Civil Rights Attorney And Political Activist Rediscovered
In March 2012, five months after his death, Derrick Bell became the target of conservative critics, in particular Sean Hannity and Breitbart.com, in an slander against President Barack Obama. After the video of a young Barack Obama hugging Professor Bell at a Harvard Law School student demonstration was shown on all the television news shows, the “scandal” as not much of a news story. Paradoxically, this lame slap against Barack Obama has reacquainted us with the late civil rights activist, legal academic and respected author Derrick Bell.
Critical Race Theory
Most of the people who heard the obituaries on the news when Derrick Bell died most likely knew little of quixotic career as a lawyer and law professor or his significance as one of the creators of critical race theory.
The Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an academic discipline centered on the application of critical theory, a neo-Marxist analysis and critique of society and culture, to the intersection of power, law, and race. CRT recognizes that racism is engrained in the system and fabric of American life.
Bell went on writing about Critical Race Theory after receiving a teaching job at Harvard University in 1969. Writing in a narrative style, Bell added to the intellectual dialogue on race. According to Bell, his objective in writing was to look at the racial issues within the context of their social, political, and economic dimensions from a legal viewpoint.
Embracing the Narrative
A great deal of Professor Bell’s scholarship discarded dry legal analysis in favor of stories. In books and law review articles, he presented parables and allegories about race relations, then contested their meaning with a fictional alter ego, a professor named Geneva Crenshaw, who compelled him to deal with the truth about racism in America.
Scholarship
Bell is probably the most significant source of thought critical of conventional civil rights discourse. He applied three major arguments in his analyses of racial patterns in American law: constitutional contradiction, the interest convergence principle, and the price of racial remedies. His book Race, Racism and American Law, now in its sixth edition, has been consistently in print since 1973 and is viewed as a classic in the field.
Significant Writings of Derrick Bell
Race, Racism and American Law
Published in 1973 by Little Brown:
This is Bell’s milestone work in the study of race, racism and civil rights law in the United States. This was the first judicial decisions book focused on race and racism in relation to the American law. It has been part of law school curricula for over three decades and is currently in its sixth edition.
And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice
Published in 1987 by Basic Books:
Bell originally wrote And We Are Not Saved as a foreword to a 1985 publication of the Harvard Law Review on the Supreme Court. In this extended adaptation, Derrick Bell asserted that although racial equality has been legally confirmed, economic equality after initial gains is retrogressing despite affirmative action. He proposed the development of a coalition of disadvantaged blacks and whites, urging that entitlement standards include class as well as racial disadvantage.
Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence Of Racism
Published in 1992 by Basic Books:
This collection of essays dealt with the problem of racism in America and the class distinctions involved in discrimination against minorities. In this book, Bell discussed the civil rights movement in American society, and concluded that racism is everlasting, and will forever be part of society.
Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester
Published in 1996 by Beacon Press:
This book was written three years after Bell’s tenure at Harvard Law School was ended. Bell offered a detailed account of the events that led him to give up his standing as a Harvard Law School professor to protest the school's never having granted tenure to a minority woman.
Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival in an Alien Land Called Home
Published in 1997 by Basic Books:
Gospel Choirs is the third in a series of parables and essays by Derrick Bell that shed light on just about the most perplexing problems of our day--racism. Bell combined dialogues and dreams through his own voice and that of the fictional civil rights lawyer of the 1960s, Geneva Crenshaw. Plus it's not just racism that Bell pondered. A few of the writings challenge African-Americans' views on sexism and sexuality.
Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth
Published in 2002 by Bloomsbury USA:
In Ethical Ambition, Bell provided excellent insight into how an individual seeks to live by the highest of personal ideals and standards. Derrick Bell examined his struggle to meet what he termed an ethical standard. He admitted that an infatuation with ambition, even in an altruistic sense, may violate the ethical obligations owed to family. He explored the conflicts of issues in his own religious traditions that he negotiated to reach a higher spiritual awareness frequently lost in traditional religions. Bell also cited examples of widely known ethically principled individuals--W. E. B. DuBois and Martin L. King Jr., among others--who often strove for higher ethical standards, single-handedly and at tremendous personal cost.
Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
Published in 2005 by Oxford University Press:
In Silent Covenants, Bell reflected critically on the purpose and constraint of the far-reaching Brown decision. He asserted that he, like many of his colleagues, confused the means of integration with the targets of superb education and racial equality. To analyze racial reforms, he produced a theory of converging interests into one of racial fortuity. In other words, when the interests of blacks converge with the motivations of whites, blacks are more likely to have their requirements dealt with; otherwise they are not. Derrick Bell cautioned blacks to not forgo their real interests even when they do not converge with the majority, and certainly prominent among those interests is the educational advancement of black children.
Conclusion
Whether you identify Derrick Bell as a dangerous radical or a distinguished academic, adding his publications to your non-fiction bookshelf would be a sensible move. In 1971 Derrick Bell became the first black tenured professor in the history of Harvard Law School. That marked a significant turning point in his life. Two years after that he wrote his seminal opus, Race, Racism and American Law, thus starting his career as one of America’s most influential thinkers.
Jana Cates is a cat lover who writes in her spare time. You can visit her website at http://heatedcatbedreview.com or check out her collection of luxury cat bed images on her blog.
