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

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 change [that previously] had been scattered" (p. 134). This he argues even though he concurs with John Boger's argument that "Brown imposed a new normative statement of American polity, and ... purported to clarify for Americans normatively who they were or should be, and thereby allowed all who were willing the chance to work, with implicit legal support, toward the fulfillment of this normative vision" (p. 136).

Bell astutely asserts that "Brown v. Board of Education was a dramatic instance of a remedy that promised to correct deficiencies in justice far deeper than the Supreme Court was able to understand" (p. 10). He attempts to expose "deficiencies in justice" during and after Brown and suggests ways to address them (p. 10). Bell begins with two challenges. First, he calls for acknowledgment "that policymakers have been willing to sacrifice even blacks' basic entitlements ... to promoting ... the maintenance of white dominance" (p. 9). Second, Bell calls on African Americans to recognize that the subordinate position is maintained by "silent racial covenants that ... endanger all black people" and have greater significance to whites than any egalitarian creed (p. 48).

With respect to strategies for empowerment of African Americans and improvement of their conditions, the author contends that an important and necessary step is to understand and acknowledge that "[h]istory as well as current events call for realism in our racial dealings." Such realism requires learning from Brown that "advocates of racial justice should rely less on judicial decisions and more on tactics, actions, and even attitudes that challenge the continuing assumptions of white dominance" (p. 9). Bell also proposes that African Americans demonstrate their agency in the protection of their own interests by "forging fortuity." Minimally, this includes fighting to address the needs and interests of African Americans "rather than simply rely[ing] on the abstract concept of equality." He insists that "blacks are a permanent, subordinate class. Recognition of our true status will serve as a gateway to an era where we forge fortuity, that is, defy the workings of involuntary sacrifices and interest-convergence determinants of racial policies and practices" (p. 190).

Bell urges readers to see that racial realism requires actions based on principles and interests other than the "racial equality creed." Belief in this creed not only "enables us to drown out the contrary manifestations of racial domination that flourish despite our best efforts" but also "leads us to confuse tactics with principles" (pp. 188-89). The author follows this Afrocentric critique with an number of suggestions for African Americans in the continuing struggle.

It is problematic that Bell limits Brown's significance primarily to the mirage it created and the backlash it precipitated. During the civil rights and Black Power movements, some African Americans and their allies were responsive to the very weaknesses and flaws in the legal system that Bell identifies. Others chose to hold to a belief in America's commitment to egalitarian ideals. Nonetheless, the origins of the vitality and the lucidity of more recent debates about education, desegregation, white dominance, and black subordination can be traced to what a few brave dissenters have done historically: speak truth to power in scorn of the personal consequences, often knowing they would see no ultimate victory.

In large measure the validity of the interest-convergence thesis as it applied to the nation's reputation during the Cold War depended on the desires not only of African Americans (largely disfranchised) but also of some white Americans to represent the principle of equal rights as consistent with what the United States represented internationally. Given this, would it have been wise strategically for African American attorneys to forgo arguing in the media and in the courts that the nation's interests and African Americans' interests converged in the matter of public education on a desegregated basis? It is troubling but true that "[t]he very process of realizing a gain sought through the courts ultimately serves to deepen the legitimacy of the system" (p. 188). Nevertheless, attorneys who fought for a decision denying the constitutionality of segregation in public schools perceived that they faced the realities of segregation as a form of racial subordination. Accordingly, they planned strategically to use the equal rights rhetoric of the constitution to speak truth to power. Does Bell fail to see that, in part, we benefit from his decades of scholarship because national hypocrisy and commitment to white supremacy could no longer be hidden when lawyers and communities-backed by Brown--called upon states to fulfill equal protection duties and desegregate public schools?

While some in the twenty-first century share Bell's disappointment, they have avoided the temptation to assess Brown as a mirage, believing instead that assessment can be broadened to the influence that the Brown decision had on the hearts, minds, expectations, and hopes of persons who previously had not believed that nine white men were capable of any declaration of racial equality. Even as hopes have been dashed in years of resistance to desegregation and racial justice, it matters that Brown prompted some to stand, speak, and struggle. Critique of post-Brown reformers is necessary. It does not completely negate, however, the propriety of recognizing a broader symbolic significance of Brown--particularly within the historical context of African Americans' struggle for freedom and justice--than Bell is willing to concede. Bell has written a book that will challenge all of its readers. Most importantly, in Silent Covenants, he offers insights that can facilitate struggles against injustice in the twenty-first century.

GENNA RAE MCNEIL

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill