Interest convergence is a principle that suggests that social change for minority groups occurs when their interests align with those of the majority. This shared interest can lead to the creation of new laws and policies. The theory was first coined by Derrick Bell. Bell was an American lawyer, theorist and civil rights activist in the 1970s. Bell argued that when fighting for racial justice, advocates will only be successful when their aim aligns with the needs and desires of privileged white people in society. The theory of interest convergence suggests that because racism is beneficial to white people they have little incentive to eradicate it. Using the lens of interest convergence, critical race theorists argued that both civil rights gains and changing attitudes towards people of colour regularly coincided with changing needs and desires of white people.
Background
Brown v Board of Education The idea of interest convergence came to Bell after considering Supreme Court decisions involving racial matters. Many of these cases were argued on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment states “[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court confirmed the “separate but equal doctrine”, stating that racially segregated facilities were not illegal, providing the facilities were equal for both Black and white people. Scholars argue that this decision allowed policymakers to create rules that discriminated against Black students. The landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy. The Supreme Court held that segregated schools violated the 14th amendment and injured Black children. The change in approach by the Supreme Court led Bell to question their reasoning.
Response to Brown v Board of Education The response to the decision was mixed. Many white people were horrified by the decision, describing the day the decision was handed down as a “Black Monday”. The Black community and its allies viewed the decision as the “crown jewel of US Supreme Court jurisprudence”. In the years that followed, people began to question the decision. Bell looked to the political climate at the time to substantiate his theory. Brown was decided in 1954. The Korean War had just ended and the Second World War had come to an end also. During these wars, Black people fought alongside their white counterparts. Many considered it unlikely they would willingly return to a position of inferiority in US society. Bell also considered the Cold War tensions at the time as likely motivation for the decision. Many US officials feared that their fight against communism would be unsuccessful when countries such as Russia could criticise America for the racial violence occurring in the US. Bell considered the political needs of white people and the equality needs of black people as a common ground. His claims were initially met with outrage.
Report of Mary Dudziak Bell’s theory was backed up by legal historian Mary Dudziak. Dudziak studied official Government documents from the Justice Department that confirmed the fears of the US government regarding the spread of communism. She also discovered secret cables to the Justice Department outlining the United States’ interest in “improving its images in the eyes of the Third World”. In the wake of the decision, instructions were made to broadcast the decision to Russia and China.
Effects of Brown Bell argues that interest convergence can be seen clearly in the state of Black education today. Followers of the interest convergence theory suggest that Black education hasn’t improved because Brown was not decided for their benefit. Decisions made in the aftermath of Brown decided that desegregation should be carried out as fast as possible. Leaving this matter to lower federal courts led to “local, judicial and political evasion of desegregation”. The treatment of the “Little Rock Nine” is an example of this. Studies done on schooling after the Brown decision show that many Black educators were fired and many Black students had to attend schools where they were “subjected to physical violence and emotional abuse, racial intimidation and hostility and illegal suspensions”.
Principles
Limited Success Because decisions made through interest convergence aren’t made specifically to benefit minority groups, adherents question the success of the results of these decisions. According to Harvard Law Review, Brown’s failure is because the decision was never really made to benefit Black people. Interest convergence asserts that even if the interests of Black people are in theory protected by the 14th Amendment, that alone will not suffice to achieve justice if doing so will threaten the status of whites. Bell argues that even in situations where white people may support the decision based on equality alone, their numbers are not enough to bring out reform, without the converging interest of the majority group. Bell looked at interest convergence as a “two-sided coin”. On one side, political and legal achievements for Black people would only occur where they coincided with those of white people, and on the other hand, these achievements will be taken away if they threaten the interests of whites. Scholars cite studies conducted to show the effect of interest convergence in education which found that white students still attend schools that are predominantly white, and Black and Latinx students attend predominantly non-white schools. This report also showed that the schools white students attend tend to receive vastly better resources that give white students educational advantages over other students who attend schools where the resources and standard of education is seriously lacking.
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