One of the most unfortunate elements of the Breitbart organization’s attempt to smear President Obama on the basis of his support, as a law student, for professor Derrick Bell has been the claim that Bell was somehow antisemitic. The claim rests on “Space Traders,” a 1993 short story Bell wrote, a sci-fi parable that sketches an encounter between the United States and mysterious space aliens who offer the country unimaginable wealth in exchange for the abduction of the nation’s black population.
The Breitbart folks quote from a review of a book critical of Bell which includes a gloss on the Space Traders story. Here’s the relevant portion:
“Jews condemn the trade as genocidal and organize the Anne Frank Committee to try to stop it. Empathy from another group that has suffered oppression? Not according to Bell. Instead, Jews worry that ‘in the absence of blacks, Jews could become the scapegoats.’ … The story is … a poke in the eye of American Jews, particularly those who risked life and limb by actively participating in the civil rights protests of the 1960’s. Bell clearly implies that this was done out of tawdry self-interest. Perhaps most galling is Bell’s insensitivity in making the symbol of Jewish hypocrisy the little girl who perished in the Holocaust — as close to a saint as Jews have. A Jewish professor who invoked the name of Rosa Parks so derisively would be bitterly condemned — and rightly so.”
This passage is the source of numerous criticisms of Bell, including a viral claim on Twitter that he “publicly mocked Anne Frank.” But it’s grounded in a fundamental misreading of Bell’s story.
In Space Traders, American Jews are among the leading opponents to the plan to trade away the country’s black population. Bell quotes a fictional rabbi as saying that people of faith
“Simply cannot stand by and allow America’s version of the Final Solution to its race problem to be carried out without our strong protest and committed opposition. Already … a secret Anne Frank Committee has formed, and its hundreds of members have begun to locate hiding places in out of the way sites across this great country. Blacks by the thousands can be hidden for years if necessary until the nation returns to its senses. We vow this action because we recognize the fateful parallel between the plight of the blacks in this country and the situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Holocaust scholars agree that the Final Solution in Germany would not have been possible without the pervasive presence and the uninterrupted tradition of anti-Semitism in Germany. We must not let the space Traders be the final solution for blacks in America.”
Bell never suggests that this speech is dishonest or maliciously motivated. He portrays American Jews as flocking to the rabbi’s call, and as suffering legal persecution, economic retaliation, and antisemitic abuse as a result.
But what of Kosinski’s quote, which he says demonstrates that Bell “derisively” regards all of the above as “hypocrisy” and craven self-interest? Well, you can read the relevant passage for yourself:
“A concern of many Jews not contained in their official condemnations of the Trade offer was that, in the absence of blacks, Jews could become the scapegoats for a system so reliant on an identifiable group on whose heads less-well-off whites can discharge their hate and frustrations for societal disabilities about which they are unwilling to confront their leaders. Given the German experience, few Jews argued that ‘it couldn’t happen here.'”
Bell doesn’t describe Jewish concern for blacks as a sham, nor does he characterize their concern about antisemitism as “tawdry self-interest.” He depicts Jewish opponents of the trade as motivated both by sincere empathy for blacks and by legitimate worries about antisemitism.
Derrick Bell was a pessimist. He believed that those who thought the country’s racial woes were in its past were dangerously deluded, and Space Traders was an expression of that perspective. A fair reading of the text makes it absolutely clear that he saw American Jews, like American blacks, as victims of the country’s white supremacist ideology, and that he viewed their fear of becoming targets of bigotry as entirely reasonable. The story is a slavery allegory, but it is a Holocaust allegory as well.
There’s nothing antisemitic in the piece. Nothing at all.
Update | Lots of folks seem to be under the mistaken impression that Bell himself called Anne Frank “the symbol of Jewish hypocrisy.” As the quotes above make clear, Bell never used that phrase in any context. The term comes from Alex Kosinski’s review, in which it appears as Kozinski’s gloss on Bell’s writing.
Second Update | Now it’s being argued in multiple places that Bell wrote that “Jews would sell blacks as slaves.” This is, of course, pretty much the opposite of Bell’s position, even in the most uncharitable reading of his work.
28 comments
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March 8, 2012 at 5:01 pm
hugh reinhardt
Both you and Bell are talking utter B#*@S&*T.
The country has made unbelievable strides in racial equality since Martin Luther King Jr. The fact that a black man can be elected President proves that.
I am not going sit here and accept the Bells apriori argument that whites are inherently racist and that America is incapable of change. Its like saying all Germans are and will remain Nazi’s or all Mulsims are and forever will be wife beaters and terrorists.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself in trying to defend an obvious anti-semite and racist.
March 8, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Solomon Wong
It has nothing to do with White people, it has to do with who is in charge of the country (white people). As long as America carries on without a major deconstruction or revolution, racism will remain a yarn woven into it.
You presented (goofy) evidence that Bell is a racist; where is your evidence that he is antisemitic?
March 8, 2012 at 5:23 pm
hugh reinhardt
Like nailling to a wall. “Its has nothing to do with White people, it has to do with who is in charge of the country (white people). What kinda shit are you smoking and can you send me some.
March 8, 2012 at 6:15 pm
Angus Johnston
Let’s set aside for a minute, Hugh, the fact that I didn’t vouch for Bell’s views on race. Set aside as well the fact that you haven’t even attempted to defend the charge of antisemitism. Here’s the core issue:
Derrick Bell never said, and didn’t believe, that all whites were “inherently racist.” What he argued was that racism was more intractable, more resilient, than most people understood. He was, as I’ve written elsewhere, a racial pessimist.
There’s something breathtakingly perverse about a rush to condemn as racist a man who grew up under Jim Crow — a man who fought for decades for racial equality, a man who was pushed out of a civil rights job in the federal government because of his membership in the NAACP — just because he did not wholly embrace the premise that an end to bigotry was imminent.
March 8, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Solomon Wong
It has nothing to do with How White People Are, it has to do with what power does to people, and the power dynamics of groups in power and groups that are or were used. Black people were an underclass in America, and until the country effectively becomes a new one, that is never going to be forgotten. Things will get better (and Bell never said they wouldn’t), but racism will never fully leave America. White people are in charge in America, and so their racism is the type focused on. Our biology means that everyone has racist tendencies, but the racism that truly matters belongs to those in power.
March 8, 2012 at 6:38 pm
gocart mozart
If you actually watch the episode, available on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6-n9axdiOs, it is obvious that the antisemitism charge is a bald faced lie by Britbart’s poo flinging minions. Don’t make arguments out of pure ignorance and don’t take the right wings word on anything.
March 8, 2012 at 7:08 pm
ratatatat1
People seem to be missing an obvious point. If indeed Bell believed that the only way whites (or whomever is in power) would end racism is through Revolution, Obama himself proved that racism could be overcome to the point where a black (or biracial) man could become President of the country, which is damn good progress if you ask me.
So in essence it is almost impossibly hard to argue credibly the whole “guilt by association” canard if Obama has served to prove Bell at least partially wrong through his own achievement.
March 8, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Solomon Wong
Obama’s election did not mark an end to racism, though. It doesn’t really even mean much in the sense of “look how much less racist we are now”, because look at the disgusting things being said about Obama, Obama voters, urban poor, etc. I know you weren’t saying Obama ended racism, but the point is that Bell isn’t necessarily wrong and he certainly hasn’t been proved wrong by the 2008 election. In addition, couldn’t Obama’s election be regarded as a sort of quiet revolution in itself, anyway?
March 8, 2012 at 8:39 pm
hugh reinhardt
By ‘racial pessimist’ I suppose Bell meant that whitey could be non-racial but that was highly unlikely and very rare. Love your newspeak.
Its like a KKK asshole saying blacks could be productive members of society but that was highly unlikely and very rare.
Bell’s work is nothing more than racism couched in a fancy academic Phd diploma.
If you want a man’s work to defend…and let’s be intelectually honest here, you are for whatever reason, defending Bell writings…But let’s scrap that thought. Mandela was in prison for 27 years and is a beacon of unity and racial equality. He believes that people can change–that society can improve. Now that is truly inspirational–Mandela is someone who I could embrace.
Now as to the anti-semitism. First of all why heck did Bell chose the “jews” in his little novella as the ones that had to make a choice–either blacks or themselves?
It makes the “jews” seem sneaky and sellouts–these are old stereotypes.
Why not choose the chinese? or lilliputians for that matter?
The problem I have with Bells thought processes is he cannot get beyond race. His weltanschauung is askewed by skin color. He is a racist and given his power and postion in academia he ought to be shunned.
I am not going to accept his apriori position. It is utter B#%s&(t.
His writings are also full of deconstructionist/Marxist thought processes–class warfare etc. I too reject such analysis as meaningless, discredited, pyschobabble. Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot all suscribed to communism and we all know the results–in the millions murdered.
If whites are racist because they are the majority (who have the power) then it follows that no matter what progress is made concerning minorities it is at the will and kindesses of the elite class (ie whites).
If you take Bells writings to its logical conclusion then you’d have to say that if a black person wants to be truly free he has to destroy whites–either economically or in a final solution senario. SICK.
March 8, 2012 at 9:05 pm
Solomon Wong
Jews are mentioned in the story because they too were faced with extermination. They don’t have to choose between themselves and the blacks – this article goes into how that isn’t true. The story points out that the Jews, in the absence of another scapegoat, worry that they will revert to being the perennial victim. They aren’t being sneaky, and that’s not how they were intended to be portrayed. They ended up opposing exporting the blacks anyway, so I don’t see how they’re being portrayed as sellouts.
Your extrapolation of “racial pessimism” to what amounts to black supremacist nazism is ludicrous. Why is the assertion that racism will never die in America so offensive to you? The concept, certainly, but to demonize the man who brings it up seems misguided at best. And again, Bell never said that no progress is possible, like you seem to be saying (“Mandela was in prison for 27 years and is a beacon of unity and racial equality. He believes that people can change–that society can improve. Now that is truly inspirational–Mandela is someone who I could embrace.”). Bell likely agrees with all of that.
The prospect of blacks being faced with the choice between continued oppression and “destroying” whites is an unsavory notion, but how is it philosophically incorrect? Or even untrue? I don’t know what the solution to racism is, and I would say that it needn’t come to true violence at this point (at least in America), but you have absolutely no proof that Mandela is right and Bell is wrong. Racism has never ended, anywhere, and none of us knows what mechanisms it will take to stamp it out. Bell is merely unconfident that there will ever be an end to it.
March 8, 2012 at 9:49 pm
hugh reinhardt
This will be my last posting. You know, as an immigrant to this country, I have to reject Bells and your premise that this country is fundamentally a racist country. You have no clue what true racism is or what it can do to a country. I reject your premise that Americans are in fact rampant racists. Yours is a false world view. There are racists in this country, true enough, but the I know to many good people to conclude that this country is fundamentally racist. Your philosphy is a chimera. It is dangerous. Americans love their freedom; love the fact that under the law everyone is created equal. They are the most generous people in the world I have ever known. They are the most fair minded people on the earth. For every instance of “racism” you can show me I’ll be able to prove to a hundred instances of kindnesses. Americans are not pessimists–we believe in a better future for ourselves and our children. I have seen how the kids today are so indifferent to a persons skin color. I believe in a better future. It is yours and Bells outlook that is messed up.
March 8, 2012 at 10:01 pm
Solomon Wong
You’re ignoring every single thing I said, so good argument, I guess.
March 8, 2012 at 10:09 pm
Solomon Wong
When a country is founded on and built by slavery, and once slavery ends, goes to extreme measures to keep ex-slaves in an underclass, and once some laws are passed to hopefully prevent that, insists that no further laws, funding, reparations, programs, or special considerations are necessary, when those ex-slaves receive abhorrently low school funding, produce a culture only for it to be demonized and ridiculed at every single milestone, when the only way for them to really move up in the world is to conform to the society that once enslaved them, what do you call that?
March 8, 2012 at 10:11 pm
jim
PROTIP: trying to argue rationally with anyone from the Breitbart.com flying-monkey brigade is as futile as trying to teach a goldfish ballet.
For the right-wing ideologues at Breitbart.com & elsewhere, facts are worrisome impediments to the triumph of their narrative – & a central current of that narrative is that white males are being sorely oppressed by the fascistic tentacles of Political Correctness run amok. That Bell’s thesis concerning the influence of race in American law enrages them is no surprise whatsoever, & that they have no way to refute it empirically (assuming they could somehow muster the mental firepower to do so) merely cranks that rage up to 11. They love America & you are proving them wrong, ergo you hate America because SHUT UP THAT’S WHY.
Let us thank Mr. Reinhardt for demonstrating just how historically ignorant & intellectually dishonest he & all his fellow-travellers on the Right are: Hitler was a Commie, arguing that racism remains a potent force in American culture makes you a racist, & why can’t uppity academics like Bell be more like that nice Nelson Mandela (who worked against Apartheid in solidarity with black South African communists & was long condemned in the West by conservatives as a communist himself for his membership in the ANC)?
March 8, 2012 at 10:23 pm
chicagoxile
Unfortunately, a lot of folks will draw their conclusions from the HBO “adaptation” of Space Traders, and that production takes a much more cynical view of the Jews’ “true motives.” And unfortunately, Bell didn’t just get a writing credit for the HBO production, he was consulted on it (http://wapo.st/pH7xk4). And then there’s also his support for Farrakhan…
March 8, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Angus Johnston
Hugh, your position appears to be that anyone who believes that racism is a serious problem in America today is presumptively a racist. That’s a worldview that’s nearly as dismissive of American blacks as you believe Derrick Bell was of American whites.
Positing that a majority of American blacks are racist seems like a weird place for a guy who believes that Americans “are the most generous people in the world I have ever known … the most fair minded people on the earth” to begin.
March 8, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Solomon Wong
I don’t see where he said that the majority of American blacks are racist..
March 8, 2012 at 10:56 pm
Angus Johnston
The view that racism is a persistent and substantial problem in the United States is one that’s shared by a majority of American blacks, and it’s one that Hugh seems to consider racist. Hence my comment.
March 8, 2012 at 11:06 pm
Solomon Wong
Ah. Fair enough.
March 9, 2012 at 1:25 am
Edward
Mr. Johnston, thank you for posting this interesting article.
It seems that Mr. Bell, the film “Space Traders” and the theme of Critical Race Theory (CRT) have drawn irrational and undeserved comments. Mr. Bell was a pioneer of CRT, which was a body of legal scholarship that explored how racism is embedded in laws and legal institutions, even those intended to lessen the effects of past injustice.
Much of Mr. Bell’s scholarship rejected dry legal analysis in favor of allegorical stories. Creatures from another planet offer the United States “enough gold to retire the national debt, a magic chemical that will cleanse America’s polluted skies and waters, and a limitless source of safe energy to replace our dwindling reserves” in exchange for one thing: its black population, which would be sent to outer space. The white population accepts the offer by an overwhelming margin
What is dangerous about “Space Traders” is the underlying assumption upon which their thinking is based. That is, all peoples are driven by self-interest, including as groups, or races. Consequently, American whites (and American Jews) are by definition racist and no amount of reason, or logic can ever change that. Because blacks are a minority, Bell holds that they are at critical disadvantage and an Obama in the White House is the only way to combat that by compelling Americans to act in a certain manner through law and regulation.
In Bells’ eyes, all white Americans, including Jews, are inherently racist and will only care, help or do anything about blacks when it is in their own self-interest as whites to do so, or when compelled by government. So, when people call Bell racist (anti-white) or antisemitic, they are doing it because of the way Bell addresses and judges them as a group. That’s also what makes Bell precisely what those critics call him; it is he and his progressive compatriots, who only see people in groups forever divided by socio-economic, racial, or other lines.
It may be easy for some to dismiss Bell and “Space Traders” as craziness or perhaps call it “race traders”. That’s what Bell is actually saying, whites and Jews will “trade,” or sell out blacks for self-interest every chance they get and nothing can change that except government. the reality is, the thinking beneath it now dominates much of American jurisprudence and culture and unless conservatives expose and defeat it, we will only become it’s victims, regardless of our race, because we hold the individual and indivdual liberty so dear.
March 9, 2012 at 6:48 am
Angus Johnston
Edward. Dude. Plagiarizing a blog comment? Seriously? That’s …
I don’t even know what that is.
Source: http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2012/03/understanding-derrick-bell-and-why-we-shouldnt-mock-him.html
March 12, 2012 at 9:30 am
Plantsmantx
If anything, the reaction to Obama’s Presidency proves Bell right.
March 12, 2012 at 9:41 am
Plantsmantx
Jewish opponents of the trade as motivated both by sincere empathy for blacks and by legitimate worries about antisemitism.
Well, yes. As a black man, my support for the rights of women, LBGT, Latinos, and other minority groups is motivated by both those things. There’s nothing wrong with that.
In the story, the only whites (what’s with Dan Riehl’s “whites and Jews”?) who don’t sell out black people are liberals and Jews. I think he was being overly optimistic:).
March 13, 2012 at 11:58 am
Lawson ENglish
The bottom line: everyone is racist. It is part of our genetic makeup to be uneasy about people who are perceived as different. The best any of us can do is to try to catch our more obvious issues, and to try to examine our behavior critically when others call us on it. Of course, this is the best any of us can do about anything, racism or whatever.
March 13, 2012 at 5:34 pm
mike
you are a self hating person- bell is a sicko that was booted from Harvard- even harvard couldnt take his hate speech- obama loved him just like all is other friends- you dont look blind but you sure are dumb cracker dumb
October 19, 2014 at 4:13 pm
Michaela
Lawson English, “It is part of our genetic makeup to be uneasy about people who are perceived as different.” is so VERY INCORRECT. That makes no sense–one easy example would be how humans constantly have interracial mates. And how do those offspring feel about others?
This is not genetic coding in the least bit, it is societal.
Mike, Bell LEFT Harvard in support of a Black female colleague that was not tenured due to her race.
February 23, 2015 at 8:08 pm
haywoodjablomiehaywoodjablomiehaywood Jablomie
****”We vow this action because we recognize the fateful parallel between the plight of the blacks in this country and the situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Holocaust scholars agree that the Final Solution in Germany would not have been possible without the pervasive presence and the uninterrupted tradition of anti-Semitism in Germany.”****
How ironic that not even Bell recognized that the continual scapegoating of Caucasians for all the ills of blacks is perfectly parallel to how the Nazis scapegoated the Jews.
Bell saw everything in terms of race. When unqualified black professors were denied tenure, Bell insisted that it was only because of their race…despite Harvard being a bastion of liberal thinking.
If “critical race theory” prevails, and it looks more and more as if it is, then if the day ever comes when black assume real power in the U.S., we can expect a “Final Solution” for whites.
February 17, 2017 at 2:46 am
Will Shetterly
It’s hard not to conclude that Bell was antisemitic. In 1992, he said, “Smart and super articulate, Minister Farrakhan is perhaps the best living example of a black man ready, willing and able to ‘tell it like it is’ regarding who is responsible for racism in this country.”
Most online antisemitic quotes by Farrakhan are later than Bell’s statement because Farrakhan’s antisemitism hasn’t stopped, but the SPLC has one from 1990 that Bell ought to have known about: “The Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters … the Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress.”