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Derrick A. Bell

Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1992

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Key Figures

Derrick Bell (The Author)/The Law Professor

Derrick Bell (1930-2011) is the author of Faces at the Bottom of the Well. Bell’s reputation as a legal scholar is based on his contributions to legal cases during the 1960s and 1970s that ended legal segregation in education; he later made important contributions to legal scholarship as a law professor, writer, and academic administrator at several law schools. Bell is most associated with critical race theory, a concept he explores from several different perspectives and in various arenas in each of the pieces in this volume.

Bell writes in his own voice in the preface and introduction. This voice is scholarly and authoritative because of his inclusion of references and direct quotes from a range of sources from fields such as the law, literature, sociology, and history; In fact, several of his references are to works he published in respected law journals. His grasp on so many fields and the language associated with them builds credibility with his audience as he advances his controversial thesis that racism is permanent.

Bell also uses a law professor persona in dialogues with the fictional characters in several of the pieces included in this book. This persona has less well-formed ideas than Bell the author. In the dialogues with the character Geneva Crenshaw or other characters like Jesse Semple from Chapter 1: “Racial Symbols: A Limited Legacy,” the law professor persona is just as likely to win as to lose a debate with characters who lack his academic credentials. The evolution of this persona’s thinking on race and racism provides an example of openness to ideas for readers who may be skeptical or resistant to Bell’s argument that racism is permanent. In addition, the law professor’s willingness to learn from ordinary people like Jesse Semple advances Bell’s argument that the experiences of ordinary African Americans are crucial to understanding how race really works.

Over the course of the volume, the law professor persona becomes more and more aware of how depressing the permanence of racism can be to well-intentioned people. As a character in “Racial Symbols,” the law professor asserts that symbols are important because they show signs of progress in the struggle for civil rights; his take on symbols is optimistic. In subsequent pieces, the law dialogues with Geneva force the professor to concede that common approaches, such as love (“The Last Black Hero”), appeals to reason (“Divining a Racial Realism Theory”), understanding how racism works (“The Rules of Racial Standing”), and education (“Racism’s Secret Bonding”), are not capable of ending racism or protecting African Americans from its harms. “The Space Traders,” which Bell presents without a dialogue, ends in despair when each of the groups tries to rely upon these approaches to avoid a morally bankrupt deal with the aliens. This shift in tone is Bell’s way of acknowledging that accepting the permanence of racism is not just intellectual work. Accepting it requires some psychological self-awareness.

The epilogue is likely the law professor persona as well, given the title (“Beyond Despair”) and that it is addressed to fictional character Geneva Crenshaw. The word choices are full of heightened emotion—racism was in the days of slavery “stark and terrifying” (243), and modern African Americans must face the struggle for justice with “unbelievable strength and courage” (247)—that are typical of the law professor persona. That Bell gives the last word to this persona and closes the book with the valediction “your friend as ever” (248) allows Bell to end on a more intimate note that helps the reader deal with the despair of the permanence of racism because they are not alone.

Geneva Crenshaw

Geneva Crenshaw, whose name is likely derived from Kimberlé Crenshaw (one of several important women scholars whose work influenced Bell), is a character who engages in constant dialogue with the law professor and who is the putative author of several of the stories that appear in the volume. Bell notes in his preface that she is a character he first introduced in And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. Bell describes Geneva as “the ultimate African queen,” with “gray dreadlocks” and “smooth blue-black skin” (66). Geneva bears markers of African American culture on her body. She is also a lawyer whose mastery of the law is equal to or exceeds the law professor’s. Finally, she is a storyteller whose fictions reveal truths about America that would not be available to the average reader otherwise. She is the embodiment of several important insights of critical race theory, in other words.

Geneva serves as a foil to the law professor persona. While the law professor persona is a character who is still clinging to some idealistic notions of the law as a tool to root out racism, Geneva is from the start pragmatic. In her first appearance in the book, Chapter 3: “The Racial Preference Licensing Act,” she forces the professor to examine his liberal conceptions of what the law can do about racism. In that piece, for example, she tells the law professor that no matter how unpleasant, it is the law professor’s job to tell liberal activists and lawyers that the end of racism is a “dream [that] is never coming true” (76) so they can move on to more productive pursuits to counter racism’s harms. Her arguments in this chapter help the professor begin to come to terms with critical race theory’s premise that racism is a permanent and central feature of the law, not an incidental and unfortunate glitch in the American system.

Bell uses the conceit that some of the pieces in the book are by Geneva, making her a storyteller who uses this atypical approach to illuminate parts of the law and culture that traditional legal scholarship ignores. The stories and the dialogues that follow are essentially teaching situations in which Geneva uses conversation about the stories to get the law professor (and the reader) to work through implications of the insight that racism is central to American law and culture. Her Socratic dialogue with him in Chapter 7: “The Law Professor’s Protest,” forces the law professor to defend storytelling as a critical tool to examine the law and racism.

In Chapter 8, we see the law professor’s increasing fluency with using stories as a tool to bring light to truths about race. Chapter 9: “The Space Traders,” is a piece that the professor attributes to Geneva, and the epilogue “Beyond Despair,” shows his effort to help her deal with the despair the ending of the story implies. Geneva becomes a character who needs comfort. Ultimately, she serves a rhetorical function by allowing Bell to address the psychological impact of permanence of racism on the reader.

Geneva is so important in these pieces because she allows Bell to replicate what he did in his Harvard classroom with the earlier iterations of these stories—rely upon storytelling and dialogue about stories to illuminate uncomfortable parts of how race works in America or even to deal with the reality of ordinary people grappling with the significance of racism’s permanence.

Jason Warfield

Jason Warfield, one of the main characters in Chapter 4: “The Last Black Hero,” is a leader of a civil rights organization, who falls in love with the white doctor who treats him after a bombing nearly kills him. Bell presents Jason as an idealistic man, who is charismatic, handsome, and an example of African American excellence. He inspires hero-worship in his followers and curiosity among the news organizations that pursue him for interviews after he survives the bombing.

Prior to the events of the story, Jason espoused the belief that African American love, specifically relationships between African American men and women, is central to revolutionary African American thought and political action. He counsels African American men in his organization to choose African American women as their love objects because doing so lines up with political values of protecting the African American community. Jason’s near-death experience and encounters with Sheila change the entire trajectory of his public and private life because he must choose between standing by his previously expressed values or loving her and becoming an ineffectual, hypocritical civil rights activist.

Jason is chastened by his strong feelings for Sheila and decides to renounce his commitment to dating African American women exclusively, a decision that shows a more realistic perspective on how love and attraction work; he recognizes that a relationship with Sheila trumps his political commitments because she makes him happy. Using Neva’s pragmatic insights about how to turn this relationship to his political advantage, Jason decides to return to his civil rights work despite possible backlash.

Bell uses this internal conflict and resolution to dramatize the notion that racism’s permanence is not just a philosophical problem but one that causes problems even within the intimate spaces of love and relationships (hence Jason’s name, “War-field”). In addition, he uses the dialogue between Geneva Crenshaw and the law professor to reveal the implication that love across racial lines cannot undo the permanence of racism.

Gleason Golightly

Gleason Golightly is a Black conservative who attempts to stop the trade deal between aliens and the US government in Chapter 9: “The Space Traders.” His last name reflects his willingness to cynically go along with racial politics as usual even when they are based on white supremacist ideas about African Americans as inferior. The name recalls the more light-hearted Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (the film and book), an escort whose desire for economic security eventually runs counter to her desire for love. Gleason’s character arc takes him from believing that he can manipulate racial politics to his personal and political advantage to his recognition that his racial identity makes him subject to the same racism as his poorer, less-politically connected racial peers.

Because of his past dealings with the American president and his cabinet, Gleason is one of the first African Americans to be certain that the Americans will take the deal. In the past, Gleason has given cover to the president’s racist appeals and politics in exchange for power and to do favors behind the scenes for African American universities and other African Americans. He sees himself as a trickster figure who, much like historical figure Booker T. Washington, believed that accommodation, not militancy, was the best policy for powerless people to gain some small protection from white supremacy. At the start of the story, he still believes that appeals to morality and reminding the president and his cabinet of the damage taking the deal will do to America’s reputation abroad will be enough to get them to turn down the deal.

His self-perception shifts when the president and his cabinet reveal that they see him as just another African American person. Their response and the ridicule that the Secretary of the Interior subjects him to leads to his epiphany that he is actually powerless due to the rules of racial standing; the powerful people around him reject his arguments because he is an African American person talking directly about matters that concern African Americans.

Gleason becomes desperate after that point, despite reassurances that he and his family will be protected. While such reassurances and appeals to his self-interest worked on him in the past, his realization that morality will never trump white self-interest leads him to action. His willingness to address a liberal civil rights group—people he has viewed as politically naïve in the past—is the first indication that he has had a change of heart about his conservative politics as the only means of gaining security in America. Their feel-good but ineffective response confirms his belief in their naiveté.

He leaves the narrative attempting to take a limo to the Canadian border to take advantage of the safe passage the administration gave him, but the Secretary of the Interior snatches away this opportunity at the last minute. He seems bemused and surprised that his wife is able to face their fate with stoicism, a point that indicates his shock and fear at going to the space traders’ ships. Bell uses his fate to critique Black conservative politics and to show that economic success, token status, and individual access are no protections against the permanence of racism.

Erika Wechsler

A character in Chapter 5: “Divining a Racial Realism Theory,” Erika Weschler is a former law school student and a member of White Citizens for Black Survival, an all-white militia committed to protecting and providing safe haven to African Americans if the United States decides to commit overt genocide. She is a round and white character, one of the few in the book, and Bell uses her to show what it would really take for white people to be true and effective allies—renunciation of white privilege and taking on the burden of armed resistance in a worst-case scenario.

Erika disrupts politics as usual as Bell presents them in the book because she is a left libertarian, that is, she is fully committed to individual rights, such as the right to bear arms, but she also believes in traditionally leftist positions, such as racial equality. She belongs in the tradition of John Brown, a 19th century white man who took up arms against slavery.

Like Geneva, Erika is a figure whose dialogue with the law professor forces him to admit that everything about American history shows racism is permanent. Her arguments provide a critique of liberal efforts to use the law to undo racism and the tenets of racial realism. Her appearance with her gun in hand marks the law professor’s increasing occupation with racial violence and despair over the permanence of racism.

Neva Brownlee

Neva Brownlee is Jason Warfield’s deputy in Chapter 4: “The Last Black Hero.” An accomplished and hard-working civil rights activist, Neva is a woman who is able to think strategically once Jason’s relationship with a white woman threatens to destroy the credibility of Quad A, the civil rights organization Jason leads. She keeps cool and stays productive even though she seems to have some romantic interest in Jason and hero-worships him just like the other members of Quad A.

Her personal life has been marred by painful divorce and loneliness, a reality that conversations with her mother reveal. These conversations with her mother also reveal the intersectional struggles of African American women whose lives are shaped by sometimes competing loyalties and oppression that result from their navigating their racial and gender identities. The situation with Jason tests these competing interests, but not without a personal cost to Neva. She, for example, pays off the blackmailer who threatens to expose Jason’s relationship, but she is hurt and angry at Jason for his actions.

Faced with several unpleasant choices, such as damage to Quad A, Jason’s unhappiness if he is not able to be with Sheila, and loss of face if people believe Jason has jilted her, Neva chooses pragmatism. Because she understands how race shapes Quad A and Jason’s ability to be seen credible by both white and African American observers of his leadership, she concludes that a relationship with Sheila can be an asset in the group’s efforts to politically effective. In the end, her subordination of her own feelings for the greater good does personal damage to her because she is forced to give up her idealistic notion of who Jason is, but it also allows her to become a voice for racial realism.

Sheila Bainbridge

Along with Erika Weschler, Sheila Bainbridge is one of two white female characters who ally themselves with African American interests. Sheila is an accomplished, beautiful woman with both a law and a medical degree. She is a graduate of the Black Studies program at Howard, an important historically Black university that is a powerhouse of African American excellence. This education gives her an appreciation for African American culture and informs her desire to sacrifice her love for Jason to protect his ability to be an effective leader for Quad A.

Erika’s initial decision to engage in self-sacrifice is one of the few examples of white surrender of self-interest; in fact, she loses her job ostensibly because she crossed a line by dating a patient but likely because that person is an African American man. The immediate political problems posed by marriage between Sheila and Jason and Sheila’s growing doubt when Jason concludes that Neva’s belief the situation is salvageable shows that love—a feeling racial idealists believe can undo racism—cannot overcome the power of racism.

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