Bell, Derrick (1930–)

Derrick Bell is widely regarded as providing the conceptual basis for critical race theory, a legal theoretical perspective grounded in the historical and social experiences of racial groups in the United States. Bell's contribution to the genesis of critical race theory is derived from using race as an intellectual and methodological approach to explain racism and social inequity.

Bell, a former attorney with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund during the civil rights movement, viewed traditional strategies—such as filing amicus briefs and conducting protests, marches, and boycotts—as producing minimal and temporary results for oppressed racial groups, particularly African Americans. In addition, Bell argued that laws and policies designed to eradicate racial discrimination or provide remedies for racial injustice on the basis of color-blindness and merit generally secured and advanced the political and economic interests of middle- and upper-class whites.

According to Bell, racism is not indiscriminate but is instead a permanent component of American society. Developing an analytical construct he termed the interest-convergence principle, Bell explained how race and racism are perpetuated and maintained by society's dominant group. In contrast to de jure methods of exclusion and oppression to maintain its power, the dominant class, according to the interest-convergence principle, maintains its position through an elaborate process of marginalization using society's governing institutions. This process includes the use of law and public policy to construct and situate the political and economic interests of the dominant group around social resource management, distribution, and production. Paradoxically, the rights of subordinate groups are only recognized and legitimated when they further the interests of the dominant class and society's governing institutions.

An example of a convergence of interests is the decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). For Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn segregation in Brown was more a matter of advancing America's national interests than of reconciling a fundamental discrepancy within its democratic tenets. Using the legal history of African Americans as a precedent, Bell explained that, prior to Brown, claims that segregated schools were inferior had been met with unsympathetic responses from the courts or addressed with court orders requiring equal facilities. Bell asserts that the Supreme Court's decision to [Page 227]abolish de jure segregation on the basis of race was necessary for the United States to secure its position as an international superpower. The image of America legally subordinating its nonwhite citizens undermined its effort to combat the spread of communism to Third World countries. Under the interest-convergence principle, the passage of Brown is viewed as “progress” requiring the coincidence of a pressing social issue rather than a commitment to justice.

Derrick Bell's intellectual and social significance stems from his departure from traditional legal theory. Through a social-constructionist perspective of race, he introduced a new line of critical thought to explain the continuance of racism and social injustice. Bell's critical race scholarship, which used unconventional, non-analytic methods—such as narrative, storytelling, and racial allegory—articulated how judicial and civil rights strategies designed to promote equality simultaneously worked to preserve America's social hierarchy.

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