Lots of information about Derrick Bell’s radicalism is flooding out onto the web. Lots of Leftists are rushing to his defense. Others are coming out as authorities on Bell and the rancid critical race theory which he espoused. But there was this curious statement over at National Review Online about Bell from Stephen Thernstrom.
Thernstrom also notes that, “my other comment on this whole matter is that no one is going to find any tapes of Derrick Bell sounding remotely like Jeremiah Wright. Bell certainly was radical, but he had a mild and gentle personal style, with a soft southern accent.”
Southern accent? Bell was born in the Hill District in Pittsburgh and never lived in the South. He lived in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, D.C., Boston and New York. But that’s small potatoes, shall we say, compared to the absolution some are giving him on his radical statements. Not remotely like Jeremiah Wright? It depends on how you define remotely. Living “to harass white folks” and claiming the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan is a “great hero for the people” sounds at least within shouting distance of the good Reverend. I’ll leave others to comment on the whiff of anti-Semitism in Bell’s Space Traders.
It’s time people start branding nasty racialism as nasty racialism and stop giving quarter simply to sound thoughtful.
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