civil society. I argue that these two additional normative bases substantially contribute to countering white supremacy in a way that the category of the moral person alone cannot, since it is largely a legalistic concept. I thus aim to contextualize the category of the moral person as one aspect of social freedom’s realization in the state and civil society.
