RiverDad
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Always remember, diversity "enriches" your college experience. Look at this "enriched" experience. Students attend debate competitions to sharpen their skills and find that the teams who win just ignore the topic of debate and play race-victim cards. The judges are too cowed by political correctness to tell these clowns to get off the stage and fearful of being accused of racism instead pander to them by awarding them the top prize.
Is it any wonder that faculty and white students find that the quality of the educational experience diminishes as the proportion of black and Hispanic students increases?
From the Atlantic:
Check this out. When some teams have had enough of this racial theater and wanted to break away and form a new association focused on proper debate, all of the clowns went nuts - the whole point is to force clownishness on everyone. Just like with the homosexual movement, the point isn't about having the freedom to be a clown, it's about transforming standards and making clownishness in debate the new standard.
Look clowns, normal people don't want to associate with you. Get it? Why don't you go and be clowns in your own space instead of forcing yourself on people who are fed up with you?
Oh yeah, Diversity is our Strength™.
Is it any wonder that faculty and white students find that the quality of the educational experience diminishes as the proportion of black and Hispanic students increases?
From the Atlantic:
It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students you’d see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In matching navy blazers, they’d recite academic arguments for and against various government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring.
No more.
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 “nigga 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.
This year wasn't the first time this had happened. In the 2013 championship, two men from Emporia State University, Ryan Walsh and Elijah Smith, employed a similar style and became the first African-Americans to win two national debate tournaments. Many of their arguments, based on personal memoir and rap music, completely ignored the stated resolution, and instead asserted that the framework of collegiate debate has historically privileged straight, white, middle-class students.
Tournament participants from all backgrounds say they have found some of these debate strategies offensive. Even so, the new style has received mainstream acceptance, sympathy, and awards.
No more.
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 “nigga 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.
This year wasn't the first time this had happened. In the 2013 championship, two men from Emporia State University, Ryan Walsh and Elijah Smith, employed a similar style and became the first African-Americans to win two national debate tournaments. Many of their arguments, based on personal memoir and rap music, completely ignored the stated resolution, and instead asserted that the framework of collegiate debate has historically privileged straight, white, middle-class students.
Tournament participants from all backgrounds say they have found some of these debate strategies offensive. Even so, the new style has received mainstream acceptance, sympathy, and awards.
Check this out. When some teams have had enough of this racial theater and wanted to break away and form a new association focused on proper debate, all of the clowns went nuts - the whole point is to force clownishness on everyone. Just like with the homosexual movement, the point isn't about having the freedom to be a clown, it's about transforming standards and making clownishness in debate the new standard.
14 schools expressed interest in sending debaters to Hardy’s proposed alternative tournament, scheduled to occur last month. But after word got out that a group of mostly white teams from elite universities were trying to form their own league, Hardy and his supporters were widely attacked on Facebook and other online forums. Ultimately the competition didn’t happen, purportedly because of logistical issues with the hotel venue. Nonetheless, Hardy wrote in an email that a “toxic climate” has precluded even “strong supporters of ‘policy debate’ from “publicly attach[ing] their name to anything that might get them called racist or worse.”
Korey Johnson, the reigning CEDA champion from Towson University, was one of the students who took offense to the alternative tournament. “Separating debate is a bad move,” she said. “With the increase in minority participation came a range of different types of argument and perspectives, not just from the people who are in debate, but the kind of scholarship we bring in.” Her debate partner Ameena Ruffin agreed: “For them to tell us that we can’t bring our personal experience, it would literally be impossible. Not just for black people—it is true of everyone. We are always biased by who we are in any argument.”
Korey Johnson, the reigning CEDA champion from Towson University, was one of the students who took offense to the alternative tournament. “Separating debate is a bad move,” she said. “With the increase in minority participation came a range of different types of argument and perspectives, not just from the people who are in debate, but the kind of scholarship we bring in.” Her debate partner Ameena Ruffin agreed: “For them to tell us that we can’t bring our personal experience, it would literally be impossible. Not just for black people—it is true of everyone. We are always biased by who we are in any argument.”
Look clowns, normal people don't want to associate with you. Get it? Why don't you go and be clowns in your own space instead of forcing yourself on people who are fed up with you?
Oh yeah, Diversity is our Strength™.
