https://lawdawghall.blogspot.com/2012/03/derrick-bell-whos-afraid-of-critical.html
Critical race theory writing and lecturing is characterized by frequent use of the first person, storytelling, narrative, allegory, interdisciplinary treatment of law, and the unapologetic use of creativity. The work is often disruptive because its commitment to anti-racism goes well beyond civil rights, integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures. This is not to say that critical race theory adherents automatically or uniformly âtrashâ liberal ideology and method (as many adherents of critical legal studies do). Rather, they are highly suspicious of the liberal agenda, distrust its method, and want to retain what they see as a valuable strain of egalitarianism which may exist despite, and not because of, liberalism.
C-SPAN Booknotes: Thomas Sowell (1990)
Brian Lamb: What's the state of prejudice in the United States today compared to earlier years in your life?
Thomas Sowell: It depends on the base here, like most comparisons. If you take 30 years ago, certainly greater in the academic world. In the book that I wrote about colleges, I urged minority parents not to think that because they had a good experience on a particular college campus 30 years ago, that their children will have that good an experience today, because the racial tension is enormous on many campuses. The colleges themselves try to say that they're victims of the racism of the larger society, and in point of fact, the racism on the campuses is greater than that in the larger society, in many campuses. And what I worry about is that they're going to graduate into the general society, blacks and whites alike, who hate each other's guts, and who can be the leaders of new racial strife for the future.
Lamb: What's causing that on college campuses?
Sowell: One of the factors is the preferential policies. But it's more the just that, because that in itself sets in motion a series of events, which add to the original resentment over the preferential policies. That is, you put yourself in the position of a black kid who comes out of the ghetto school, and he's gone through for 12 years with nothing but A's and B's, without a great deal of effort, and now he finds himself for the first time in his life in a predominantly white environment, and he finds that when he works twice as hard as he's ever worked, all he gets back for his work is a D, and that there is also a minority establishment -- this is true not only of blacks but of minorities in general -- an establishment which tells him, "Yes, this is the racism on this campus -- the white power structure is trying to keep you down." And it has to have a certain plausibility to it. It would have a certain plausibility to me had I come along in that era.
Now, I was fortunate enough in one sense that, having grown up in the south and then transferred to New York, I was shifted between different levels of education, and so I was a top student in my class in North Carolina, and then I was immediately the bottom student in my class in Harlem, and I was way behind whoever was next to the bottom, because the educational differences were just that great. A very painful period of adjustment, but there was no racial issue involved, since all the other kids ahead of me were all black. And so I got through that, and then for a second time in my life, I had gone out on my own when I was 17, and I didn't return to college full-time until I was about 25. For the second time in my life, I went into an environment that was very difficult compared to what I'd been used to, and once again I was way behind and I was in danger of flunking out of school the first semester.
Lamb: Where were you then?
Sowell: Harvard. Really, it really is incredible -- for the first time in your life, in ten years, you're a full-time student, and you're a full-time student at Harvard, without a high school diploma. So there were little difficulties.
Sowell: Oh, at that stage I was studying just general things, but I majored in economics, and all my degrees are in economics. Again I had an enormous adjustment to make, but there was no one there to tell me, "All these white professors have it in for you and that's why you're doing badly." Because first of all, I had done badly in Harlem, and I'd overcome, and I was doing badly there and I overcame it, but ...
Lamb: What happened -- take that Harvard experience through. How long did you stay at Harvard?
Lamb: Graduated from Harvard.
Lamb: I'm sorry, I thought you said earlier you went to Howard.
Sowell: I went there for a year and a half, and then I transferred to Harvard.
Sowell: You see, but I was going to Howard in the evening while working full-time during the day so when I went to Harvard I was a full-time student for the first time in ten years, and so that was a...
Lamb: And what years did you go to Harvard?
Sowell: I graduated in class of '58 -- so that you can understand how the student would find this plausible. I talked to a black man recently, a lawyer, who said when he was in law school, he was told when he first got there, that Professor X never gives black students more than a C, you know, and he got a B+, but there was great consternation because one of the myths had fallen. But, it's truly criminal what goes on in terms of using and manipulating the students to serve all kinds of external purposes.
Lamb: Can you give us an idea of the kind of external purposes you're talking about?
Sowell: Oh, political purposes. I just a couple of days ago was told by someone from Wellesley that there's a divestment campaign at Wellesley, demonstrations, the whole thing, and that those black girls who did not want to participate in that were threatened with violence -- and that's not unique.
At Stanford the Hispanic students, some Hispanic students, have complained that the Hispanic establishment has threatened them if they don't want to go along with what's being said and done, and they claim that only 15% of the Hispanic students at Stanford have ever attended a single event spons.ored by the Hispanic establishment, which speaks boldly in their name. Ah, and so you have this kind of thing going on at these schools across the country.
Again, notice, that once, once you let in the students who cannot make, meet the academic standards, you're going to end up having to let in professors who can't meet the academic standards. You're going to have to create courses that don't meet the academic standards.
Lamb: Correct me on the, on the names and everything. Derrick Bell?
Lamb: Harvard Law School, black man.
Lamb: Threatened the law school if they didn't hire a black woman, he's going, he's leaving?
Sowell: Well, if I understand it correctly, he's taking unpaid leave until such time as they hire a woman of color, as he says.
Well, he's also said that by black, he does not mean skin color, he means those who are really black, not those who think white and look black. And so what he is really saying is he wants ideological conformity in the people that are hired to fill this position. That's not uncommon either.
I know a black woman, for example, who had a Ph.D. -- she's had a book published, she has another contract on another book, she's taught at a couple of very nice places, she has a devil of a time getting a job -- not a job in a prestigious institution, a job teaching at a college. And the reason is that she gets shot down, blackballed, whatever, by people who don't like her ideology.
That's happening not only racially, it's also happening where race is not an issue. In a law school, I learned recently, there's a woman who was being considered for a tenured position, and all the men voted for her and all the woman voted against her, because she does not follow radical feminism.
And so you're getting these ideological tests, so that at the very time that there's all this mouthing of the word diversity, there is this extremely narrow ideological conformity that is being enforced wherever people have the power to enforce it.
Lamb: What did you think of Derrick Bell's whole plan?
Sowell: Well, his chances of success will depend on whether or not he has overestimated his importance to the Harvard Law School. I think it would be a tragedy if they caved in, and I was very pleased to see that they seemed to show some backbone, which is quite rare among academics.
Lamb: Now, what do you think of the press treatment of him?
Sowell: It's been quite gentle.
Lamb: I mean, is he a hero?
Lamb: No. Basically, I mean, from the press coverage, you've seen, is he a hero to the ...?
Sowell: Well, he's looked at as an idealist who is self-sacrificing and so on. I suppose one could, if one wanted to look at it that way, have seen Hitler that way in his early days. It's just a question of where that kind of idealism leads. He has launched a despicable attack on a young black professor at the law school who doesn't go along with this. A young man named Randall Kennedy, who has written a very thoughtful, intelligent article last June in the Harvard Law Review, questioning some of the assumptions that people are making, people like Derrick Bell and doing it in a very gentlemanly as well as very logical way, empirical way, and that's not what they want. They want the conclusion to be that -- they want him to march in lock step and he won't do it, and they're doing their best to make life impossible for him.
Lamb: What do you think Harvard will do?
Sowell: I've heard that Kennedy -- and I don't know this -- I've heard that he has tenure, so I think that he may be all right.
Lamb: But, I mean, what do you think they'll do with ...
Sowell: I hope that they will resist it, and since it's gotten so much publicity, I'm not sure they could stand to cave in to it. I was very pleased to see that Alan Dershowitz of Harvard had criticized this and that he picked up the fact that what Bell is really asking for is not only that people be hired by race, but that they be hired to fit Derek Bell's ideology.
Lamb: What would happen if this was going on at Stanford Law School?
Sowell: They'd have caved in long ago.
Lamb: Stanford Law School would have?
Sowell: Yes. I think so. It's a judgment call, but that's my judgment.
Lamb: Why would they do it so quickly?
Sowell: Just looking at their track record. They have perfected the technique of preemptive surrender.
[ Full interview: https://youtu.be/T2hPQ86lGV0 ]
âUnlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.â
âAs mentioned earlier, critical race scholars are discontented with liberalism as a framework for addressing Americaâs racial problems. Many liberals believe in color blindness and neutral principles of constitutional law. They believe in equality, especially equal treatment for all persons, regardless of their different histories or current situations.â
-- "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" by Delgado and Stefancic.
Thomas Sowell saw this coming 30 years ago. Of course, Harvard now routinely capitulates to tantrums; the most recent FIRE Campus Free Speech Rankings gave Harvard the lowest grade numerically possible due to it acceding to shrill, illiberal ideological demands.
