Selected Product:
| Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
Paperback
Author: Derrick Bell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date: 2005-08-18
ISBN-10: 0195182472
ISBN-13: 9780195182477
List Price: $19.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, would become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent.
Here, Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. He maintains that, given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined instead to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants--unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights--that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions.
In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book.
Stimulating Read
| Customer Rating: | | This is a book that I think anyone interested in the Civil Rights movement should read. It will make you think about the Brown v. Board decision in a different way. The book puts the decision into the context of the times, while shocking you with Bell's main argument. While I found Bell's argument interesting, and parts of it compelling, I could not bring myself to endorse it full heartedly. I still side with the likes of Thurgood Marshall on this one! |
As always Derrick Bell is thought provoking
| Customer Rating: | | Excellent, Derrick Bell gives a deeper meaning to the Brown decision. |
Thinking about Brown v. Board of Ed--not honoring it
| Customer Rating: | Read this book. It makes you think critically, challenge your assumptions, and argue with the author. What more can you ask of a book?
Bell has the honesty to look at Brown from the perspective of its fiftieth anniversary, and ask the question, "What did it all mean?" Bell has the standing to ask this question, having devoted much of his life to litigation seeking to enforce the promise of Brown--often at not inconsiderable risk to his own life. Bell has the intelligence to bring to bear facts coupled with a historical perspective.
His conclusion: Brown was a step in the right direction, but had far more effect as a symbol than as a legal decision. Factually, virtually no child (Black or White) received an education in an integrated classroom as a result of any court order enforcing Brown. What little integration occurred (and the number of children (Black and White) who attend effectively segregated schools today--50 years after Brown--is staggering) resulted from legislative action (the civil rights acts of 1964/65 and the school finding acts of the same period).
Bell's analysis of Brown as a legal precedent is persuasive. It is more of a symbol than a living legal precedent. However, I disagree that Brown's symbolic power should be discounted. The reason that there have been so few cases citing Brown is that Brown so effectively ended legalized segregation.
I would argue that without Brown, the civil rights movement of the late 50's and early 60's (sit ins, voter registration, and other direct action) would not have been possible. For example, James Meredith survived his attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi by using his personal defiance to leverage the power of the United States government to battle the Klan. Without Brown, Meredith's struggle simply would have died (perhaps most literally).
Behind every successful mass movement was the protection (however ephemeral it may have been in all too many cases) of federal law enforcement. That presence would not have occurred without the mandate (and symbol) of Brown.
As Atlas said, give me a lever and I can move the world. Brown did not move the world; did not eliminate racism, and did not end segregated schools. It did, however, provide a fulcrum. The mass movements and direct actions which followed were the lever. And the world did, indeed, move.
Is racism gone? No. Are some people worse off than they were before Brown? Yes. Did Brown reach the issues of poverty generally or the impoverishment of Blacks in particular? No. Bot so what? No legal case or series of legal decisions can change a society. What they can do is point the way, and provide a base for struggle. And that is what Brown did. What more can you ask of a legal decision?
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The Conspiracy to Disenfranchise Blacks
| Customer Rating: | | Bell condemns the past 50 years of legal and cultural struggle against segregation as a conspiracy of whites to disenfranchise and dupe Black folks and their leaders because that struggle missed the point. The point is that if you don't outlaw racism then racist will conspire together and coop your movement to the benefit of whites. Bell is eloquent, as always, but far less compelling than in his earlier works. Here, Bell's strident argument against integration versus segregation will make you think hard about the quality of civil rights progress over the past 50 years. But, since the book offers only a "what if" Brown v. Board of Ed. had been decided differently idea, and no real vision for an alternative progressive movement, it becomes a must read and a must shelve book in the same instance. |
mixed feelings about this one....
| Customer Rating: | | In this book, Bell makes the argument that racial reform will never happen in the United States. He explains his belief that every policy implemented by whites, even though it may seem to be in the interest of black advancement, is in all actuality an attempt to further white interests. One can see this in the correlation between Brown v. Board and the United States' attempts to put an end to communism. Brown v. Board took place during the Cold War and when communism was at its peak. America was fighting to put an end to communism, and other countries were looking at the U.S. and seeing the segregated facilities and thinking "why are they trying to instigate democracy when they don't even have a democratic government'" and thoughts similar to these. With the ruling of Brown, other countries looked at the U.S. more favorably and it justified our attempts to end communism. He also makes this very interesting argument that blacks have no right to complain about certain policies, because although a policy may have been enacted which benefited blacks, that policy wasn't geared toward blacks, it was geared towards whites. So in essence, whites are the only ones who have the right to complain (thus making whites look like prejudice pigs). Blacks are merely "fortuitous beneficiaries" of white policy. Bell's arguments are certainly worth taking a look at, although at times he isn't very clear on his opinions and he has a very obvious bias. However, it's definitely worth a look. |
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