Lawyer, activist, teacher, writer: for over 40 years, Derrick Bell has provoked his critics and challenged his readers with uncompromising candor and progressive views on race and class in America. A founder of Critical Race Theory and pioneer of the use of allegorical stories as tools of analysis, Bell's groundbreaking work shatters conventional legal orthodoxies and turns comfortable majoritarian myths inside out. Edited and with an extensive introduction by leading critical race theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, The Derrick Bell Reader reflects the tremendous breadth of issues that Bell has grappled with over his phenomenal career, including affirmative action, black nationalism, legal education and ethics. Together, the selections offer the most complete collection of Derrick Bell's writing available today.

The classic work on American racism and the struggle for racial justice In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, civil rights activist and legal scholar Derrick Bell uses allegory and historical example to argue that racism is an integral and permanent part of American society. African American struggles for equality are doomed to fail so long as the majority of whites do not see their own well-being threatened by the status quo. Bell calls on African Americans to face up to this unhappy truth and abandon a misplaced faith in inevitable progress. Only then will blacks, and those whites who join with them, be in a position to create viable strategies to alleviate the burdens of racism. "Freed of the stifling rigidity of relying unthinkingly on the slogan 'we shall overcome,'" he writes, "we are impelled both to live each day more fully and to examine critically the actual effectiveness of traditional civil rights remedies." Faces at the Bottom of the Well is urgent and essential reading on the problem of racism in America.

From the pioneering legal scholar and bestselling author of Faces at the Bottom of the Well, a compelling investigation of racial justice in America In And We Are Not Saved, civil rights activist and legal scholar Derrick Bell employs a series of dramatic fables and dialogues to probe the foundations of America's racial attitudes and raise disturbing questions about the nature of our society. How have we failed to achieve racial equality, Bell asks--and why? What does this failure mean--for black people and for whites? Where do we go from here? Should we redirect the quest for racial justice? Guided by these questions, Bell aims to provoke discussion that will provide new insights and prompt more effective strategies for pursuing racial justice.

In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the world's foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Court's decisions abour race, family law and the death penalty.

These ten stories of the struggle for civil and human rights are fictionalized accounts of classic legal cases involving African Americans which marked turning points in US law and in the history of the nation.

Unearthing the legal history of racial identity, Gross's book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society.

Words, like sticks and stones, can assault; they can injure; they can exclude. In this important book, four prominent legal scholars from the tradition of critical race theory draw on the experience of injury from racist hate speech to develop a first amendment interpretation that recognizes such injuries. In their critique of ?first amendment orthodoxy,? the authors argue that only a history of racism can explain why defamation, invasion of privacy, and fraud are exempt from free-speech guarantees while racist and sexist verbal assaults are not.The rising tide of verbal violence on college campuses has increased the intensity of the ?hate speech? debate. This book demonstrates how critical race theory can be brought to bear against both conservative and liberal ideology to motivate a responsible regulation of hate speech. The impact of feminist theory is also evident throughout. The authors have provided a rare and powerful example of the application of critical theory to a real-life problem.This timely and necessary book will be essential reading for those experiencing the conflicts of free-speech issues on campus'students, faculty, administrators, and legislators'as well as for scholars of jurisprudence. It will also be a valuable classroom tool for teachers in political science, sociology, law, education, ethnic studies, and women's studies.