Afrolantica Legacies
Derrick Bell is perhaps best known for the principled stand he took at Harvard  in 1990 when he quit his tenured position on the law-school faculty to protest the school's  failure to grant tenure to a black woman. Now a visiting professor at New York Law  School, Bell is still deeply interested in issues of race relations and has chosen to explore  the subject fictionally inAfrolantica Legacies. In a nutshell, the story goes like  this: a mysterious land mass suddenly appears in the Atlantic Ocean, a fabulous island on  which only black people can survive. American blacks set sail to the island to begin a  new life, only to see it sink again before they can reach the shore. On the return trip to  America, the passengers draw up a list of principles called the Afrolantica Legacies,  defining how they want to reposition themselves in American society.The stories Bell tells to illustrate his points are narrated by Geneva Crenshaw, a character  he has used in earlier fiction. Racism, government conspiracies against blacks, and  Jewish-black relations are the subjects here, and heroes of African American history such  asMarcus Garvey, Thurgood  Marshall, andNat Turnerall  make appearances. Depending on which side of the black/white divide you happen to  stand, Bell's take on race relations in America will either seem right on the money or very  grim indeed.