Living with racism in education and society: Derrick Bell’s ethical idealism and political pragmatism

Abstract

Derrick Bell’s pronouncement and challenge that racism is likely permanent has captured the imagination of Critical Race Theorists in education. Equally important are his ideas about living with the concrete conditions of racism. This article focuses on a tension within Bell’s work. On the one hand, his writings are characterized by a certain ‘racial realism.’ In this perspective, Bell encourages race scholars and activists to abandon notions of one day ending racism. On the other hand, Bell also retains a certain idealism, most evident in his appeal to the ethical dimensions of critical race work. He invites intellectuals to join him in fighting racism even if the prospects for change are sometimes bleak. In his life as well as his work, Bell willingly sacrificed prestige and financial security for his ideals, and seemed puzzled when his friends and colleagues were reluctant to do the same. Bell’s racial realism and ethical idealism comprise two – sometimes warring – moments that permeate his work.

Keywords:

• Critical Race Theory
• education
• Derrick Bell
• racism
• racial realism

Notes

1. Already a prominent lawyer and professor of law at Harvard, Bell resigned his tenured post in the Law School after the faculty failed to act upon his repeated exhortations to hire a woman of color to its tenure track. Some scholars mark this action as the beginning of Critical Race Theory as a social movement in addition to being an intellectual intervention.Already a prominent lawyer and professor of law at Harvard, Bell resigned his tenured post in the Law School after the faculty failed to act upon his repeated exhortations to hire a woman of color to its tenure track. Some scholars mark this action as the beginning of Critical Race Theory as a social movement in addition to being an intellectual intervention.Already a prominent lawyer and professor of law at Harvard, Bell resigned his tenured post in the Law School after the faculty failed to act upon his repeated exhortations to hire a woman of color to its tenure track. Some scholars mark this action as the beginning of Critical Race Theory as a social movement in addition to being an intellectual intervention.

2. Interest convergence is not a political strategy but an analytical innovation. It describes, usually post facto, the convergence of white interests with black progress and goes against the convenient liberal interpretation that freedom for the latter may be attributed either to the good intentions or enlightened perspectives of the former. Rather, in landmark cases, like the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, black emancipation is predicated on maintaining overall white advantage. The subtitle of Bell’s article on interest convergence contains the word ‘dilemma,’ which signals that rather than being either a pessimist or an unadulterated idealist, Bell is a realist who underlines the contradictions of racial change within an existing white supremacist order.Interest convergence is not a political strategy but an analytical innovation. It describes, usually post facto, the convergence of white interests with black progress and goes against the convenient liberal interpretation that freedom for the latter may be attributed either to the good intentions or enlightened perspectives of the former. Rather, in landmark cases, like the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, black emancipation is predicated on maintaining overall white advantage. The subtitle of Bell’s article on interest convergence contains the word ‘dilemma,’ which signals that rather than being either a pessimist or an unadulterated idealist, Bell is a realist who underlines the contradictions of racial change within an existing white supremacist order.Interest convergence is not a political strategy but an analytical innovation. It describes, usually post facto, the convergence of white interests with black progress and goes against the convenient liberal interpretation that freedom for the latter may be attributed either to the good intentions or enlightened perspectives of the former. Rather, in landmark cases, like the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, black emancipation is predicated on maintaining overall white advantage. The subtitle of Bell’s article on interest convergence contains the word ‘dilemma,’ which signals that rather than being either a pessimist or an unadulterated idealist, Bell is a realist who underlines the contradictions of racial change within an existing white supremacist order.

3. Within Marxist theory, there is a difference between historical classes and existential classes, which are more or less quasi-classes. Only capitalists and the working class are defined as possessing a historical character whose resolution or synthesis represents the march of history, with the recognition that capitalist ideology masks it whereas working class or socialist ideology unmasks it. Marxism does not argue that the working-class experience represents the most oppressive within the class variant; that ‘honor’ arguably belongs to peasants, or the lumpenproletariat. However, the working class is crucial because it lives out the concrete contradictions within modern capitalism. Bell’s framework is somewhat different; as his term ‘faces at the bottom of the well’ suggests, blackness is not just favored as the historical race but also as the site of ultimate racial suffering.Within Marxist theory, there is a difference between historical classes and existential classes, which are more or less quasi-classes. Only capitalists and the working class are defined as possessing a historical character whose resolution or synthesis represents the march of history, with the recognition that capitalist ideology masks it whereas working class or socialist ideology unmasks it. Marxism does not argue that the working-class experience represents the most oppressive within the class variant; that ‘honor’ arguably belongs to peasants, or the lumpenproletariat. However, the working class is crucial because it lives out the concrete contradictions within modern capitalism. Bell’s framework is somewhat different; as his term ‘faces at the bottom of the well’ suggests, blackness is not just favored as the historical race but also as the site of ultimate racial suffering.Within Marxist theory, there is a difference between historical classes and existential classes, which are more or less quasi-classes. Only capitalists and the working class are defined as possessing a historical character whose resolution or synthesis represents the march of history, with the recognition that capitalist ideology masks it whereas working class or socialist ideology unmasks it. Marxism does not argue that the working-class experience represents the most oppressive within the class variant; that ‘honor’ arguably belongs to peasants, or the lumpenproletariat. However, the working class is crucial because it lives out the concrete contradictions within modern capitalism. Bell’s framework is somewhat different; as his term ‘faces at the bottom of the well’ suggests, blackness is not just favored as the historical race but also as the site of ultimate racial suffering.