Groups who rule by birth are fast disappearing in the West and white supremacists are fated to go the way of aristocrats and other extinct upper castes.
In the recent past, we have been forced to acknowledge that the relationship between the races in the United States is indeed a political one – and one of the control of collectivity defined by birth, or another collectivity also defined by birth. It is precisely because such groups have no representation in formal political structures that their oppression is so entire and so continuous. It is time we gave attention to defining a theory of politics which treats of power relationships on the less formal than establishmentarian grounds of personal intercourse between members of well defined and coherent groups – races, castes, classes and sexes. It is time we developed a more cogent and relevant psychology and philosophy of power relationships not yet considered in out institutional politics. By politics I mean powerstructured relationships, the entire arrangement whereby one group of people is governed by another, one group is dominant and the other subordinate. I do not define the political area here as that narrow and exclusive sector known as institutional or official politics of the Democrat or Republican – we have all reason to be tired and suspicious of them. Is it possible to regard the relation of the sexes in a political light at all? It depends on how one defines politics. The ideas within it were later incorporated into Chapter 2 of the book, which is a feminist classic. Note: This 1968 essay by Kate Millett was circulated before the publication of her book Sexual Politics.