Carving Out a Humanity: Race, Rights, and Redemption

by Vincent Southerland, Janet Dewart Bell (Editor)

Overview

Leading law professors weigh in on key issues in race and the law—collected in honor of one of the originators of critical race theory, Derrick Bell

When Derrick Bell, one of the originators of critical race theory, turned sixty-five, his wife set up a lecture series of the leading critical race theorists, many of them Bell’s former students. Now, these lectures, given over the course of twenty-five years, are collected for the first time in Carving Out a Humanity, a volume that Library Journal calls “potent” and Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, says “powerfully acknowledge[s] the persistence of structural racism.”

“To what extent does equal protection protect?” asks Ian Haney López in a penetrating analysis of the gaps that remain in our civil rights legal codes. Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, describes the hypersegregation of our cities and the limits of the law’s ability to change deep-seated attitudes about race. Patricia J. Williams explores the legacy of slavery in the law’s current constructions of sanity. Anita Allen discusses competing privacy and accountability interests in the lives of African American celebrities. Chuck Lawrence interrogates the judicial backlash against affirmative action. And Michelle Alexander describes what caused her to break ranks with the civil rights community and take up the cause of those our legal system has labeled unworthy.

Carving Out a Humanity gathers some of our country’s brightest progressive legal stars in a volume that illuminates facets of the law that have continued to perpetuate racial inequality and to confound our nation at the start of a new millennium. According to Library Journal, “Scholars and lay readers alike will be enlightened and spurred to thought and discussion.”

Contributors:
Charles Ogletree
Charles Lawrence
Patricia J. Williams
Richard Delgado
Lani Guinier
Anita Allen
Mari Matsuda
Cheryl L. Harris
Kendall Thomas
Derrick Bell
John Calmore
Robert A. Williams
Paul Butler
Emma Coleman Jordan
Devon W. Carbado
Ian Haney Lopez
Annette Gordon-Reed
William Carter Jr.
Stephen Bright
Sherrilyn Ifill
Michelle Alexander
Theodore M. Shaw
Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Kenneth W. Mack

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620976203
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	11/24/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,091,962
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Janet Dewart Bell is a social justice activist with a doctorate in leadership and change from Antioch University. She founded the Derrick Bell Lecture on Race in American Society series at the New York University School of Law and is the author of Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement and Blackbirds Singing: Inspiring Black Women’s Speeches from the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century and the co-editor (with Vincent M. Southerland) of Carving Out a Humanity and Race, Rights, and Redemption (all published by The New Press). An award-winning television and radio producer, she lives in New York City.
Vincent M. Southerland is an assistant professor of clinical law and co–faculty director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law. The co-editor (with Janet Dewart Bell) of Carving Out a Humanity and Race, Rights, and Redemption (The New Press), he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Contents

A Brief History of the Derrick Bell Lectures

Introduction by Congresswoman Barbara Lee

1. No Justice, No Peace

Charles Ogletree

1. Each Other's Harvest

Charles Lawrence

1. The Archetypes That Haunt Us

Patricia J. Williams

1. Derrick Bell's Toolkit—Fit to Dismantle That Famous House?

Richard Delgado

1. Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy

Lani Guinier

1. Accountability for Private Life

Anita Allen

1. Somebody Else's Child

Mari Matsuda

1. From the West to the Rest: Interest Convergence in California Racial Politics

Cheryl I. Harris

1. Envisioning Abolition: Sex, Citizenship, and the Racial Imaginary of the Killing State

Kendall Thomas

1. And We Are Still Not Saved: Twenty-First-Century Constitutional Conflicts

Derrick Bell

1. Racism as the Ultimate Deception

John Calmore (Lecture Delivered by Derrick Bell)

1. Like a Loaded Weapon

Robert a. Williams

1. A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice

Paul Butler

1. Between Slavery and Freedom: The Deep Racial Roots of the 2008 Financial Crisis

Emma Coleman Jordan

1. After Obama: Three "Post-racial" Challenges

Devon w. Carbado

1. Justice Undone: Color Blindness After Civil Rights

Ian Haney López

1. Critiquing the Family Tree: White Supremacy in the Writing of History

Annette Gordon-Reed

1. Badges and Incidents: Lingering Vestiges of Slavery and the Thirteenth Amendment

William Carter Jr.

1. The Criminal Injustice of Capital Punishment

Stephen Bright

1. What's Left Out of Brown

Sherrilyn Ifill

1. The Society We Want

Michelle Alexander

1. A Tale of Two Americas

Theodore M. Shaw

1. The Boundaries of Whiteness: From Till to Trayvon

Angela Onwuachi-Willig

1. Race, Violence, and the Word

Kenneth W. Mack

Tributes to Derrick Bell from the Bell Lecturers

Acknowledgments

Permissions

Editorial Reviews

10/19/2020

Social justice advocate Bell (Lighting the Fires of Freedom) and Southerland, executive director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law, present incisive essays on racial injustice in America drawn from the school’s Derrick Bell lecture series. Created by coeditor Bell to honor her husband, law professor and critical race theory originator Derrick Bell (1930–2011), the series invites legal scholars to discuss issues related to law and race. Though varied in tone and intent, each piece is cogently argued and offers new perspectives on familiar topics, including how racial bias is embedded in the death penalty and the value of affirmative action. Highlights include legal historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello, on how the absence of legal protections for marriage and family caused enslaved people to be viewed as unreliable narrators of their own history; Boston University School of Law dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s comparison of the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till to the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012; and The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander’s discussion of regrets over how she chose clients as a practicing civil rights attorney. Deeply enriched by the classroom and courtroom experiences of its contributors, this consistently insightful collection is a valuable resource for students and teachers of the law. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Carving Out a Humanity:
"Penetrating essays on race and social stratification within policing and the law, in honor of pioneering scholar Derrick Bell. . . . Many powerfully acknowledge the persistence of structural racism and offer in-depth discussion regarding particular aspects of the law's effect on marginalized communities, resonant in an era of White supremacy's bid for mainstream acceptance."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“This potent work draws conclusions about systemic injustice and race. . . . Scholars and lay readers alike will be enlightened and spurred to thought and discussion.”
—Library Journal

From the Publisher

11/01/2020

The late law professor and civil rights activist Derrick Bell, the first African American granted tenure at Harvard University, was a champion for equality who often resigned from prestigious posts in protest over non-inclusive university hiring practices. He also inspired much of the scholarship of critical race theory. In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Derrick Bell Lecture Series at New York University School of Law, Bell's wife, Janet Dewart Bell (Lighting the Fires of Freedom), who founded the series, and Southerland (executive director, Ctr. on Race, Inequality, and the Law, New York Univ. Sch. of Law) present this anthology of scholarly lectures on race theory. Here, legal scholar Patricia Williams contends that systemic ownership of people through slavery led to the development of sexual archetypes of race; The New Jim Crow author and civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander writes about justice and mass incarceration. Providing a lens on issues of race in America and how scholars have responded, this potent work draws conclusions about systemic injustice and race. VERDICT Scholars and lay readers alike will be enlightened and spurred to thought and discussion.—Mattie Cook, Flat River Community Lib., MI

Library Journal

★ 2020-09-01
Penetrating essays on race and social stratification within policing and the law, in honor of pioneering scholar Derrick Bell (1930-2011).

At the beginning, the editors explain the anthology’s genesis: “Founded twenty-five years ago in 1995, the Derrick Bell Lectures were originally created as a birthday present from Janet Bell to her husband, and were designed to highlight not only Derrick Bell’s legacy as the father of the legal studies movement, but also to give that movement exposure in the academy and beyond.” Some speakers acknowledged Bell’s outsized personality; he’d repeatedly resigned from prestigious institutions to protest wan diversity efforts. Charles Ogletree notes, “the craziness is that he has such insight and foresight that it’s unimaginable,” before narrating the unequal legal landscape of Black America, even following Gunnar Myrdal’s landmark 1944 examination of the U.S. Charles Lawrence discusses backlash against affirmative action even as recruitment of Black students plummeted at prominent law schools, a topic of concern to Bell. Richard Delgado considers Bell’s research as a “toolkit” to address how each advance for racial justice “is cut back by narrow judicial interpretation, foot dragging, and delay.” Patricia Williams anticipates current discourse in a frank reflection on the echo of sexual abuse in persistent racial archetypes, denoting society’s refusal to acknowledge “the actual historical meaning of slavery as a system of human ownership.” Bell himself contributes “Racism as the Ultimate Deception,” in which he concludes, “the only defense against the racism phantasm as it operates in the real world is absolute honesty about our actions, our desires, our goals, or as close to that ever elusive dream as we can come.” Other prominent contributors include Lani Guinier, Paul Butler, Stephen Bright, and Michelle Alexander. Many powerfully acknowledge the persistence of structural racism and offer in-depth discussion regarding particular aspects of the law’s effect on marginalized communities, resonant in an era of White supremacy’s bid for mainstream acceptance.

An erudite collection to alarm conservatives and gratify progressives.

Kirkus Reviews