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

“Mrs. MacDonald looked at me and said slowly, seriously, ‘I can’t speak for everyone, but as for me, I am an old woman. I lives to harass white folks.’”

In choosing the voice of an ordinary but brave woman to represent people who are defiant in the face of likely failure to end racism, Bell signals that he sees the stories of ordinary African Americans as valuable evidence. The inclusion of her story is an example of storytelling, a hallmark of the way critical race theorists make their arguments.

“Several of the stories were written to facilitate classroom discussion.

Bell identifies an important context for this volume, namely law school classrooms. This description prepares the reader for the sometimes didactic (teacherly) approach in the stories that follow and help the reader understand why so much of the text is devoted to discussing the law and important legal principles.

“To initiate the reconsideration, I want to set forth this proposition, which will be easier to reject than refute: Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even those herculean efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary ‘peaks of progress,’ short-lived victories 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.”

That phrase “easier to reject than refute” shows Bell’s awareness of how counterintuitive his stance on the permanence of racism is to likeminded people in his audience. He acknowledges that this audience might reject his stance, but he then appeals to history by highlighting a cycle of progress of reversion that most students of race in America will recognize. Here, too, he introduces the idea of defiance as an appropriate response to this state of affairs and thus anticipates an important theme in the work that follows.

“We identify with and hail as hero the man or woman willing to face even death without flinching. Why? Because, while no one escapes death, those who conquer their dread of it are freed to live more fully. In similar fashion, African Americans must confront and conquer the otherwise deadening reality of our permanent subordinate status. Only in this way can we prevent ourselves from being dragged down by society’s racial hostility. Beyond survival lies the potential to perceive more clearly both a reason and the means for further struggle.”

Bell continues making the case for acceptance of the permanence of racism and defiance in the face of that permanence as a heroic stance, an appeal to the emotions of his audience. He also uses “we” as the pronoun here to build community with his audience. Using emotional appeals and establishing connections with the audience are important persuasive approaches, and their presence here shows how skillful Bell is at getting his readers to support his argument.

“I recognized that Semple was speaking as much out of his experience as out of the books he read. He sounded like the working-class men in black barbershops who may have to keep quiet not to lose their jobs, but in their environment, talking to their friends, let it all come out. Far from being so beaten down making a living as to have stopped caring about their race, their rhetoric makes it seem as if the revolution is not simply imminent but already under way.”

Bell, in his law professor persona, identifies a key area where African American speakers like Semple have space and standing to make arguments about race in America. He is careful to note here that that speech is grounded in two kinds of knowledge, academic knowledge and personal experience, with both being valid ways of knowing. In fact, this chapter in which books (the professor) and experience (the driver) are in dialogue allows both men to figure out together what the real significance of racial symbols might be. This piece reiterates Bell’s point elsewhere that looking to the lives of ordinary African Americans can provide a way to navigate through the permanence of racism. In addition, the barbershop is one of the sources of African American resilience because it supports an attitude of defiance.

“Supporters of Afrolantican emigration took as their models three key advocates of emigration between the early nineteenth century and the 1920s: Paul Cuffe, Martin R. Delany, and Marcus Garvey. The first, Paul Cuffe, was black shipowner from Massachusetts who, himself a constant victim of persecution (he was jailed for his refusal to pay taxes, which he withheld to protest being denied the vote and other privileges of citizenship), had determined to ‘emancipate’ Africa.”

One of the important functions of this chapter is to educate the reader about the history of African Americans’ responses to the persistence of racism in America. Although this piece is certainly a story, it includes long passages like these that interrupt the flow of the narrative, an indication that the main purpose here is to educate instead of entertain. These long passages are frequently supposed to represent the arguments of various schools of thought about whether African Americans should leave the United States; these stances are what take the place of specific, well-developed characters, making this piece an allegory instead of a straightforward short story.

“The spirit of cooperation that had engaged a few hundred thousand blacks spread to others, as they recalled the tenacity for humane life which had enabled generations of blacks to survive all efforts to dehumanize or obliterate them. Infectious, their renewed tenacity reinforced their sense of possessing themselves. Blacks held fast, like a talisman, the quiet conviction that Afrolantica had not been mere mirage—that somewhere in the word America, somewhere irrevocable and profound, there is as well the word Afrolantica.”

The language at the end of this story is literary in that Bell uses parallel sentence structure to carry the reader along in that last moment of transcendence that people are coming back from the Afroatlantica Armada with hope instead of disappointment. His presentation of their return is of people who are triumphant, and he grounds this representation in the history of the resilience of enslaved African Americans in the past. The end of this story allows Bell to illustrate what defiance in the face of the permanence of racism could look like. This ending also reinforces that acceptance of the things one cannot change—racism in America being one of them—can lead to defiance and a better lived life.

“IT WAS ENACTED AS THE RACIAL PREFERENCE LICENSING Act. At an elaborate, nationally televised signing ceremony, the President—elected as a ‘racial moderate’—assured the nation that the new statute represented a realistic advance in race relations. ‘It is,’ he insisted, ‘certainly not a return to the segregation policies granted constitutional protection under the stigma-inflicting ‘separate but equal’ standard of Plessy v. Ferguson established roughly a century ago.1’”

This piece has almost no storytelling elements with the bulk of the text being either the voice of the president explaining the ins and outs of the act and (the largest part) Geneva Crenshaw and the law professor debating how realistic such an act would be. In addition, this paragraph includes the first (indicated with the “1” in superscript at the end) of 31 numeric notes. These characteristics make “The Racial Preference Licensing Act” one of the more teacherly texts, one that is most clearly designed to address an academic audience of legal scholars or those in training to be lawyers. Bell has to appeal to multiple audiences to establish the credibility of his arguments, and in Chapter 3 the text indicates he is prioritizing his legal audience over a general audience by using scholarly conventions they expect to see in writing about the law.

“‘Sounds to me,’ I said, ‘like trying to fight for civil rights the way Brer

Rabbit got himself out of Brer Fox’s clutches in the old Uncle Remus story.’ ‘Something like that.’ Geneva smiled, sensing that she was penetrating my skepticism. ‘In a bad situation he lacks the power to get out of, Brer Rabbit uses his wits. He doesn’t waste any energy asking Brer Fox to set him free.’”

Bell references a storehouse of lessons in African American resilience—African American folktales in which the less powerful rabbit outwits the more powerful fox. The moral of that folktale is that acceptance is the first stage of getting the best that one can hope from a situation. Using the reference to the folktale here shows once again that Bell values African American culture as a source of knowledge; in addition, the example of Brer Rabbit’s acceptance of his situation as a first stage to minimizing the harm to himself is an example of how acceptance of the permanence of racism can help African Americans more effectively use their political resources.

“But, Mom, how do we accept our responsibility in the face of betrayal and maintain the respect that was a basis for our love and caring in the first place?”

This piece of dialogue between Neva Brownlee and her mother demonstrates the intersection of expectations and oppression African American women face because of their gender and race. Neva’s complaint that she is faced with two impossible choices—supporting African American men even if they don’t support her or choosing to center herself even if it harms her racial community. Intersectionality, a concept critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw uses to describe this predicament, is on display here. Bell uses Neva’s struggles with this dilemma to show that even in the most personal of arenas—love and relationships—the permanence of racism tends to intervene.

“‘When you reveal your relationship with Dr. Bainbridge,’ Neva continued, turning to him, ‘Quad A may have a rough time for a while. They’ll know her only as ‘that white woman.’ But if you both return and she joins you in our work, there’s just a chance that Quad A can equal the acceptance many African American families achieve when one of their children marries a white person. I assume, Jason, that Dr. Bainbridge has qualities—other than her race—that attract you. In time, Quad A members may recognize them as well. Since, as I understand it, she is a lawyer as well as a doctor, surely she has skills we could use.’”

Neva’s acceptance of and strategic thinking about the political problem posed by Jason’s relationship with Sheila poses to the mission of Quad A allows her to make the best of a difficult situation. In this moment she exemplifies Bell’s argument that accepting the permanence of racism and other racial dynamics in America will allow African Americans to make decisions that ultimately help them. This is also a moment when Bell shows that the quiet competence of African American women is a form of heroism that needs to be noted.

“To answer both questions, I cited the 1978 Bakke case,10 where the Supreme Court invalidated the policy of California’s medical school of reserving 10 percent of its openings for minorities. The Court relied heavily on the Fourteenth Amendment which the Court—during its enlightened period—said poses serious problems to state laws and policies that make racial classifications. In rigidly applying this rule in a seemingly neutral way to California’s 10-percent minority admissions policy, a policy intended to make amends for years of overt discrimination, the Court’s majority utterly ignored the fact that the white race had in fact the power and advantages; and that, notwithstanding the Fourteenth Amendment, the black race has for decades been denied entry into California’s medical schools.”

The elevated diction in this quote and the explicit citation of a legal case make it clear that the main purpose of this story is to explore the problem with seeing the law as colorblind. This passage and others in this story explicitly incorporate important premises of critical race theory as lenses for understanding why racism is permanent in America.

“There are limits to what we can do with philosophy. You and I know that if the need is great enough, the rewards large enough, the temptation strong enough, we blacks can be sacrificed at will. A present fear sometimes, a distant memory always.”

This passage identifies the implication of the racial realism theory of the title, namely that white self-interest will always and inevitably trump African American rights. His focus on the centrality of white self-interest reflects an important premise of critical race theory, which is that the racism is a foundational part of the American political system.

“It is a little scary, but I can’t help noticing that the voice sounds suspiciously like the actor James Earl Jones doing one more TV commercial voiceover. It really riles me how even one of the country’s finest actors cannot escape the exploitative practice of overlaying the actions of the whites portrayed on the screen with the warm, rich voices of blacks. Damn! I thought.”

This is another of the selections that has very few storytelling elements. Nevertheless, Bell brings focus to bear on language and the role it plays in African Americans’ ability to be heard in a permanently racist society by using a pop-culture reference to James Earl Jones. The profanity and examples are likely intended to be humorous, but they also allow Bell to anticipate his theme in the piece, which is that African American voices are only heard inasmuch as it serves the interests of white people for them to be heard. This focus on voice here and in the later reference to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s dialect poetry allows Bell to turn a critical (and self-critical) eye on the importance of paying attention to the rhetorical situation. His discussion here, especially the use of multiple frames, shows off his own facility with rhetoric and thus enhances his credibility as he makes his arguments.

“True awareness requires an understanding of the Rules of Racial Standing. As an individual’s understanding of these rules increases, there will be more and more instances where one can discern their workings. Using this knowledge, one gains the gift of prophecy about racism, its essence, its goals, even its remedies. The price of this knowledge is the frustration that follows recognition that no amount of public prophecy, no matter its accuracy, can either repeal the Rules of Racial Standing or prevent their operation.”

The fifth rule is another instance in which understanding the seemingly immutable permanence of racism can allow African Americans to act more strategically when it comes to mitigating the effects of racism. The reference to this knowledge still not being enough to avoid its operation is one of several instances when Bell acknowledges the possibility of despair as a response to this reality.

“They take seriously their roles as guardians of Harvard’s scholarly reputation—a guardianship not evil in itself, but in practice it simply replicates the status quo by selecting candidates from similar backgrounds, with interests and ideology like those of current faculty members.”

Bell here explains why elite institutions like Harvard hire and promote so few Black faculty members. His explanation highlights how gatekeepers—faculty, in this case—may not have bad intentions on an individual level but still perpetuate racism that is baked into the system of tenure. His insight about the disconnect between good or neutral intentions and discriminatory outcomes reflects critical race theorists’ understanding that racism is built into societal structures that reinforce the racial status quo.

“Professor Mari Matsuda has, in discussing the academic value of a more integrated legal landscape, argued that new voices will emphasize difference, and thus give new vigor to theoretical debate. An outsider’s experience of discrimination or poverty may, for example, though differing from textbook cases, be valid knowledge, both concrete and personal: ‘To the extent legal discourse is distillable into conflicts over distribution of resources, the voice of the poor will force us to discuss such conflicts with full awareness of the reality of American poverty.’”

Bell clearly aligns his approach to the law with critical race theory here by citing Matsuda, an important scholar in this field, and by including a quote that explains why critical race theorists value voices that are traditionally excluded from discourse about the law. Like many of the arguments in this piece, the focus is on the impact of the permanence of racism in law schools, rarefied settings that most general readers will not be too concerned about. This section is designed to appeal to readers who are concerned about legal education while the quote is designed to call to the attention of general readers why they should care.

“I can’t claim objectivity, Geneva, but I and many other minority legal scholars—for example Robert Williams, Angela Harris, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, Jerome Culp, Richard Delgado, Gerald Torres, Lani Gunier, and Charles Lawrence—have borrowed from other disciplines like philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences. With what some of us are calling critical race theory, we are attempting to sing a new scholarly song—even if to some listeners our style is strange, our lyrics unseemly.”

This chapter is one in which the persona of the law professor/narrator most overlaps with Bell, especially since the protests of the law professor are a part of Bell’s professional biography. Bell also name checks foundational figures in critical race theory and identifies their use of multidisciplinary perspectives as the rationale for his approach to making the law more equitable. This passage is one of the clearest moments when Bell declares his role in critical race theory. 

“Geneva sat quietly for a time, absorbed in thought. ‘A fine story,’ she said finally, ‘and an apt metaphor for the knowing but unspoken alliance whereby all whites are bonded—as bell hooks says—by racism. ‘And,’ she added, ‘as paradoxical as it seems, viewing racism as an amalgam of guilt, responsibility, and power—all of which are generally known but never acknowledged—may explain why educational programs are destined to fail.’”

This passage is a commentary on how Ursula Le Guin’s short story illustrates the importance of scapegoating in America’s racial politics. Notable here is that this evidence comes from a piece of literature. This use of literature as evidence is an illustration of a critical race theorist’s willingness to borrow from other disciplines to make arguments. The story underscores a key insight of critical race theory, which is that racism is already baked into America’s political structures, which explains why education cannot wish it away.

“I believe that the notion that we blacks, the immutable outsiders, might nevertheless be the bearers of the culture, increases our risk dramatically.”

Geneva’s point here that being in an outgroup and nevertheless central to American identity places African Americans in grave danger is an example of foreshadowing; the next piece is “Space Traders,” a story in which Bell imagines what would happen if the U.S. followed its willingness to sacrifice to its logical end. Bell shows off his literary and rhetorical skills throughout the collection by including at the end of each piece a preview that helps to connect the piece to the one coming up.

“America. Though few gave voice to their thoughts, many were thinking that the trade offer was, indeed, the ultimate solution to the nation’s troubles.”

That phrase “ultimate solution” will conjure for most historically informed readers the idea of Germany’s “final solution,” the genocide we today identify as the Holocaust. That historical allusion is a good indication for readers that America’s willingness in the story and reality to sacrifice African American lives for white interests poses an existential threat to African Americans. Phrases like these and their implications make the mood of this story somber.

“He did not really mind that none of the delegates had spoken to him before leaving. But he was crushed by his failure to get them to recognize what he had long known: that without power, a people must use cunning and guile. Or were cunning and guile, based on superior understanding of a situation, themselves power? Certainly, most black people knew and used this art to survive in their everyday contacts with white people. It was only civil rights professionals who confused integrity with foolhardiness.”

Gleason Golightly is astonished at the lack of strategic thinking among the members of a traditional civil rights group. His critique here echoes critical race theory’s argument that traditionally liberal activists who rely upon the belief that the law is colorblind are doomed to fail in their efforts to make the law live up to its supposed fairness to all. This particular group in the story ultimately decides to take a principled but ineffectual stance against the trade deal, an outcome that echoes Bell’s comments elsewhere that pro-integration pushes did little to improve the actual education of children on whose behalf pro-integrationist lawyers fought.

“As the sun rose, the Space Traders directed them, first, to strip off all but a single undergarment; then, to line up; and finally, to enter ‘hose holds which yawned in the morning light like Milton’s ‘darkness visible.’ The inductees looked fearfully behind them. But, on the dunes above the beaches, guns at the ready, stood U.S. guards. There was no escape, no alternative. Heads bowed, arms now linked by slender chains, black people left the New World as their forebears had arrived.”

Bell explicitly references the transatlantic slave trade, especially the Middle Passage, in his description of the despairing mood as the African American captives board the aliens’ ships. This allusion underscores that although this story is a piece of speculative/science fiction, the reality is that it goes beyond the realm of what if because such a large-scale sacrifice of African Americans has historical precedent. The downcast demeanors of the captives are a stark emblem of the despair Bell warns well-intentioned people against throughout the text.