Who is Professor Derrick Bell and what is Critical Race Theory?
The newly released video of a young, blossoming Marxist Barak Hussein Obama shows the future president praising Professor Derrick Bell at Harvard. Like I posted earlier, The Conservative Lady has already done a superb job of jumping on this.
So who is Derrick Bell?
The founder of Critical Race Theory. We will get to that in a moment.
First, I'll let you read for yourself...
(from Wikipedia)
So who is Derrick Bell?
The founder of Critical Race Theory. We will get to that in a moment.
First, I'll let you read for yourself...
(from Wikipedia)
Protests over faculty diversity
In 1980 Bell became the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, becoming one of the first African-Americans to ever head a non-black law school. He resigned in 1985 over a dispute about faculty diversity.[1] Bell then taught at Stanford University for a year.
Returning to Harvard in 1986, Bell staged a five-day sit-in in his office to protest the school's failure to grant tenure to two legal scholars on staff, both of whom adhered to a movement in legal philosophy that claims legal institutions play a role in the maintenance of the ruling class' position. The administration, not giving an inch, claimed substandard scholarship and teaching on the part of the professors as the reason for the denial of tenure, but Bell called it an unambiguous attack on ideology. Bell's sit-in galvanized student support but sharply divided the faculty.[3]
Bell reentered the debate over hiring practices at Harvard in 1990, when he vowed to take an unpaid leave of absence until the school appointed a female of color to its tenured faculty.[4] At the time, of the law school's 60 tenured professors, only three were black and five were women. The school had never had a black woman on the tenured staff.[3]
Students held vigils and protests in solidarity with Bell with the support of some faculty. One of these students was future U.S. president Barack Obama, who spoke at a protest at Harvard Law School on behalf of Bell.[5] Critics, including some faculty members, called Bell's methods counterproductive, and Harvard administration officials insisted they had already made enormous advances in hiring.[3] The story of his protest is detailed in his book Confronting Authority.
Academic contributions
Bell continued writing about critical race theory after accepting a teaching position at Harvard University. 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.
For instance, 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, like the affirmative action hiring through which he acquired his status.
Get this:
In the mid-1960s Bell was appointed to the law faculty of the University of Southern California as executive director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty. In 1969, with the help of protests from black Harvard Law School students for a minority faculty member, Bell was hired to teach there. At Harvard, Bell established a new course in civil rights law, published a celebrated case book, Race, Racism and American Law, and produced a steady stream of law review articles. As a teacher, Bell became a mentor and role model to a generation of students of color, but he played a delicate balancing act at the university. Bell became the first black tenured professor in Harvard Law School's history and called on the university to improve its minority hiring record. But shortly after his tenure in 1971, a white university vice-president tried to purchase a house that Bell had been previously offered through the university; Bell saw this as a case of discrimination. This was the first case in which Bell's charges of racism would mobilize his supporters, who championed his efforts to stand up for principle, and anger his detractors, who accused him of being too quick with his allegations of bigotry.[3]
On Critical Race Theory:
Overall Theory
Although no set of canonical doctrines or methodologies defines CRT, the movement is loosely unified by two common areas of inquiry. First, CRT has analyzed the way in which white supremacy and racial power are reproduced over time, and in particular, the role that law plays in this process. Second, CRT work has investigated the possibility of transforming the relationship between law and racial power, and more broadly, the possibility of achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination.
Key theoretical elements
-A critique of liberalism: CRT scholars favor a more aggressive approach to social transformation as opposed to liberalism's more cautious approach, favor a race conscious approach to transformation rather than liberalism's embrace of color blindness, and favor an approach that relies more on political organizing, in contrast to liberalism's reliance on rights-based remedies.
-Storytelling/counterstorytelling and "naming one's own reality"--using narrative to illuminate and explore experiences of racial oppression.
-Revisionist interpretations of American civil rights law and progress—criticizing civil rights scholarship and anti-discrimination law.
-Applying insights from social science writing on race and racism to legal problems.
-Structural determinism, or how "the structure of legal thought or culture influences its content."
-The intersections of race, sex, and class--e.g., how poor Latinas' experience of domestic violence needs distinctive remedies.
-Essentialism and anti-essentialism—reducing the experience of a category (like gender or race) to the experience of one sub-group (like white women or African-Americans).
-Cultural nationalism/separatism, Black nationalism--exploring more radical views arguing for separation and reparations as a form of foreign aid.
-Legal institutions, critical pedagogy, and minority lawyers in the bar.
CRITICISM
Many mainstream legal scholars have criticized CRT on a number of grounds, including some scholars' use of narrative and storytelling, as well as the critique of objectivity adopted by critical race theorists in connection with the critique of merit. Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry have argued that critical race theory, along with critical feminism and critical legal studies, has anti-Semitic and anti-Asian implications, has worked to undermine notions of democratic community and has impeded dialogue.[7] Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago has “label[ed] critical race theorists and postmodernists the ‘lunatic core’ of ‘radical legal egalitarianism.’”[8] He writes,
What is most arresting about critical race theory is that...it turns its back on the Western tradition of rational inquiry, forswearing analysis for narrative. Rather than marshal logical arguments and empirical data, critical race theorists tell stories — fictional, science-fictional, quasi-fictional, autobiographical, anecdotal — designed to expose the pervasive and debilitating racism of America today. By repudiating reasoned argumentation, the storytellers reinforce stereotypes about the intellectual capacities of nonwhites.[8]
Judge Alex Kozinski, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, writes that Critical Race Theorists have constructed a philosophy which makes a valid exchange of ideas between the various disciplines unattainable.
The radical multiculturalists' views raise insuperable barriers to mutual understanding. Consider the Space Traders story. How does one have a meaningful dialogue with Derrick Bell? Because his thesis is utterly untestable, one quickly reaches a dead end after either accepting or rejecting his assertion that white Americans would cheerfully sell all blacks to the aliens. The story is also a poke in the eye of American Jews, particularly those who risked life and limb by actively participating in the civil rights protests of the 1960s. Bell clearly implies that this was done out of tawdry self-interest. Perhaps most galling is Bell's insensitivity in making the symbol of Jewish hypocrisy the little girl who perished in the Holocaust — as close to a saint as Jews have. A Jewish professor who invoked the name of Rosa Parks so derisively would be bitterly condemned — and rightly so.[9]
At the left wing RacismReview.com this was said of Bell:
It is standard practice of scholars to honor their intellectual fore-parents who have been caste into the shadows of history, we eulogize their memories and praise their life’s work as a goal to which we should all aspire, but Derrick Bell’s life is the stuff “Black thought” is made of and resists such “fluffy-ization.” Derrick’s courage rang with the testament of Black thinkers from beginning to end. When I dared to suggest back in October of 2007 that philosophers were trying to make sense of his work next to Marx and Nietzsche, he told me that he considered himself-
"...the academic counterpart of Errol Garner, the late jazz pianist from my hometown, Pittsburgh, who never learned to read music fearing, as I understand it, that it would ruin his style. I think there must be value in Marxist and other writings, but I did not really read them in college and have had little time since. I am writing this in Pittsburgh where I have been celebrating my 50th law school reunion from Pitt Law School. I do care more about the thought and writings and actions of Du Bois, Robeson, Douglass, et al. I think during my talk at UCLA, I read from the 1935 essay by Ralph Bunche about the futility of using law to overcome racism. It made more sense than so much of the theoretical writings on law, past and present, that I can barely understand and have great difficulty connecting with my experience. And you are right. At almost 77, I do not care to write in ways that whites can vindicate."
Bell even wrote a short story (mentioned above in the critique section) called "The Space Traders". The preface is as follows:
In “The Space Traders,“ aliens arrive and offer the United States ”enough gold to retire the national debt, a magic chemical that will cleanse America’s polluted skies and waters, and a limitless source of safe energy to replace our dwindling reserves.” The U.S. just has to give the aliens one thing in return: all of our black people. (Guess what white Americans decide?)In the story, aliens visit the United States in the future and offer America eternal peace, prosperity, and health in exchange for all black people in America. The story ends with 70% of Americans voting to send the blacks off, as they are marched, naked and under supervision of white men with weapons, to the alien slave ships.
In fact, a short movie was released called 'Cosmic Slop' which featured Ronald Reagan as an evil alien slave trader.
...and here is more Bell spewing more diarrhea straight out of his mouth:
This is the guy President Obama tells us to "open up our hearts and minds to". I have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg.
But, do you know what is most appalling about all of this? Liberals will see this video of Barack Obama embracing Derrick Bell and they will not think a second thought about it. Why? They simply don't care. Likewise, the left wing media, in a continual effort to surround Barack Obama with entrenched fortifications of protection, will not investigate this for a second. For Barack Obama to say we must "open up our hearts and minds" to a man who's entire life, study, and theory is predicated on the belief that all white people are inherently evil and racist is a complete outrage worthy of widespread news coverage. Though, like I said, liberals will not understand, nor will they care, to think on their own or imagine the very implications of this.
In fact, I am thoroughly convinced that a video could be released of Obama murdering a litter of golden retriever puppies with a bloody axe and the left would still respond with the usual, "So, what's so controversial about that?"
No worries. There will be plenty more videos to come. Plenty more ammunition spread by the army of Breitbarts out there. Enough to finally make a complete nationwide mockery of the mainstream media, Barack Obama, and every person supporting him.
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