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These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years.
But this transformation has also sparked a difficult, often painful controversy for a community that prides itself on handling volatile topics.
On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities.
In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis. Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “***** authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “**** the time!” he yelled. His partner Campbell, who won the top speaker award at the National Debate Tournament two weeks later, had been unfairly targeted by the police at the debate venue just days before, and cited this personal trauma as evidence for his case against the government’s treatment of poor African-Americans.
So a debate about the President's war powers descends into how the US attacks poor communities?
So a debate about the President's war powers descends into how the US attacks poor communities?
Just want to point something out: The quoted reference above is what you call an example of biased writing: "two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis." Notice it doesn't say what anyone else was wearing or talk about their hairstyle. I'm used to the liberal press pulling this kind of biased writing on conservatives but here it is in another form. Bias can be pro or con.
As actual debate team member in high school and college, this foolishness resides squarely in the lap of the debate judges/organizations who actually give points to either or both sides for what is straw man fallacy writ large.
What these "alternative debaters" are doing is launching the debate by changing the subject right from the opening bell, thus officially building a straw man argument their opponent was not prepared to discuss, and the judges actually reward them for doing so. This all started in the high school debate circuit like 15 years ago, and the style is the same - instead of taking the affirmative or negative on the stated issue/policy, launch into a tirade about the racism inherent in even having the debate, attack your opponent with ad hominem and unprovable meta arguments, and receive points and praise from judges based on them being scared of being called racists for properly evaluating a logical argument and the use of fallacy in place of preparation.
A good primer on this is the South park episode where they clown on Johnny Cochran using the "dreaded Chewbacca defense" of "if Chewbacca livin' on Endor don't make no sense, you must acquit" to wild cheers from the gallery and jury.
Same thing here.
Resolved: should the United States military increase presence in Eastern Ukraine?
Team 1: We intend to prove that the United States has no pressing interest, politically, economically or diplomatically, to employ force vs Russia in the Eastern Ukraine.
Team 2: Russia, Ukraine and America are white devil oppressors and the question is racist. We therefore dismiss the issue and will prove that the question, the other team, and the white devil judges are oppressors of disadvantaged black youth. [wild appluase follows]
And that's how alternative debate works. It's a straw man based on ad hominem, and apparently this is now considered winning debate by both major collegiate debate societies. The judges are too scared to abide by or enforce the rules of proper debate. Consider, from the article:
Quote:
At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “**** the time!” he yelled. His partner Campbell, who won the top speaker award at the National Debate Tournament two weeks later, had been unfairly targeted by the police at the debate venue just days before, and cited this personal trauma as evidence for his case against the government’s treatment of poor African-Americans.
Victimology and white guilt allow him to get away with what would have resulted in an automatic disqualification from that tournament, and likely suspension of the team from further tournies that year or longer back when I was doing formal debate. It's a game/sport like any other, and you don't just get to use intimidation, fear, guilt, etc to change the rules as the game goes along.
well looking at the facts he is definitely to blame.
Word is those people of ANY "color" who have the rep of doing well in the US DON'T use racism as a reason to fail. Look at what happened to many Asians here in the US 100 years ago; they had to put up with unfair crap and MOST of them are doing better than most of us white people in 2014.
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