ABSTRACT
I realized my mistake when I finally returned to the original texts and compilations of critical race theory. I tell my students all the time to go back to their primary sources. I had to heed my own advice and start with the father of CRT, Derrick A. Bell: “If we are to seek new goals for our struggles, we must first reassess the worth of the racial assumptions on which, without careful thought, we have presumed too much and relied on too long” (1992, p. 14). The irony of Derrick Bell’s words being the ones to clarify my thinking, when these same words inspired my professional pathway, was not lost on me. Since we lost Derrick Bell in 2011, it seems only fitting that I continue to be reminded of the legacy of his work. After returning to Bell’s work (1989), I began a journey to better understand how CRT defined the elusive term “social justice.”
