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24 Conn. L. Rev. 553 (1991-1992)
Realist Review

handle is hein.journals/conlr24 and id is 573 raw text is: REALIST REVIEW Robin D. Barnes* Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even those herculean efforts we hail as successful will pro- duce no more than temporary 'peaks of progress, short- lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance. This is a hard- to-accept fact that all history verifies. We must acknowledge it and move on to adopt policies based on what I call: Ra- cial Realism. -Derrick Bell' [Bilack Americans will never be saved or even assisted terri- bly much by others, never be repaid for our suffering, and never find that symmetrical, historical justice that we cannot help but long for. These things will never happen. Jean-Paul Sartre once said that we were the true existential people, and certainly we have always had to create ourselves out of whole cloth and find our own means for survival. Nothing has really changed. -Shelby Steele2 D ERRICK Bell's most recent article, Racial Realism,3 invites black America's leaders to abandon the ideal that racial equality can be obtained through law, and adopt policy positions and cam- paigns that are less likely to worsen conditions for those we are trying * Associate Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law. B.A., SUNY-Buffalo; J.D., University of Buffalo School of Law; LL.M., University of Wisconsin School of Law. I would like to thank my research assistant, Janice Soriano. for all her Valuable efforts. I would also like to thank my editor, Michael Besso, and the editorial board of the Connecticut Law Revlew tor welcoming nontraditional scholarship and ideas. 1. Derrick Bell, Racial Realism, 24 CONN L REv. 363, 373 (1992). 2. SHELBY STEELE. THE CONTENT OF OUR CHARACTER, A NEW VISION OF RACE IN, A?,1ERICA 172-73 (1990) (emphasis added). 3. Bell, supra note I.