And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest For Racial Justice by Derek Bell

Author:Derek Bell [Bell, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465003297

"You'll notice, Geneva, that Professor Marable doesn't charge that ideological hegemony is the result of a conspiracy, plotted and executed with diabolical cunning. Rather, it's sustained by a culturally ingrained response by whites to any situation in which whites aren't in a clearly dominant role. It explains, for example, the 'first black' phenomenon in which each new position or role gained by a black for the first time creates concern and controversy about whether 'they' are ready for this position, or whether whites are ready to accept a black in this position."28

"Putting it that way," said Geneva, "helps me understand why the school's rejection of my seventh candidate hurt without really surprising me. I had already experienced a similar rejection on a personal level.29 When I arrived, the white faculty members were friendly and supportive. They smiled at me a lot and offered help and advice. When they saw how much time I spent helping minority students and how I struggled with my first writing, they seemed pleased. It was patronizing, but the general opinion seemed to be that they had done well to hire me. They felt good about having lifted up one of the downtrodden. And they congratulated themselves for their affirmative-action policies.

"Then after I became acclimated to academic life, I began receiving invitations to publish in the top law reviews, to serve on important commissions, and to lecture at other schools. At this point, I noticed that some of my once-smiling colleagues now greeted me with frowns. For them, nothing I did was right: my articles were flashy but not deep, rhetorical rather than scholarly. Even when I published an article in a major review, my colleagues gave me little credit; after all, students had selected the piece, and what did they know anyway? My popularity with students was attributed to the likelihood that I was an easy grader. The more successful I appeared, the harsher became the collective judgment of my former friends."

"I'm glad," I replied, "I haven't experienced that reaction, but I know many minority teachers who have. It is a familiar phenomenon. One of its forms is condescension thinly veiled as collegiality. Professor Regina Austin's experience is an example. Shortly after publishing two articles for which she was granted tenure, one faculty member-the school's affirmative-action officercame into her office and draped himself on her couch ready for conversation. He proceeded to inform me," she reports, "that he was glad that it had been unnecessary for him to write a memorandum in support of my promotion because he really did not know what he would have written about my articles.

"Professor Richard Delgado thinks that something like 'cognitive dissonance' may explain this reaction:

At first, the white professor feels good about hiring the minority. It shows how liberal the white is, and the minority is assumed to want nothing more than to scrape by in the rarefied world they both inhabit. But the minority does not just scrape by, is not eternally grateful, and indeed starts to surpass the white professor.

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