Faces at the Bottom of the Well
The Permanence of Racism

Okay, I’ll admit it. I wanted to hate this book. Understanding its general themes, depressing conclusions, and fatalistic prescriptions for action, I found myself formulating counterarguments to what I had assumed to be Bell’s ideas before I had even cracked the cover. I knew this was dumb as I was......more

a bright blow to the brain. this is not great writing necessarily - it is insightful and provocative thinking. this book changed my imagination and has stayed with me as few others have - that's as good as it gets for me.......more

This book surprised me: though Bell is one of the core voices in a canon I've spent much of college reading and discussing, I had not yet encountered his major (and provocative) conclusion. (I would summarize this conclusion--the book's thesis--as: racism is a permanent feature of the United States,......more

Although this book is fiction it is very essential to the movement. I was introduced to this book my sophomore year in college where I was training to be a student anti-racist organizer. The book assists to prepare its reader for events that have and will continue to take place within the anti-racis......more

Derrick Bell is sometimes said to be the founder of Critical Race Theory. Instead of using elitist legal jargon, he uses compelling stories to expose the problems caused by the seemingly permanent racism underlying U.S. constitutional law and politics. His stories are often quite tragic, but he alwa......more