Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform [Paperback]

Derrick Bell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195182472 | ISBN-13: 978-0195182477 | Publication Date: August 18, 2005

When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, would become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent.

Here, Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. He maintains that, given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined instead to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants--unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights--that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions.

In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Bell, the first tenured black professor at Harvard and a veteran civil rights lawyer, reflects critically on the function and limitation of the landmark Brown decision. He asserts that he, like many of his colleagues, confused the means of integration with the objectives of high-quality education and racial equality. To analyze racial reforms, he has developed a theory of converging interests into one of racial fortuity. For example, it was U.S. cold war interests that necessitated the elimination of legal segregation rather than purported concern with quality education for black children. In other words, when the interests of blacks converge with the interests of whites, blacks are more likely to have their needs addressed; otherwise they are not. Thus white resistance to busing and other integration strategies has reduced the Brown decision and its promise to mostly symbolic value. However, Bell admonishes blacks to not forgo their real interests even when they do not converge with the majority, and certainly prime among those interests is the educational development of black children. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Mournful.... Captures the significance of Brown at the time of its pronouncement and of African Americans' then-unconquerable optimism about the country's ultimate goodness."--Debra J. Dickerson, Mother Jones

"Bell, always a self-consciously provocative writer, remains true to form in Silent Covenants. In his most creative chapter, Bell imagines an alternative Brown decision that would have upheld segregation but insisted on the equalization of resources between blacks and whites. Had that road been followed, he suggests, black children might have gotten the education they needed and deserved."--Boston Globe

"Provocatively sardonic.... His pervasive melancholy may surprise readers who expect movement veterans to celebrate victories rather than rue their missteps, but to Bell the very perception of Brown as a victory is a 'mirage' that must be vanquished."--Chicago Tribune

"A bold and sobering counterproposal."--The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195182472
• ISBN-13: 978-0195182477
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Law > English Law > Social Security & Welfare

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thinking about Brown v. Board of Ed--not honoring it, December 18, 2004

By 

Alan Mills (Chicago, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Hardcover)

Read this book. It makes you think critically, challenge your assumptions, and argue with the author. What more can you ask of a book?

Bell has the honesty to look at Brown from the perspective of its fiftieth anniversary, and ask the question, "What did it all mean?" Bell has the standing to ask this question, having devoted much of his life to litigation seeking to enforce the promise of Brown--often at not inconsiderable risk to his own life. Bell has the intelligence to bring to bear facts coupled with a historical perspective.

His conclusion: Brown was a step in the right direction, but had far more effect as a symbol than as a legal decision. Factually, virtually no child (Black or White) received an education in an integrated classroom as a result of any court order enforcing Brown. What little integration occurred (and the number of children (Black and White) who attend effectively segregated schools today--50 years after Brown--is staggering) resulted from legislative action (the civil rights acts of 1964/65 and the school finding acts of the same period).

Bell's analysis of Brown as a legal precedent is persuasive. It is more of a symbol than a living legal precedent. However, I disagree that Brown's symbolic power should be discounted. The reason that there have been so few cases citing Brown is that Brown so effectively ended legalized segregation.

I would argue that without Brown, the civil rights movement of the late 50's and early 60's (sit ins, voter registration, and other direct action) would not have been possible. For example, James Meredith survived his attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi by using his personal defiance to leverage the power of the United States government to battle the Klan. Without Brown, Meredith's struggle simply would have died (perhaps most literally).

Behind every successful mass movement was the protection (however ephemeral it may have been in all too many cases) of federal law enforcement. That presence would not have occurred without the mandate (and symbol) of Brown.

As Atlas said, give me a lever and I can move the world. Brown did not move the world; did not eliminate racism, and did not end segregated schools. It did, however, provide a fulcrum. The mass movements and direct actions which followed were the lever. And the world did, indeed, move.

Is racism gone? No. Are some people worse off than they were before Brown? Yes. Did Brown reach the issues of poverty generally or the impoverishment of Blacks in particular? No. Bot so what? No legal case or series of legal decisions can change a society. What they can do is point the way, and provide a base for struggle. And that is what Brown did. What more can you ask of a legal decision?

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Conspiracy to Disenfranchise Blacks, September 3, 2004

By 

Civil Right (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Hardcover)

Bell condemns the past 50 years of legal and cultural struggle against segregation as a conspiracy of whites to disenfranchise and dupe Black folks and their leaders because that struggle missed the point. The point is that if you don't outlaw racism then racist will conspire together and coop your movement to the benefit of whites. Bell is eloquent, as always, but far less compelling than in his earlier works. Here, Bell's strident argument against integration versus segregation will make you think hard about the quality of civil rights progress over the past 50 years. But, since the book offers only a "what if" Brown v. Board of Ed. had been decided differently idea, and no real vision for an alternative progressive movement, it becomes a must read and a must shelve book in the same instance.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best kind of contrarian/counterintuitive scholarship, June 23, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Hardcover)

This is a brilliant book, one that challenges many of the feel good myths surrounding Brown. The notion of unfulfilled hopes is crucial in an age when people no longer acknowledge the signficance of race. I would buy this book along with a copy of Thomas Shapiro's The Hidden Cost of Being African-American.