BEEN THERE; DONE THAT:

My first encounter with critical race theory (CRT)--by which I mean the original body of work, not the mythologized version that exists in today's conservative discourse--was in college, in an Introduction to African American Studies course. As part of the curriculum, we were assigned a reading by Derrick Bell, the law professor who wrote some of the movement's key texts from the 1970s to the 1990s. I thought it was going to be a piece of conventional legal scholarship, but it turned out to be a science fiction story called "The Space Traders." In Bell's story, aliens visit the United States and make a disturbing proposal: they propose to buy all of the country's Black people. In exchange for allowing the Black population to be re-enslaved and taken to another planet, the aliens offer riches on an unfathomable scale, enough to solve every earthly problem and provide prosperity for all. 

Bell's perspective on American race relations was infamously pessimistic and (spoiler) at the end of the story, after a secret ballot referendum, American whites vote overwhelmingly to accept the traders' terms, and the country's Black population is carted off to the stars. The story ends with the disturbing lines: 

Crowded on the beaches were the inductees, some twenty million silent black men, women, and children, including babes in arms. As the sun rose, the Space Traders directed them, first, to strip off all but a single undergarment; then, to line up; and finally, to enter those holds which yawned in the morning light like Milton's "darkness visible." The inductees looked fearfully behind them. But, on the dunes above the beaches, guns at the ready, stood U.S. guards. There was no escape, no alternative. Heads bowed, arms now linked by slender chains, black people left the New World as their forebears had arrived.

When I first read "The Space Traders" at the age of 18, I hated it. I felt it was ridiculous and said nothing useful about the contemporary United States. As a piece of fiction, I thought it was more than a little heavy-handed--it seemed like exactly what you expect when a law professor ventures into satirical short story writing--and wrong as a piece of social commentary. The United States would not sell its Black population to aliens. I considered myself to be aware of the workings of racism in the U.S., but I felt it operated in far more subtle ways and that Bell was being hyperbolic. 

But though I disliked "The Space Traders," I thought about it often over the years. It disturbed me in a way that lasted, and over time I realized that I had been wrong. I had objected to the idea that U.S. whites would exchange Black lives for a pile of gold, but of course that was exactly what they had already done for a good part of the country's history, and their doing so had created inequities in wealth, health, schooling, and housing that had lasted continuously from the time of slavery to the present day. 

Conceived of that way, the U.S. not only once bargained Black lives for treasure, but continues to do so. With each passing year, the country's governing institutions allow Black people to die who could be saved, if whites were willing to expend a small amount of illegitimately-accumulated wealth. For instance: Black infant mortality is over twice that of white infant mortality. We could pay to address this problem, and relatively easily, through guaranteeing quality healthcare to all and addressing the social determinants of poor health outcomes. But we don't. What is this but choosing money at the expense of Black lives? In other words: the despicable bargain of the "Space Traders" was not a hypothetical: it was just another way of looking at existing reality. Every dollar spent on luxury housing that is not spent on improving Black healthcare and Black schools is a deal made with the Space Traders. 

It took me years to take this obvious message from Bell's story, and I am glad someone made me read the piece. I am better off intellectually for having had to wrestle with it. It should be taught in schools. It should be thought about and argued about. It certainly shouldn't be ignored. The uncomfortable questions it raises are ones that need facing head-on. 

Derrick Bell's body of work is unique. He famously got himself fired from Harvard Law School in 1993, when he refused to continue teaching, an act of protest against the law school's failure to hire any Black women as professors. (In 1997, Harvard Law's communications office told the press that it had hired a "woman of color" after Bell departed. Her name was Elizabeth Warren.) 

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