Luncheon Speech
Racism: The Source of Property and Wealth Inequality in America
Derrick A. Bell, Jr. New York University School of Law

The extreme inequality of property and wealth in America is the direct result of the historic and continuing willingness of a great many perhaps most white people to identify with and attempt to emulate those at the top of the economic heap while comforting their likely permanent lowly state by disidentifying and refusing to join with blacks and other people of color.

This may not be a curable defect in our societal structure. Rather, it is likely a key component in the stability of a nation built on the seemingly contradictory standards of a free market economy in which wealth percolates to the top and popular democracy where the universality of voting should serve as a continuing challenge to the wealthy.

The contradiction is resolved in substantial part because so many whites with relatively little property of a traditional kind, money, securities, land -- view their whiteness as a property right. Professor Cheryl Harris accurately describes the phenomenon when she writes: "the valorization of whiteness as treasured property takes place in a society structured on racial caste. In ways so embedded that it is rarely apparent, the set of assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status of being white have become a valuable asset that whites sought to protect. . . . Whites have come to expect and rely on these benefits, and over time these expectations have been affirmed, legitimated, and protected in law."

That political advantage over blacks, though, requires that whites not identify with blacks even on matters that transcend skin color. To give continued meaning to their whiteness, whites must identify with whites at the top of the economic pile, not with blacks with whom -- save color -- they have so much in common. .

The economic and political role of whiteness is now being identified and challenged by a host of writers and in a growing number of courses and workshops. Enlightening white people as to the real benefits and the great cost of their property in whiteness will require a herculean educational campaign that, in substantial part, must be undertaken by knowledgeable whites. Its success, though, would pose a serious threat to the inequality of wealth and property which, like it or not, is a mainstay of the nation's stability.