Derrick Albert Bell, Jr. (November 6, 1930 – October 5, 2011) was the first tenured African-American professor of Law at Harvard University, and largely credited as the originator of Critical Race Theory. He was the former dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an academic discipline focused upon the intersection of race, law and power.
Scholars like Derrick Bell applauded the focus of civil rights scholarship on race, but were deeply critical of civil rights scholars’ commitment to colorblindness and their focus on intentional discrimination, rather than a broader focus on the conditions of racial inequality.
Scholars in Critical Race Theory have focused with some particularity on the issues of hate crime and hate speech.
Critical race theorists have also paid particular attention to the issue of affirmative action. Many scholars have argued in favor of affirmative action on the argument that so-called merit standards for hiring and educational admissions are not race-neutral for a variety of reasons, and that such standards are part of the rhetoric of neutrality through which whites justify their disproportionate share of resources and social benefits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Race_Theory
in The Constitutional Contradiction, Bell argued that the framers of the Constitution chose the rewards of property over justice. With regard to the interest convergence, he maintains that “whites will promote racial advances for blacks only when they also promote white self-interest.” Finally, in The Price of Racial Remedies, Bell argues that whites will not support civil rights policies that may threaten white social status, like the affirmative action hiring through which he acquired his status.