How Derrick Bell, the Antisemitic Father of Critical Race Theory, created Neoliberal Identitarianism — with a little help from Kimberlé Crenshaw

Derrick Bell would be famous if the right had more reason to hate him and the left had less reason to forget him. Praised by Barack Obama, Bell has been called the Father of Critical Race Theory, though he did not give it that name.

Bell began with the best intentions. One of his critics, black conservative lawyer Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr., noted,

Bell had come out of the litigation struggle during the 1960s. Rightly concerned with the “snail pace” of racial progress, he began writing arguments critical of traditional civil rights law. He continued his provocative work after his appointment to the Harvard Law School faculty in 1969 and tenure in 1971. … Because he taught at the premier law school in the country, Bell’s thoughts had a disproportionate impact on the best and the brightest black law students.

Bell believed,

Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even those Herculean efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than ‘temporary peaks of progress,’ short lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance … white self-interest will…