Policy Comp Framework Answers (adi)

ADI 08 Framework (Policy Comparison) answers

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Answers to Policy Comparison Framework Best for Debate

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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 2 of 16 Jack Rogers wrote an article about judging bias in the Debate Community entitled A Community of Unequals It contained that the measure of bias within the dominant culture group that favors competitors who reflect similar dominant “in-group” identity and marginalizes the participation and success of competitors from subdominant “out group” cultures. The data in this study concluded that positive bias on the part of white (male) critics towards what they perceive of as positive behavior exhibited by white, male competitors. Conversely, (male) critics have much more negative view of competitors who are female and /or ethnic minority status. Rogers in 1997 Jack E., Director of Forensics at The University of Texas at Tyler, “A Community of Unequals,” Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, http://www.cedadebate.org/CAD/1997_rogers.pdf For decades, the forensics community has studied the participation and success rates for women and minorities within the arena of intercollegiate competitive debate. Figures for the Open Division remain disproportionately low given the level of successful participation by these groups within the Novice ranks. Women and minority competitors have expressed a perception of a positive bias within the judging pool towards competitors who reflect the dominant culture. They claim that this bias towards white male competitors degrades their ability to compete and engenders their lack of participation within the Open Division. The purpose of this study is to examine judges' perceptions of ability in eight key areas with regard to competitors' gender, race and debate division to measure bias within the dominant culture group that favors competitors who reflect similar dominant "in-group" identity and marginalizes the participation and success of competitors from subdominant "outgroup" cultures. The study concludes that there is strong empirical evidence to support the presence of judging bias within the dominant culture.

ADI 08 Framework (Policy Comparison) answers

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The game of debate must constantly change to remain its potential for liberation and to remain relevant and engaging to the students involved. (The other team forces the practices and interpretations of debate to remain the same) hooks in 1994 bell hooks, Professor at Berea College, 1994, “Teaching to Transgress” pg. 138-9,

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Our bodies are a pollutant in your educational spaces – spaces that were never designed with us in mind – bodies of color do not cleanly fit into these spaces where our lack of whiteness brushes us with the color of inferiority – It is the presence of the black body that exceeds attempts to contain it and its inability to be contained is what maintains white privilege in our knowledge making practices and structures Reid-Brinkley, Assistant Professor of Communication, 2008 (Shanara R., THE HARSH REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE – dissertation University of Georgia, Speech Communication, http://graduate.gradsch.uga.edu/etdarchive/spring2008/reid-brinkley_shanara_r_200805_phd.pdf

The fact that bodies of color remain present despite the fact that they are supposed to be absent "is exactly what maintains white privilege.”61 Educational structures may or may not be directly racially discriminatory, "rather, they take the form of cultural values, methods of learning, styles of interaction, and other educational rituals that continually reinforce the culture of power.”62 In essence, Warren suggests that bodies of color represent a bodily contaminant that can only result in a systemically cycling psychosis as these bodies can never fully be rendered absent. Thus, if the body can never be rendered fully absent then it is exceedingly relevant to the racial signification process in educational spaces and public discourse about those spaces. The idea of restricting the performace is based on a fear of black subjectivity as what has happened historically bell hooks, Author, Feminist, Professor at Berea College, 1996 Killing Rage: Ending Racism p. 35 One mark of oppression was that black folks were compelled to assume the mantle of invisibility, to erase all traces of their subjectivity during slavery and the long years of racial apartheid, so that they could be better, less threatening servants. An effective strategy of white supremacist terror and dehumanization during slavery centered around white control of the black gaze. Black slaves, and later manumitted servants, could be brutally punished for looking, for appearing to observe the whites they were serving, as only a subject can observe or see. To be fully an object then was to lack the capacity to see or recognize reality. These looking relations were reinforced as whites cultivated the practice of denying the subjectivity of blacks (the better to dehumanize and oppress), of relegating them to the realm of the invisible.

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Shelton K. Hill wrote an article on Black participation in 97 that expressed many concerns from black debaters about the predominately white community. He concluded Hill in 1997 Hill, Shelton 97, Former Debate coach at Biola University, “African American Students’ Motivation to Participate in Intercollegiate Debate, in the Southern Journal of Forensics 2 (Fall, 1997) 202-235

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Their framework arguments are ones that try to benefit assimilation of people of color McIntosh in 1988 McIntosh, Peggy: 1988, Associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women; White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence. My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us." Privilege is a key component of how they institute their dominance McIntosh in 1988 McIntosh, Peggy: 1988, Associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women; White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems. To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me

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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 7 of 16 now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

Claims of fairness, objectivity, predictability are ways to marginalize the out group and silence our voices Delgado, Law Prof at U. of Colorado, 1992 [Richard, “Shadowboxing: An Essay On Power,” In Cornell Law Review, May] We have cleverly built power's view of the appropriate standard of conduct into the very term fair. Thus, the stronger party is able to have his/her way and see her/himself as principled at the same time. Imagine, for example, a man's likely reaction to the suggestion that subjective considerations -- a woman's mood, her sense of pressure or intimidation, how she felt about the man, her unexpressed fear of reprisals if she did not go ahead-- ought to play a part in determining whether the man is guilty of rape. Most men find this suggestion offensive; it requires them to do something they are not accustomed to doing. "Why," they say, "I'd have to be a mind reader before I could have sex with anybody?" "Who knows, anyway, what internal inhibitions the woman might have been harboring?" And "what if the woman simply changed her mind later and charged me with rape?" What we never notice is that women can "read" men's minds perfectly well. The male perspective is right out there in the world, plain as day, inscribed in culture, song, and myth -- in all the prevailing narratives. These narratives tell us that men want and are entitled [*820] to sex, that it is a prime function of women to give it to them, and that unless something unusual happens, the act of sex is ordinary and blameless. We believe these things because that is the way we have constructed women, men, and "normal" sexual intercourse. Yet society and law accept only this latter message (or something like it), and not the former, more nuanced ones, to mean refusal. Why? The "objective" approach is not inherently better or more

fair. Rather, it is accepted because it embodies the sense of the stronger party, who centuries ago found himself in a position to dictate what permission meant. Allowing ourselves to be drawn into reflexive, predictable arguments about administrability, fairness, stability, and ease of determination points us away from what [*821] really counts: the way in which stronger parties have managed to inscribe their views and interests into "external" culture, so that we are now enamored with that way of judging action. First, we read our values and preferences into the culture; then we pretend to consult that culture meekly and humbly in order to judge our own acts.

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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers

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___ Rules are created to re-enforce status quo power and privilege – masking these rules in the language of fairness makes them more acceptable Delgado, Law Prof at U. of Colorado, 1992 [ Richard, “Shadowboxing: An Essay On Power,” In Cornell Law Review, May] The debate on objective and subjective standards touches on these issues of worldmaking and the social construction of reality. Powerful actors, such as tobacco companies and male dates, want objective standards applied to them simply because these standards always, and already, reflect them and their culture. These actors have been in power; their subjectivity long ago was deemed "objective" and imposed on the world. Now their ideas about meaning, action, and fairness are built into our culture, into our view of malefemale, doctor-patient, and manufacturer-consumer relations. n36

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It is no surprise, then, that judgment under an "objective" (or reasonable person) standard generally will favor the stronger party. This, however, is not always the case: Rules that too predictably and reliably favored the strong would be declared unprincipled. The stronger actor must be able to see his favorite principles as fair and [*819] just -ones that a reasonable society would rely upon in contested situations. He must be able to depict the current standards as integral to justice, freedom, fairness, and administrability -- to everything short of the American Way itself (and maybe even that, since societies that regulate these relationships more closely are paternalistic, and verge on (shhh!) socialism). n38

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___ Subjectivity is essential for liberation of the oppressed – it is the great equalizer of resources Delgado, Law Prof at U. of Colorado, 1992 [Richard, “Shadowboxing: An Essay On Power,” In Cornell Law Review, May] The subordinate party, naturally, prefers the subjective standard. No matter how limited one's resources or range of options, no matter how unequal one's bargaining position, at least one's thoughts are free. Small wonder that the recent legal-storytelling [*822] movement has had such appeal to people of color, women, gays and lesbians. Stories inject a new narrative into our society. They demand attention; if aptly told, they win acceptance or, at a minimum, respect. This is why women demand to tell their account of forced sex, why cancer victims insist that their smoking was a redressable harm despite the tobacco companies' pathetic warnings, and why patient advocates demand a fundamental restructuring of the doctor-patient relationship. n63

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___ Beliefs about objectivity, predictability and fairness are used to co-opt activism, we must disbelieve in order to free ourselves Delgado, Law Prof at U. of Colorado, 1992 [Richard, “Shadowboxing: An Essay On Power,” In Cornell Law Review, May] I began by observing that law-talk can lull and gull us, tricking us into thinking that categories like objective and subjective, and the stylized debates that swirl about them, really count when in fact they either collapse or appear trivial when viewed from the perspective of cultural power. If we allow ourselves to believe that these categories do matter, we can easily expend too much energy replicating predictable, scripted arguments -- and in this way, the law turns once-progressive people into harmless technocrats. But this happens in a second way as well, when we borrow their tools for our projects without sensing the danger in that use. For example, a recent article by a Critical Race scholar proposes a novel approach to the impact-intent dichotomy in antidiscrimination law. Most persons of majority race, including judges, are not prepared [*823] to see subtle forms of "institutional" or "latter-day" racism in the absence of vicious intent. That is, "impact" alone is not enough. To bridge the gap between currently unredressable, unintentional discrimination and the redressable, intentional kind, Charles n70

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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 10 of 16 Lawrence proposes that the law recognize a third, unconscious form of redressable discrimination. So far, so good. But his article goes on to propose a "cultural test" for this sort of unconscious racism. Under Lawrence's test, unconscious racism is redressable if, in light of prevailing cultural meanings and understandings, the action is racist. n73

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There is no such thing as neutral education- the notion of fairness should not exist in debate rounds Shaull in 1968 Shaull, Richard. Professor of Ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Pg 34. 1968

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___ Their criticism of identity politics is simplistic – it is used to destroy coalitions and to excuse continued oppression of all minorities Alcoff in 2006 Alcoff, Linda 2006, Feminist Professor, The Political Critique of Identity: from Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Without doubt, the critique of identity has worked effectively, and justifiably, against some of the problematic interpretations of identity politics, where identity is construed in reductionist and simplistic fashion and where its link to politics is rendered overly determinist. Nonetheless, I believe the more significant effect of the critique has been a negative one, in discrediting all identity-based movements, in blaming minority movements for the demise of the left, and especially in weakening the prospects for unity between majority and minority groups, contrary to the beliefs of such theorists as Schlesinger and Gitlin. Although the critique purports to be motivated by just this desire for unity, it works to undermine the credibility of those who have "obvious" identities and significantly felt identity-attachments from being able to represent the majority, as if their very identity attachments and the political commitments that flow from these attachments will inhibit their leadership capabilities. It also inhibits their ability to participate in coalition politics as who they fully are. In this way, the critique of identity has operated to vindicate the broad white public's disinclination to accept political leadership from those whose identity is minority in any respect: Catholic or Jewish, Black or Latino, Asian or Arab American. ___ Self-determination of identity solves all their liberal objections – what matters is confronting the forces that constrain our ability to self-determine Alcoff in 2006 Alcoff, Linda 2006, Feminist Professor, The Political Critique of Identity: from Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Why is it assumed that social identities require a "solution"? This only makes sense given the liberal conception of the self as requiring autonomy from identity in order to have

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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 12 of 16 rationality. After all, the fact that a social identity was created under conditions of exclusion or oppression does not by itself entail that its features are pernicious: oppression can produce pathology without a doubt but it can also produce strength, perseverance, and empathy, and certainly solidarity is not an inherent evil. Moreover, the desire to be free of oppressive stereotypes does not necessarily lead to the desire to be free of all identity; it can just as easily lead to the desire to have more accurate characterizations of one's identity and to have the collective freedom to develop the identity through developing culture and community as well as the individual freedom to interpret its meaning in one's own life.

their silence on the issue of white supremacy and how it functions with debate and society creates a bad academic practice Charles Mills writes in his book the Racial Contract in 1997 p.18-19 Thus in effect, on matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfuntions, producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made. Whites signatories will live in an inverted delusional world, a racial fantasyland, a “consensual hallucination,”to quote William Gibson. There will be white mythologies, invented Orients, invented Africas, invented Americas, with a correspondingly abricated population countries that never were, inhabited by people who never were—Calibans and Tontos, Man Fridays and Sambos—but who attain a virtual reality through their existence in traveler’s tales, folk myth, popular and highbrow iction, colonial reports, scholarly theory, Hollywood cinema,living in the white imagination and determinedly imposed on their alarmed real-life counterparts.

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Hills article points out further that some black debaters feel isolated and see the resemblance to the real world in debate Hill in 1997 Hill, Shelton 97, Former Debate coach at Biola University, “African American Students’ Motivation to Participate in Intercollegiate Debate, in the Southern Journal of Forensics 2 (Fall, 1997) 202-235

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Forensics is seen as a model for change but the demographics and identities here are not fully representative Hill in 1997 Hill, Shelton 97, Former Debate coach at Biola University, “African American Students’ Motivation to Participate in Intercollegiate Debate, in the Southern Journal of Forensics 2 (Fall, 1997) 202-235

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The critique of identity is bad hooks, 1990 bell, Black feminist theorist and Professor at Berea College, “Postmodern Blackness,1990 The postmodern critique of "identity," though relevant for renewed black liberation struggle, is often posed in ways that are problematic. Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly dismiss a concern with identity politics. Any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial

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domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups. Many of us are struggling to find new strategies of resistance. We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful chances of survival even as we must simultaneously cope with the loss of political grounding which made radical activism more possible. I am thinking here about the postmodernist critique of essentialism as it pertains to the construction of "identity" as one example.

It is key for different cultures to speak for themselves to tell their own stories instead of forcing us to speak for others Bové in 2000 Bove, A. Paul, Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power. So powerful does Said take storytelling to be that he urges it as a form of political action and testimony. Cultures have differing powers; they tell their tales better or worse or simply differently. And these differences have profound consequences in the secular movement of history. When the Israelis besiege and shell Beirut, Said calls for people to find ways to narrate their own experiences, to make the horrible events of their daily lives into experiences by giving them shape as stories that can be shared and remembered, and form a national memory and tradition. Cultures form themselves and as formed, can claim respect and recognition, especially in conflict with or, better, in dialogue with peoples of other cultures. Better to be self –representing and to form one’s own persistent tradition as a part of the effort to throw off subordination. Intellectuals’ grand narratives, remembering Abassid and Andalusain alternatives, stand with traditions that have broader and more organic formations—although, indeed, the intellectual’s responsibility is to be in relation to those very formations. The same responsibility obliges the intellectual to assess each and every narrative as it emerges, especially those associated with power; these must be treated suspiciously and , when necessary, bathed in acid so the truths they obscure and the powers they serve stand out.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Letter from A Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963 While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought

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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 17 of 16 to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms. ------ *AUTHOR'S NOTE: This response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray. the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat constricting circumstance. Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to. leave me. Although the text remains in substance unaltered, I have indulged in the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication. -------

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.