Embedded Files
Derrick Albert Bell Jr. (November 6, 1930 – October 5, 2011) was an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. Bell worked for first the U.S. Justice Department, then the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he supervised over 300 school desegregation cases in Mississippi.
After a decade as a civil rights lawyer, Bell moved into academia where he spent the second half of his life. He started teaching at USC Law School, then moved to Harvard Law School where he became the first tenured African-American professor of law in 1971. From 1991 until his death in 2011, Bell was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law, and a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.
Bell developed important scholarship, writing many articles and multiple books, using his practical legal experience and his academic research to examine racism, particularly in the legal system. Bell questioned civil rights advocacy approaches, partially stemming from frustrations in his own experiences as a lawyer. Bell is often credited as one of the originators of critical race theory.
Articles
Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory?
Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory?
Citation:
Bell. (1995). Who’s afraid of critical race theory? University of Illinois Law Review, 1995(4), 893–.
Books
Race, Racism & American Law (Sixth Edition)
Race, Racism & American Law (Sixth Edition)
By Derrick A. Bell
The Sixth Edition of this innovative text written by Derrick Bell continues to provide students with insight into the issues surrounding race in America and an understanding of how the law interprets those issues as well as the factors that directly and indirectly influence the law. The first casebook published specifically for teaching race related law courses, Race, Racism, and American Law is engaging, offering hard-hitting enlightenment, and is an unparalleled teaching tool.
Links to Access:
And We Are Not Saved
And We Are Not Saved
By Derrick A. Bell
In And We Are Not Saved, legal scholar and civil rights activist Derrick Bell calls for a deeper understanding of how white supremacy functions in the United States. Bell challenges the idea that significant social, political, and economic progress was achieved by the civil rights movement in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board decision. Through a series of fables and dramatic dialogues modeled on the grim fairytales of the eighteenth century, Bell explains the true pervasiveness of racial oppression within the American legal system. Racial inequality, he argues, is an integral part of American law and society, and it cannot be easily reversed through legislation.
Links to Access:
Faces at the Bottom of the Well : The Permanence of Racism
Faces at the Bottom of the Well : The Permanence of Racism
By Derrick A. Bell
In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, civil rights activist and legal scholar Derrick Bell uses allegory and historical example—including the classic story "The Space Traders"—to argue that racism is an integral and permanent part of American society. African American struggles for equality are doomed to fail, he writes, so long as the majority of whites do not see their own well-being threatened by the status quo. Bell calls on African Americans to face up to this unhappy truth and abandon a misplaced faith in inevitable progress. Only then will blacks, and those whites who join with them, be in a position to create viable strategies to alleviate the burdens of racism.
Links to Access
Shades of Brown : New Perspectives on School Desegregation
Shades of Brown : New Perspectives on School Desegregation
Edited By Derrick A. Bell
Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth
Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth
By Derrick A. Bell
As one of the country's most influential law professors, Derrick Bell has spent a lifetime helping students struggling to maintain a sense of integrity in the face of an overwhelming pressure to succeed at any price. Frequently asked how he managed to be so extraordinarily successful while never giving up the fight for justice and equality, Bell decided to spend his seventieth year writing a book of insight and guidance. The result, Ethical Ambition, is a deeply affecting, uplifting, and brilliant series of meditations that not only challenges us to face some of the most difficult questions that life presents, but dares to offer some solutions.
Links to Access:
Silent Covenants: Brown V. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
Silent Covenants: Brown V. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
By Derrick A. Bell
Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. He maintains that, given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined instead to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants--unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights--that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions.
Links to Access
Videos
Gloria Ladson-Billings is Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the 2005–2006 president of the American Educational Research Association. Ladson-Billings’s research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. She also investigates critical race theory applications to education. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, Crossing over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, and many journal articles and book chapters. She is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and a member of several editorial boards.
Articles
'Who you callin' nappy-headed?' A critical race theory look at the construction of Black women
'Who you callin' nappy-headed?' A critical race theory look at the construction of Black women
Citation:
Ladson-Billings. (2005). The evolving role of critical race theory in educational scholarship. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 115–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341024
Abstract:
The spring 2007 furor over New York City syndicated radio personality Don Imus' racist and demeaning characterization of a group of African American women on a college basketball team set off a firestorm of debate and discussion throughout US media. However, little of this discussion focused on the broader constructions of Black women as unattractive, undesirable, and morally suspect. These constructions from popular culture find their way into education when Black women as teachers and mothers continue to face a separate and different set of standards about what it means to be a good teacher and/or a good mother. This paper uses a set of films about teaching and teachers as 'texts' that define and re-define what it means to be a teacher or a mother and explores the implications of these constructions for teaching and teacher education through a critical race theory perspective.
The evolving role of critical race theory in educational scholarship
The evolving role of critical race theory in educational scholarship
Citation:
Ladson-Billings. (2009). “Who you callin” nappy-headed?’ A critical race theory look at the construction of Black women. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 12(1), 87–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320802651012
Abstract:
In 1994 the legal scholarship movement, critical race theory (CRT), was introduced in education. Since that time, a variety of scholars have taken up CRT as a way to analyze and critique educational research and practice. In this brief summary the author addresses the themes of the articles found in this issue and offers words of encouragement to a new generation of scholars who see CRT as a valuable tool for making sense of persistent racial inequities in US schools.
Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?
Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?
Citation:
Ladson-Billings. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/095183998236863
Abstract:
Critical race theory (CRT) first emerged as a counter legal scholarship to the positivist and liberal legal discourse of civil rights. This scholarly tradition argues against the slow pace of racial reform in the United States. Critical race theory begins with the notion that racism is normal in American society. It departs from mainstream legal scholarship by sometimes employing storytelling. It critiques liberalism and argues that Whites have been the primary beneficiaries of civil rights legislation.Since schooling in the USA purports to prepare citizens, CRT looks at how citizenship and race might interact. Critical race theory's usefulness in understanding educational inequity is in its infancy. It requires a critique of some of the civil rights era's most cherished legal victories and educational reform movements, such as multiculturalism. The paper concludes with words of caution about the use of CRT in education without a more thorough analysis of the legal literature upon which it is based.
Videos
Podcast Episodes
Black Like Me S5 Ep. 137: The Revolutionary Act of Teaching Black Kids With Excellence: Real Talk With Internationally Renowned Educator-Extraordinaire with Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, PhD.
Black Like Me S5 Ep. 137: The Revolutionary Act of Teaching Black Kids With Excellence: Real Talk With Internationally Renowned Educator-Extraordinaire with Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, PhD.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Can Save a Bad Curriculum: In Conversation with Gloria Ladson-Billings
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Can Save a Bad Curriculum: In Conversation with Gloria Ladson-Billings
Office Hours with Allen, Noguera, Howard, and Harper: Gloria Ladson-Billings Drops by the Office
Office Hours with Allen, Noguera, Howard, and Harper: Gloria Ladson-Billings Drops by the Office
Kimberlé W. Crenshaw is a pioneering scholar and writer on civil rights, critical race theory, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. In addition to her position at Columbia Law School, she is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. Crenshaw’s groundbreaking work on intersectionality was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. She authored the background paper on race and gender discrimination for the United Nations’ World Conference on Racism in 2001, served as the rapporteur for the conference’s expert group on gender and race discrimination, and coordinated NGO efforts to ensure the inclusion of gender in the WCAR Conference Declaration.
Books
Critical Race Theory : The Key Writings that Formed the Movement
Critical Race Theory : The Key Writings that Formed the Movement
Edited by Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, & Kendall Thomas
Edited by Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, & Kendall Thomas
"Edited by its principal founders and leading theoreticians, Critical Race Theory was the first book to gather the movement’s most important essays. It is essential reading in an age of acute racial injustice."
Seeing race again : countering colorblindness across the disciplines
Seeing race again : countering colorblindness across the disciplines
Edited by Kimberle Crenshaw
Edited by Kimberle Crenshaw
"This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studies."
On Intersectionality
On Intersectionality
Written by Kimberle Crenshaw
Written by Kimberle Crenshaw
"In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to Crenshaw's work, readers will find key essays and articles that have defined the concept of intersectionality, collected together for the first time. The book includes a sweeping new introduction by Crenshaw as well as prefaces that contextualize each of the chapters. For anyone interested in movement politics and advocacy, or in racial justice and gender equity, On Intersectionality will be compulsory reading from one of the most brilliant theorists of our time."
Will Be Released on 12/31/23
(Pre-Order) Amazon
Articles
Twenty Years of Critical Race Theory: Looking back to Move Forward
Twenty Years of Critical Race Theory: Looking back to Move Forward
Citation:
Crenshaw. (2011). Twenty years of critical race theory: looking back to move forward. Connecticut Law Review, 43(5), 1253–.
Abstract:
This Article revisits the history of Critical Race Theory (CRT) through a prism that highlights its historical articulation in light of the emergence of postracialism. The Article will explore two central inquiries. This first query attends to the specific contours of law as the site out of which CRT emerged. The Article hypothesizes that legal discourse presented a particularly legible template from which to demystify the role of reason and the rule of law in upholding the racial order. The second objective is to explore the contemporary significance of CRT’s trajectory in light of today’s “post-racial” milieu. The Article posits that CRT emerged between the pillars of liberal racial reform and Critical Legal Studies and that other conditions of its possibility included the temporal, institutional, and ideological nature of race discourse in the mid-eighties. Turning to the contemporary period, the Article posits that the post-racial turn presents conditions that are both parallel to and distinct from those that prevailed during CRTs formative years, and that the challenge of a contemporary CRT is to synthesize a transdisciplinary critique and counter-narrative to the post-racial settlement.
Race Liberalism and the Deradicalization of Racial Reform
Race Liberalism and the Deradicalization of Racial Reform
Citation:
Crenshaw. (2017). RACE LIBERALISM AND THE DERADICALIZATION OF RACIAL REFORM. Harvard Law Review, 130(9), 2298–2319.
Abstract:
Recent works by neoconservatives and by Critical legal scholars have suggested that civil rights reforms have been an unsuccessful means of achieving racial equality in America. In this Article, Professor Crenshaw considers these critiques and analyzes the continuing role of racism in the subordination of Black Americans. The neoconservative emphasis on formal colorblindness, she argues, fails to recognize the indeterminacy of civil rights laws and the force of lingering racial disparities. The Critical scholars, who emphasize the legitimating role of legal ideology and legal rights rhetoric, are substantially correct, according to Professor Crenshaw, but they fail to appreciate the choices and possibilities available to an oppressed group such as Blacks. The Critics, she suggests, ignore the singular power of racism as a hegemonic force in American society. Blacks have been created as a subordinated “other,” and formal reform has merely repackaged racism. Anti-discrimination law, she argues, has largely succeeded in eliminating the symbolic manifestations of racial oppression, but has allowed the perpetuation of material subordination of Blacks. Professor Crenshaw concludes by demonstrating the importance of exposing the racist nature of ostensibly neutral norms, and of devising strategies for change that include the pragmatic use of legal rights.
Videos
Podcasts
Kimberlé Crenshaw on Teaching the Truth about Race in America: In this special episode of the At Liberty Podcast listen to Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term “intersectionality,” help listeners understand the true meaning of Critical Race Theory and how it became a political flashpoint in schools and beyond.
Bakari Sellers is joined by civil rights advocate and professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to discuss factually acknowledging history through Critical Race Theory (5:47), the current trend of anti-intellectualism in politics (14:25), and the work being done by the African American Policy Forum (21:34).
Office Hours with Allen, Noguera, Howard, and Harper: Gloria Ladson-Billings Drops by the Office
Office Hours with Allen, Noguera, Howard, and Harper: Gloria Ladson-Billings Drops by the Office
Richard Delgado is an American legal scholar considered to be one the founders of critical race theory, along with Derrick Bell. Delgado is currently a Distinguished Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Previously, he was the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law
Articles
Books
By Richard Delgado
By Richard Delgado
This book offers the best and most influential writings of Richard Delgado, one of the founding figures of the critical race theory movement and one of the earliest scholars to address the harms of hate speech. With excerpts from his classic law review articles, conversations with his famous alter ego Rodrigo Crenshaw, and comments on the vicissitudes of academic life, this book spans topics such as hate speech, affirmative action, the war on terror, the endangered status of black men, and the place of Latino/as in the civil rights equation.
Links to Access
When Equality Ends: Stories About Race and Resistance
When Equality Ends: Stories About Race and Resistance
By Richard Delgado
In When Equality Ends: Stories About Race and Resistance, Delgado, adopting his trademark storytelling approach, casts aside the dense, dry language so commonly associated with legal writing, and offers up a series of incisive and compelling conversations about race in America. The characters, a young professor of color, an aging veteran of many civil rights struggles, and a brilliant young conservative, tackle a handful of complex legal and policy questions in an engaging and accessible manner.Has U.S. society quietly ended its commitment to minorities and to racial equality? In these new chronicles, Delgado searches for an answer.
Links to Access
The Coming Race War?
The Coming Race War?
By Richard Delgado
In The Coming Race War?, Delgado turns his attention to the American racial landscape in the wake of the mid-term elections in 1994. Our political and racial topography has been radically altered. Affirmative action is being rolled back, immigrants continue to be targeted as the source of economic woes, and race is increasingly downplayed as a source of the nation's problems. Legal obstacles to racial equality have long been removed, we are told, so what's the problem?
Links to Access
Justice at War: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights During Times of Crisis
Justice at War: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights During Times of Crisis
By Richard Delgado
By Richard Delgado
In the course of this new narrative, Delgado provides analytical breakthroughs, offering new civil rights theories, new approaches to interracial romance and solidarity, and a fresh analysis of how whiteness and white privilege figure into the debate on affirmative action. The characters also discuss the black/white binary paradigm of race and show why it persists even at a time when the country's population is rapidly diversifying.
Links to Access
Must We Defend Nazis? : Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy
Must We Defend Nazis? : Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy
By Richard Delgado
In Must We Defend Nazis?, legal experts Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic argue that it should not. Updated to consider the white supremacy demonstrations and counter-protests in Charlottesville and debates about hate speech on campus and on the internet, the book offers a concise argument against total, unchecked freedom of speech. Delgado and Stefancic instead call for a system of free speech that takes into account the harms that hate speech can inflict upon disempowered, marginalized people. They examine the prevailing arguments against regulating speech, and show that they all have answers. They also show how limiting free speech would work in a legal framework and offer suggestions for activist lawyers and judges interested in approaching the hate speech controversy intelligently.
Links to Access
The Rodrigo Chronicles : Conversations About America and Race
The Rodrigo Chronicles : Conversations About America and Race
By Richard Delgado
In The Rodrigo Chronicles, Delgado, adopting his trademark storytelling approach, casts aside the dense, dry language so commonly associated with legal writing and offers up a series of incisive and compelling conversations about race in America. Rodrigo, a brash and brilliant African-American law graduate has been living in Italy and has just arrived in the office of a professor when we meet him. Through the course of the book, the professor and he discuss the American racial scene, touching on such issues as the role of minorities in an age of global markets and competition, the black left, the rise of the black right, black crime, feminism, law reform, and the economics of racial discrimination.
Links to Access
Jean Stefancic writes about law reform, social change, and legal scholarship. She has written and co-authored fifty articles and fifteen books, many with her husband Richard Delgado. Their book, Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror, won a Gustavus Myers award for outstanding book on human rights in North America in 1998.
Articles
LAW, RELIGION, AND RACIAL JUSTICE: A COMMENT ON DERRICK BELL’S LAST ARTICLE
Citation:
Stefancic. (2018). LAW, RELIGION, AND RACIAL JUSTICE: A COMMENT ON DERRICK BELL’S LAST ARTICLE. Case Western Reserve Law Review, 69(2), 341–.
Abstract:
In his last article, Law as a Religion. (1) Derrick Bell sketched out his reflections on law and religion. In short, he concludes that religion is implausible, but fervently believed and that law, especially the U.S. Constitution, is idealized but does not deserve to be. In addition, both bodies of thought, he believes, have been compatible with racism, indeed can easily incline a true believer to adopt and espouse white supremacy--sometimes in a mild disguised form and on other occasions in an outright and dangerous way.
This essay examines Bell's reflections on religion and law and his exploration of how blind faith in either can incorporate racism. I offer two examples from Alabama's legal history to show how this can happen. (2) I then posit that his rejection of a fundamentalist approach to both religion and law led to his adoption of racial realism as a way to live a life of meaning and worth.
No mercy : How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda
No mercy : How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda
By Jean Stefancic
By Jean Stefancic
Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado provide an incisive analysis of the Right's rise to power. The authors show that, since the sixties, the Left has had little to do with setting the country's agenda and that conservative think tanks and foundations have been systematically abetting a conservative revolution by funding a variety of issue-oriented studies and programs. The authors focus on seven areas in which this battle has been waged and won by the powerful conservative coalition: English Only; Proposition 187 and immigration reform; IQ, race, and eugenics; affirmative action; welfare; tort reform; and campus multi-culturalism.
Links to Access
When Equality Ends: Stories About Race and Resistance
When Equality Ends: Stories About Race and Resistance
By Richard Delgado
In When Equality Ends: Stories About Race and Resistance, Delgado, adopting his trademark storytelling approach, casts aside the dense, dry language so commonly associated with legal writing, and offers up a series of incisive and compelling conversations about race in America. The characters, a young professor of color, an aging veteran of many civil rights struggles, and a brilliant young conservative, tackle a handful of complex legal and policy questions in an engaging and accessible manner.Has U.S. society quietly ended its commitment to minorities and to racial equality? In these new chronicles, Delgado searches for an answer.
Links to Access
The Coming Race War?
The Coming Race War?
By Richard Delgado
In The Coming Race War?, Delgado turns his attention to the American racial landscape in the wake of the mid-term elections in 1994. Our political and racial topography has been radically altered. Affirmative action is being rolled back, immigrants continue to be targeted as the source of economic woes, and race is increasingly downplayed as a source of the nation's problems. Legal obstacles to racial equality have long been removed, we are told, so what's the problem?
Links to Access
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse