White Backlash and Power Preservation in Bell’s Interest Convergence Dilemma

• In Event: Confronting the Assault on Critical Race Theory: Lessons Across Generations

Abstract

Contributions to Bell’s interest convergence theory have been useful in illuminating the behind the scenes mechanisms that inform and frame seemingly progressive and racially conscious social policy. Per this scholarship, in order to properly decipher progressive racial policies it is necessary to situate these within precise socio-political, geographic, economic, and historical contexts. One cannot grasp the full dimensionality of policy, jurisprudence, or other regulatory practices without first understanding the contextual constellation in which these are produced, this includes comprehending how power triggers and leverages acts of interest convergence and interest divergence. Bell’s conceptualization of the interest convergence dilemma has been of paramount importance to the development of critical race studies in education. This paper suggests that situating and contextualizing instances of interest convergence via individual versus institutional interests (Carbado & Gulati, 2003) adds texture and potency to Bell’s original thesis. The paper builds here on the work of Bell (1980) and other CRT scholars, as well as the adaptations to Bell’s original doctrine by Dudziak (1988; 2000), Guinier (2004), and Carbado and Gulati to propose that the time has come to continue to build upon Bell’s thesis. To contribute to this conversation, the paper introduces the concept of the “power preservation principle,” as an outgrowth of Bell’s work for the twenty-first century.

The power preservation principle (PPP) posits that whereas institutionally led interest convergences have historically facilitated the advancement of “racial remedies,” under the guise of societal interests, times have changed. In the twenty-first century, in the wake of an increasingly multicultural nation state where access to fountains of power, such as elite postsecondary institutions, are ever more competitive and constricted, the individual right to accessing such purveyors of power is more outwardly defended and contested by its historically white clientele. Through the PPP individual interests and beliefs of perceived entitlement rights supersede institutional or societal pursuits; such actions lead to challenging and retrenching the continuance of race-conscious social and educational policy. The paper highlights the enduring attack on affirmative action, including its recent invalidation by the Supreme Court, and how these embody the power preservation principle.

Author

• María C. Ledesma, San José State University