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22 Cap. U. L. Rev. 571 (1993)
The Racism Is Permanent Thesis: Courageous Revelation or Unconscious Denial of Racial Genocide

handle is hein.journals/capulr22 and id is 581 raw text is: THE RACISM IS PERMANENT THESIS: COURAGEOUS REVELATION OR UNCONSCIOUS DENIAL OF RACIAL GENOCIDE DERRICK BELL For the last four months since the publication of my new book of allegorical stories, Faces at the Bottom of the Well,' I have been defending the book's major message contained in its sub-title: The Permanence of Racism. In this article, I want to offer a summary of my arguments for the proposition that American racism is not, as Gunnar Myrdal concluded in his massive study, An American Dilemma,2 an anomaly on our democratic landscape, a holdover from slavery that the nation both wants to cure and is capable of curing. Rather, it is a critically important stabilizing force that enables whites to bind across a wide socio-economic chasm. Without the deflecting power of racism, masses of whites would likely wake up to and revolt against the severe disadvantage they suffer in income and opportunity when compared with those whites at the top of our socio-economic heap. Making the racism is permanent case has proven relatively easy for most black people who have heard it. Most though far from all whites are more resistive, running the gamut from those who are deeply troubled but unable to refute the basis of my thesis to those who angrily reject the idea, charging that I am racist for even suggesting it. This debate has been vigorous and, I hope, has moved the focus from either the four decades long struggle to eliminate racism by outlawing it, or the victim-blaming rationale for its continuance: black people need to prove themselves worthy. Recently, though, I received a long letter from Professor Sidney Willhelm, a social scientist who for years has been warning both that the racial equality effort had failed, and that all black people were at risk in a hostile society that no longer needed either their labor or their Copyyright © 1993, Derrick Bell. * Visiting Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, A.B. 1952, Duquesne; LL.B. 1957, University of Pittsburgh. The material in this article is based substantially on my book, DERRICK BELL, FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL: THE PERMANENCE OF RACISM (1992). Portions of the book reprinted with permission of the author and HarperCollins Publishers, Copyright @ 1992. ** This lecture, originally presented in January 1993 at Capital University Law and Graduate Center as part of the Ethics Institute's series, Essays in Justice, has been revised and edited for publication. 1. DERRICK B EL, FACES ATTHE BOTTOM OF THE WELL: THE PERMANENCE OF RACISM (1992). 2. GUNNAR MYRDAL, ANAMERICAN DILEMMA (1944).

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