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Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. By Derrick Bell. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. [x], 230. $25.00, ISBN 0-19-517272-8.)
Citizens across the nation marked the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation decision, with numerous celebrations, commemorations, conferences, and critiques. Derrick Bell has long been among those commentators insisting that the opinion was seriously flawed and the role of Brown in post-World War II racial reform was "less than critical" (p. 138). In Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform, Bell, a former NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer, extraordinary scholar-teacher, and prolific author, offers his most extensive critique of Brown v. Board of Education. He concludes that "the Brown decision's major contribution to the freedom struggle was the nation's response to the violent resistance of its opponents" (p. 193). In so doing, he reiterates his discussion of African Americans' involuntary sacrifices as well as his "Interest-Convergence" thesis: "The interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when that interest converges with the interests of whites in policy making positions." If "policymakers fear the remedial policy is threatening the superior societal status of whites," the "remedy will be abrogated" (p. 69). With interpretations of history and law, Bell argues that the Brown decision should be understood as a "magnificent mirage" (p. 4). He thereby minimizes the positive historical significance of the hope Brown offered to African Americans and its role as a catalyst for African Americans' direct action and continuing liberation struggle.
The author uses his interest-convergence model to support Michael Klarman's "Backlash Thesis," which maintains that the abolition of Jim Crow was inevitable and limits the major significance of Brown to its crystallization of "southern resistance to racial...