3/9/12

Derrick Bell: Brown v. Board was Anti-Communist

Derrick Bell is the recently deceased African American law professor Andrew Breitbart is attacking from his grave.




Breitbart's website headline: THE VETTING: OBAMA EMBRACES RACIALIST HARVARD PROF. This is the video I mentioned in my last post Andrew Breitbart claimed he had from Obama's college days. I'll be covering the other stuff their claiming to expose about Obama as they release them. So far they are just rehashing old Obama mythology with Saul Alinsky mythology. Regarding the Derrick Bell video, Bell himself is well respected and there's nothing too controversial to see it even when Breitbart.com editor John Pollak is pressed on the so called "bombshell"


There's something else that might catch a right winger's attention. In another video of Bell posted online, he gives a lecture on the election of Barack Obama as President and the effect its had on America. He brought up how his critical race theory fits into that. Through what he calls interest convergence, he argues the equality, achievements, and interests of African Americans would be nothing like it is today if whites hadn't had their interests at stake. One of the most interesting examples he brings up is Brown v. Board, calling it an "anti-communist decision" rather than an equality decision.



Bell is right that passing laws combating inequality and discrimination in the United States were a strategy against Communism particularly from Franklin Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower. Racial discrimination was becoming the Communists' most valuable assets in propaganda against the United States during the early Cold War. That's a critical analysis when you look at the writings of the previous presidents, you see they saw racial discrimination as a national security priority. Fascinating that it was a contributing force in passing equality laws. Same applies to the Civil War being fought that freed the slaves. Most Northerners were fighting primarily to save the union. If it weren't for the South trying to secede, President Abraham Lincoln probably wouldn't have had the support to free slaves in the Southern states. 

Finally, that fits with the first African American elected president, Barack Obama. Obama did not win a majority of white votes, but enough saw him as the best man to lead our country. It was wondered that Obama would suffer the Bradley Effect, in which the polling was wrong because some voters, who did not want to appear bigoted, said they voted for Obama even though they did not. Bill Maher on Larry King Live in 2008 joked about there being a Reverse Bradley Effect saying: "The reverse Bradley Effect is the racists who get together with each other down by the moose lodge -- and, of course, they couldn't admit they're voting for Barack Obama, but they get in the voting booth and they go eww, you know what, my kid's teeth are falling out and it did sound like he had the better health care plan. I hope that curtain is closed all the way, because I'm going to vote for Barack Obama." Although the number of racists who did that is likely small, that would be an example of interest convergence. Bell did not refer to racists like Maher did, but the whites in general. Obama was seen by enough in that population as the best man.

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