The Tragedy of Affirmative Action
Derrick Bell is best known for his contributions to critical race theory—which claims that racism is embedded in American law and institutions and that the historical mistreatment of black people largely explains current social and economic disparities.
Before becoming the first black tenured professor at Harvard Law School in the 1970s, Bell was a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, where he worked on school desegregation cases under the tutelage of Thurgood Marshall. Bell was once a critic of racial favoritism. But over time, he grew unhappy with the pace of black progress and came to believe that racism is so deeply ingrained in our society that colorblind remedies were destined to fail.
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