Overview Bell spent the second half of his career working in academia until his death in 2011. During this time, he worked at a number of law schools while authoring books which are now considered the foundation of
critical race theory. Bell worked towards the creation of what he considered a more inclusive faculty within institutions such as USC, Harvard, and NYU. Bell was known to be respectful of all beliefs and his class was described by his students to be the "least indoctrinated class" in their law school. Bell would give his students freedom to reach their own conclusions and to build their own arguments that could be reasonable, despite their political beliefs.
University of Oregon School of Law In 1981, During his time at NYU Law, Bell supported a student organization who were demanding the university hire more faculty of color. Taking advice from Bell, the student organization led silent protests outside faculty meetings.
Protests over faculty diversity During the summer of 1981, under the auspices of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bell conducted a multi-week seminar in Race Relations Law for 14 lawyers and judges from across Oregon. The University of Oregon School of Law was not the only place Bell fought to create a more diverse and inclusive faculty. Following his return to Harvard in 1986, after a year-long stint at
Stanford University. Bell staged a five-day sit-in in his office. The goal was to protest the school's failure to grant tenure to two professors on staff, both of whose work promoted CRT. Students supported the move which critics found "counterproductive," while Harvard administrators cited a lack of qualified candidates, defending that they had taken great strides in the previous decade to bring in Black faculty members. Following his leave of absence at Harvard, Bell accepted a visiting professorship at
NYU Law in 1991. After two years, Harvard had still not hired any minority women, and Bell requested an extension of his leave, which the school refused, thereby ending his tenure. In March 2012, five months after his death, Bell became the target of conservative media, including
Breitbart and
Sean Hannity, in an exposé of President
Barack Obama. The controversy focused on a 1990 video of Obama praising Bell at a protest by Harvard Law School students over the perceived lack of diversity in the school's faculty. Bell's widow stated that Bell and Obama had "very little contact" after Obama's law school graduation. She said that as far as she remembered, "He never had contact with the president as president." An examination of Senior Lecturer Obama's syllabus for his course on race and law at the University of Chicago revealed significant differences between Obama's perspective and that of Derrick Bell, even as Obama drew on major writings of critical race theory.
Development of Critical Race Theory In 1970, Bell published
Race, Racism, and American Law, a textbook of more than a thousand pages containing the idea that racial progress would be achieved only when it aligned with white people's interests. Bell is arguably the most influential source of thought critical of traditional
civil rights discourse. Bell's critique represented a challenge to the dominant
liberal and
conservative position on civil rights,
race and the law. He employed 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 seventh edition, has been continually in print since 1973 and is considered foundational in the field of
critical race theory. In the 1970s, Bell and these other legal scholars began using the phrase "critical race theory" (CRT) a phrase based on
critical legal studies, a branch of legal scholarship that challenged the validity of concepts such as
rationality,
objective truth, and judicial neutrality. Critical legal theory was itself a takeoff on
critical theory, a philosophical approach originating out of the leftist
Frankfurt School. Bell continued writing about critical race theory after accepting a teaching position at
Harvard University. He worked alongside lawyers, activists, and legal scholars across the country. Much of his legal scholarship was influenced by his experience both as a Black man and as a civil rights attorney. Writing in a narrative style, Bell contributed to the intellectual discussions on race. According to Bell, his purpose in writing was to examine the racial issues within the context of their economic and social, and political dimensions from a legal standpoint. In addition to this, Bell's critical race theory was eventually branched off into more theories, describing the hardships of other groups, such as AsianCrit (Asian), FemCrit (Women), LatCrit (Latino), TribalCrit (American Indian), and WhiteCrit (White). His theories were based on a number of propositions. •
Racism is ordinary, not aberrational. • ''White-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group. As an example, in
The Constitutional Contradiction, Bell argued that the framers of the Constitution chose the rewards of property over justice. With regard to the interest convergence, he maintains that "whites will promote racial advances for blacks only when they also promote white self-interest." Finally, in
The Price of Racial Remedies, Bell argues that whites will not support civil rights policies that may threaten white social status. Similar themes can be found in another well-known piece entitled, "Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory?" from 1995. His 2002 book,
Ethical Ambition, encourages a life of ethical behavior, including "a good job well done, giving credit to others, standing up for what you believe in, voluntarily returning lost valuables, choosing what feels right over what might feel good right now".
Literary Works Between the years of 1970 and 1980 Bell published many pieces of work. Other than his two most read books,
Race, Racism, and American Law, and
Serving Two Masters. His other mentionable books are
Silent Covenants, written in 2004, a book questioning the Brown v. Board of Education's legacy. His 2004 memoir,
Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth, where he dives into how he stuck to his beliefs. He wrote about how staying true to himself was how he was so successful.
Legal doctrine Along with Bell's contributions to critical race theory, in his early articles, he exhibited multiple analyses' of
legal doctrine. He discussed the legal doctrine through his outsider narrative scholarship. He would conclude that the rule of law "sought to convey an objectivity that may exist in theory but is impossible in the real world". In his narrative stories, he would create hypothetical legal doctrines that put forth the idea that racism is a permanent neutral principle. In doing so, he called “the nation to repent”, rather than having policymakers listen to him or change policies. His deconstructionist legal doctrine would include an “interest-convergence thesis” which assumed that the U.S. legal system would adapt legal doctrines meant to remedy Black injustices only when the doctrine would further benefit the interests of whites. In his doctrine, he also critiqued
Brown V. Board and titled it the “Revisionist Brown Option” which was his alternative answer that
Brown should have said in the court case. His doctrine also consisted of the concept “racial fortuitous corollary” and “racial preference licensing act”. Bell’s theories continue to be analyzed in legal discussions today, with legal professionals reflecting on his contributions to modern civil rights law. His legacy in law remains a topic of discussion, with reflections on his impact continuing in both academic and legal circles, including legal analyses published by Groth Law Firm.
As writer of short fiction Bell published a number of works of
short fiction which deal with similar themes to his nonfiction works. These include the
science fiction short story "
The Space Traders". Here, white Americans exchange the U.S. Black population for
extraterrestrials to solve the former's problems. Bell explained, “[It's] better [to] risk the unknown in space than face the certainty of racial discrimination here at home." An adaptation of the story appeared as part of the 1994
made-for-television anthology film Cosmic Slop. "The Space Traders" and other works of short fiction by Bell appeared in Bell's collection
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. == Death ==