Quotes from Derrick Bell

The goal was organized resistance to racial subjugation, and its harassing effect was probably more potent precisely because they risked so much without either economic or political power and with no certainty that they could change a system that they had known and hated all of their lives.

Given racism's critical role in providing an outlet for white frustrations caused by economic exploitation and political manipulation, one wonders whether American society could survive as we know it if large numbers of whites ever realized what racism costs them and decided to do something about it.

My parents were typical of many who drilled into me at an early age that because you are black, you have to be twice as good to get half as much. Unspoken in that advice is that whites are presumed competent until they prove the contrary. Blacks are assumed to be mediocre and certainly no intellectual match for whites until their skills and accomplishments gain them an often-reluctant acceptance.

A few white children were friendly, but others were hostile or simply distant. Teachers unthinkingly added to both problems by physically separating black students in the classroom either for special instruction or in response to the black students' requests.

But few black parents had any substantial contact with the school. Rist doubts their assessment would have been so positive had they been "really aware" of what was happening to their children.

Brown, in retrospect, was a serious disappointment, but if we can learn the lessons it did not intend to teach, it will not go down as a defeat.

To benefit from this resource in our midst, blacks must supplement the forms and patterns of striving for racial equality with innovative forms of personal self-image, group organization, resource collection and distribution, and strategic planning, using the concept of racial fortuity as a guideline.

In ways so closely tied to an individual's sense of self that it may not be apparent, the set of assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status of being white can become a valuable asset that whites seek to protect.

Since whites in general were not held responsible for harm to blacks, it followed that only those whites who were found liable for intentional discrimination should be penalized. As I suggested earlier, the Brown decision substituted one mantra for another: where "separate" was once equal, "separate" would be now categorically unequal.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

The challenge throughout has been to tell what I view as the truth about racism without causing disabling despair.

Courage is a finite resource, it is exhausted by the terrors we face.

It appears that my worst fears have been realised: we have made progress in everything yet nothing has changed.