Derrick Bell

Derrick Bell is a major figure within the legal studies discipline of Critical Race Theory. Concerned and dismayed that any gains made by civil right laws of the 1960s were quickly being eroded in the 1970s, Bell, a lawyer who served as the executive director of an NAACP branch began to fashion arguments that were designed to change existing laws.

Bell is arguably the most influential source of thought critical of traditional civil rights discourse. Bell’s critique represented a challenge on the dominant liberal and conservative position on civil rights, race and the law. Derrick Bell 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.

Bell continued in his writings on critical theory even 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 regards to the interest convergence, he maintains that whites will promote racial advances for blacks only when they also promotes 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. Each of the arguments presented shed a different light to the traditional racial discourse.