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Black Law Student Discussion Board / Derrick Bell "Faces at the Bottom of the Well"
« on: July 20, 2006, 11:59:40 AM »
Hey guys,
One of the books that was recommended reading for incoming BC Law students this fall was Derrick Bell's "Faces at the Bottom of the Well". I am in the middle of it right now, but his thesis has been churning around in my mind ever since I read it a few days ago. I really want to hear what you guys think about this idea, because I found it very frustrating. Admittedly I have a bias because I am white and find the idea of white dominance disturbing. Bell even states taht his proposition is easier to reject than refute. I've spent most of my college/grad school career studying education policy and working in predominently minority communities and schools. His thesis feels to me like a slap in the face of the work that I have done and would like to continue doing.
Perhaps you feel differently -I am genuinely curious.
His thesis: "Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even those herculean efforst we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary 'peaks of progress', short-lived vicotries that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance. This is a hard-to-accept fact that all history verifies. We must acknowledge it, not as a sign of submission, but as an act of ultimate defiance"
One of the books that was recommended reading for incoming BC Law students this fall was Derrick Bell's "Faces at the Bottom of the Well". I am in the middle of it right now, but his thesis has been churning around in my mind ever since I read it a few days ago. I really want to hear what you guys think about this idea, because I found it very frustrating. Admittedly I have a bias because I am white and find the idea of white dominance disturbing. Bell even states taht his proposition is easier to reject than refute. I've spent most of my college/grad school career studying education policy and working in predominently minority communities and schools. His thesis feels to me like a slap in the face of the work that I have done and would like to continue doing.
Perhaps you feel differently -I am genuinely curious.
His thesis: "Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even those herculean efforst we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary 'peaks of progress', short-lived vicotries that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance. This is a hard-to-accept fact that all history verifies. We must acknowledge it, not as a sign of submission, but as an act of ultimate defiance"
