Derrick Bell, the late Harvard Law professor now under a microscope for his early association with President Obama, endorsed a controversial magazine whose official motto is "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity."
Bell signed a credo calling for the abolishment of "the white race as a social category – in other words, eradicate white supremacy entirely."
He has a long history of racially divisive remarks. He was among the early critics of the June 1991 nomination of Thomas to the Supreme Court, stating, "To place a person who looks black and who, in conservative terms, thinks white, is an insult."
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BuzzFeed.com released a short clip from 1991 of Obama, then a Harvard law student, praising the professor at a protest and asking students to "open your hearts and open your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell."
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Breitbart.com editors showed more of the video on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night, including footage of Obama hugging Bell.
The event was Bell's protest demanding Harvard hire a black woman – specifically the visiting professor Regina Austin, who, like Bell, was an adherent of Critical Race Theory.
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Bell is largely credited as the originator of the theory, which analyzes the way "white supremacy" and "racial power" are reproduced over time and seeks "racial emancipation" and "anti-subordination" from whites.
Bell endorsed a journal called Race Traitor, whose official motto is "Treason to the white race is loyalty to humanity."
He signed on to a Race Traitor article titled "Renew the legacy of John Brown," calling for John Brown Day to be declared in the U.S. in 1999.
Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery.
The article signed by Bell began: "If the task of the nineteenth century was to overthrow slavery, and the task of the twentieth century was to end legal segregation, the key to solving this country's problems in the twenty-first century is to abolish the white race as a social category – in other words, eradicate white supremacy entirely."
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Discover the Networks presented a list of some of Bell's notable quotes on race, all from his 1992 book "Faces at the Bottom of the Well":
- "Despite undeniable progress for many, no African Americans are insulated from incidents of racial discrimination. Our careers, even our lives, are threatened because of our color."
- "[T]he racism that made slavery feasible is far from dead … and the civil rights gains, so hard won, are being steadily eroded."
- "[F]ew whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks."
- "[D]iscrimination in the workplace is as vicious (if less obvious) than it was when employers posted signs 'no negras need apply.'"
- "We rise and fall less as a result of our efforts than in response to the needs of a white society that condemns all blacks to quasi citizenship as surely as it segregated our parents."
- "Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do."
- "Black people will never gain full equality in this country. … African Americans must confront and conquer the otherwise deadening reality of our permanent subordinate status."
- "Tolerated in good times, despised when things go wrong, as a people we [blacks] are scapegoated and sacrificed as distraction or catalyst for compromise to facilitate resolution of political differences or relieve economic adversity."
With research by Brenda J. Elliott