Racism and Resistance : Essays on Derrick Bell's Racial Realism

African American legal theorist Derrick Bell argued that American anti-Black racism is permanent but that we are nevertheless morally obligated to resist it. Bell-an extraordinary legal scholar, activist, and public intellectual whose academic and political work included his employment as a young attorney with the NAACP and his pivotal role in the founding of Critical Race Theory in the 1970s, work he pursued until he died in 2011-termed this thesis "racial realism." Racism and Resistance is a collection of essays that present a multidisciplinary study of Bell's thesis. Scholars in philosophy, law, theology, and rhetoric employ various methods to present original interpretations of Bell's racial realism, including critical reflections on racial realism's relationship to theories of adjudication in jurisprudence; its use of fiction in relation to law, literature, and politics; its under-examined relationship to theology; its application in interpersonal relationships; and its place in the overall evolution of Bell's thought. Racism and Resistance thus presents novel interpretations of Bell's racial realism and enhances the literature on Critical Race Theory accordingly. Contents Foreword Our Philosophical Commitments and Reactionary Optimism The Contributions of Golden’s Edited Work on Bell Notes Works Cited Preface Notes Works Cited Acknowledgments Note Works Cited Introduction: I Want My Ham Voting Rights, Criminal Justice, and the Permanence of Racism Structure and Chapter Summaries Art and the Struggle for Justice Notes Works Cited Part I Racial Realism, Religion, and the Negro Problem Chapter 1 The Last Decade of Derrick Bell’s Thought I. Three Themes on Religion Bell’s Religious Faith Racist Faith The Juxtaposition between Faith and Religious Structure II. Application to Bell’s Themes in Law III. The Road Ahead Notes Works Cited Chapter 2 Derrick Bell and the “Negro Problem” I. The “Negro Problem” II. Derrick Bell and the “Long Shadow of Plessy” III. Bell on Myrdal’s Dilemma IV. Bell, Equality, and Struggle Conclusion Notes Works Cited Part II Racial Realism and Legal Theory Chapter 3 From Psychology to Resistance: Racial Realism and American Legal Realism I. II. Bell’s Essay “Racial Realism” Faces at the Bottom of the Well III. IV. Racial Realism: Black Subjectivity, Power, and the Permanence of Racism Racial Realism and Resistance to Racism “Racial Realism” and Faces Justice Marshall and The Handmaid’s Tale V. Notes Works Cited Chapter 4 A Rock and a Hard Place: Interest Convergence for the Racial-Religious Minority I. Racist Foundation The Constitution of Slavery The Historical Limitations of the First Amendment II. Prejudice in First Amendment Jurisprudence Overview of Free Exercise Clause Jurisprudence Free Exercise Jurisprudence for the Racial-Religious Minority Native Americans Jews Muslims Other Religious Minorities III. Interest Convergence for the Racial-Religious Minority Bell’s Interest-Convergence Theory Overview of the Hialeah Case Interest Convergence in Hialeah Notes Works Cited Part III Racial Realism and Hope Chapter 5 The Authority of Hope: Hopeful Illusions in Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond I. Hope and Law II. Hope in Brown III. The Child Figure and the Vagaries of Juridical Hope Conclusion Notes Works Cited Chapter 6 Between Hope and a White Body: The Challenge of Racial Realism and Interracial Love Introduction I. “Locked-In” Black Inequality Education, Employment, and Income Health, Wealth, and Residency II. The Power of Invisible Networks III. Racial Realism IV. Our Most Important Relationship V. Racial Realism and Interracial Love VI. Institutional Inequality, Individual Equality Conclusion Notes Works Cited Part IV Racial Realism and Theology Chapter 7 Rethinking Hope: The Importance of Radical Racial Realism for Womanist Theological Thought I. Confronting Racism from Multipositionality: Womanist Ideas of Hope II. Radical Racial Realism: The Problem of Eradication III. A Defiant Hope Notes Works Cited Chapter 8 Liberalism, Christendom, and Narrative: Paradox and Indirect Communication in Derrick Bell and Søren Kierkegaard I. II. Kierkegaard Derrick Bell III. Interlude: The Legal Demand for Fiction Bell on Abstraction and the Permanence Thesis: “Divining a Racial Realism Theory” “The Racial Preference Licensing Act” On the Resistance Thesis “The Afrolantica Awakening” “Justice Marshall and the Handmaid’s Tale” IV. Notes Works Cited Epilogue: Critical Race Theory as Paradox: The Propositional and the Poetic I. II. The Paradox of Racism as Poetic The “Racism” that Racism Destroyed Notes Works Cited Contributors Index