Part of what it means to live in the end times is to realize that some things will never change. For Derrick Bell, we must acknowledge both that anti-Black racism in America is permanent, and that we all have a moral obligation to resist it. This paradoxical formulation lies at the heart of his influential and controversial thesis of “racial realism”. This conversation looks at Bell's thesis in the context of a supposedly post-racial America heralded by the election of Barack Obama as president. Critically engaging with the racial progress narrative, Golden argues that racism has in fact worsened since Obama's presidency, simmering away until unleashed by the Trump administration. As Timothy Golden concludes, the letter of the law may have changed in some domains, but there have not been corresponding changes to the hearts and minds of people.

TIMOTHY GOLDEN is Professor of Philosophy at Walla Walla University, Washington, USA. His areas of scholarly research include African American philosophy and critical race theory.

DARREN CHETTY is a teacher, doctoral researcher and writer with research interests in education, philosophy, racism, children's literature and hip hop culture.

Darren Chetty (DC): Who was Derrick Bell and what did he mean by “racial realism”?

Timothy Golden (TG): Derrick Bell was a legal scholar, activist and public intellectual who lived from 1930 to 2011. The expanse of Bell's oeuvre is truly impressive, worthy of extensive scholarly treatment in law, philosophy, social and political theory, and theology. In the current political climate, Bell is probably best known for being one of the originators of critical race theory. He advanced a trenchant critique of liberalism, seeing it as a handmaiden in maintaining the structural and material conditions of white supremacy, such that white supremacy is made “legal” through abstract notions of “rights” removed from the concrete political realities of Black life in America.

Turning to his thesis of “racial realism”, it can be summed up as follows: on the one hand, anti-Black racism in America is permanent, but, on the other hand, we all have a moral obligation to resist it. This is Bell's most controversial thesis – both during his lifetime and beyond. Bell's claim about the permanence of American anti-Black racism is an inductive, empirical claim.