Racism and Resistance: Essays on Derrick Bell’s Racial Realism 1438485972, 9781438485973

Table of contents :
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