Beyond Interest Convergence

• In Event: Convergence and Disjunction in School Desegregation

Abstract

In 1980 legal scholar and founding father of Critical Race Theory Derrick Bell coined the principle of interest convergence. Since that time legal and non-legal scholars alike have looked to Bell’s principle to analyze and contextualize the permanence of race and racism in shaping and framing opportunity for non-whites. In this paper I suggest that while understanding Bell’s theory is seminal to understanding the disparate opportunities, educational or otherwise, available to many non-whites I also argue that in the era of post-racialism a new iteration of interest convergence may better explain selective opportunity and the persistence of racial animus in the twenty-first century, I call this theory the power preservation principle.

Author

• Maria C. Ledesma, University of Utah