ANGER AND CONFRONTATION

Professor Derrick Bell gave the convocation address at the September 11, 1996 convocation for Delaware State University. Professor Bell was the first African American Law Professor to be tenured at Harvard. He was also fired by Harvard when he refused to end a two year unpaid leave of absence in protest against the failure of Harvard to hire non-white females.

Professor Bell noted that it is not just Harvard that has a problem, it is our whole elitist society. In Japan there is a 16 to one ratio between the highest paid corporate leaders and the average worker's salary. In Germany that ratio is 21 to one. In the United States the ratio is 187 to one.

He might have also mentioned that in 1960 there were about 25,000 black men incarcerated in America and in 1994 we had 683,200 black male inmates.

He noted that crime is a problem in the black ghettos just as it has been in white ghettos of the past. For example, the London that Dickens depicted in his great novel OLIVER TWIST was crime ridden. The point he was making is that it is EMPLOYMENT, not race, it is a CLASS problem, the ELITISM practiced by the upper class is the problem---it is economics not race. Racism is used by the elite upper class to help sustain themselves.

What Professor Bell advocates, as a response, is not simply anger, although we should be angry with all of this. What he suggests is that we develop a READINESS TO CONFRONT AUTHORITY.

I strongly agree with Professor Bell. However, the question then becomes one of how to be confrontive? Someone confronted authority when they blew up the federal building in Oklahoma. The Unabomber confronted authority with letter bombs. I assume that these responses are not what Professor Bell is calling for. In his own life he has consistently confronted authority and it has cost him his job at Harvard. For social workers, it is sometimes necessary to risk your job rather than lose your soul, by doing what you know to be right, instead of doing what authority requires. I don't believe in quitting a job. I believe that you should have your next job lined up and then do the confrontation if you think it can lead to your dismissal.

I also think that, before you are confrontive, you need to make sure that you are not simply venting your anger inappropriately. It is often easy to blame authority when in fact we may be the party at fault. So, the first thing you need to do, if you are going to confront authority, is to make sure that you have your own act together, that you are doing a first rate job.

However, the best way, in my opinion, to confront authority is to become an entrepreneur, to create your own system, to build an agency that is democratic, that utilizes the principles of the Mondragon Experiment. The best way to confront authority is to beat them at their own game by creating a better model, a model that more effectively serves clients and workers alike.

In this way you get at the heart of the problems that Professor Bell pointed out. You begin to eliminate the elitism and economic disparities that give power to the authority figures.