Black Studies in Debate

Lecture will have theory, internal debates

 Key Terms
Black people refers to descendants of Africans who were transported along the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade

Blackness does not equal black people. Whiteness does not equal white people. Instead, focus on
Racialization.

Anti-Blackness vs White Supremacy—Anti-blackness is institutionalizing racism. White supremacy is

raising the status of white people.

Civil Society refers to the basic institutions such as universities, churches, prisons, neighborhoods, etc.
Ur everyday formalized set of place, operations where we go to learn, socialize, etc.

Race vs Ethnicity—Ethnicity is less mutable, tied to where ur from. Race is a much more of a social
institution—ur not born with but born into.
 Racial Capitalism
Structures of white supremacy and Cap are mutually reinforcing systems

The bourgeoise class has evolved and relies on system of racialization in order to sustain power

Aims at being a connecting force to unite the world around the liberation of both the proletariat and
Black people. Birthed off land exploitation and systems of anti-blackness. Robinson argues the
bourgeoise class uses the process known as racialization and racialism.

They. Justified colonization under racialism.

Goal is to bring a unifying force around the system. Endpoint is collectivization where we need
totalization to destroy the system.

Against these structures, we should we do?

 The Middle Passage
Slave trade was a system of trade where Africa sold slaves to America.

Mid 16th century to 1860s

Most Africans were transported from West and Central Africa.

 Internal Debates within Black Studies
Afterlife of Slavery

Social Life and Black Agency

Material Progress

Should we use coalitions?

What demands are necessary?

How should we understand Blackness?

--All questions are what blackness entails.

 Social Security
Marriage and Longevity

Discrimination against Black Disabled persons

Parental Leave and Care Work

--What is the role of economy? How can we enable our economy to benefit our citizens.

--Some institutions make black people die earlier in life. SS is very meaningful and impactful. A lot of
internal discussion and how they affect black populations.
 Jobs Guarantee
Questions on the role of black labor in a jobs guarantee?

Challenges racial inequality gap that doesn’t exist.

Persons formerly incarcerated

Positive Externalities—reasons why it improves the economy.

--Prison industrial complex is good.

Jobs Guarantee would challenge formerly incarcerated metric.

Lit base for anti-blackness cause for BI and SS more than Jobs Guarantee so its kinda bad.
 Basic Income
Bridge gap between racial inequality

Opportunity gap—if given a basic income, many black people would invest in their cities, their
education, etc that they do not have access to either.

Critiques of Social Services

Reparations
 Reparations
40 acres and a mule was black people’s promise

2020 Protests

Endpoint and starting point of every Black Critical theorist—to achieve black liberation, we need to have
discussion about reparations.

So many questions?
 Basic of Afropessimism
Afro pessimism is a theory that aims at tracking and explaining the continuation of anti-black violence.

Conceives of blackness as a structural antagonism rather than as opposed to a performance or

embodiment.

Primarily builds off Black Feminists scholarship, Psychoanalytical theory, and Orlando Patterson’s theory
of social death.
 Social Death
Social Death is the condition in which a person is not fully accepted as human by wider society

For Orlando Patterson, this form of death occurs at the level of metaphysics or more specifically at the
level of one’s being.

He refers to it as “the permanent, violent domination

 Three Pillars of Social Death
Natal Alienation

Gratuitous Violence
 Natal Alienation
Refers to the disconnection black people feel between themselves and their historical ancestry.

Patterson and Wilderson elite the Middle Passage as the first instance of Natal Alienation, but it evolves
over time.

Black orphans, families who frow up fatherless, ancestry days, and most importantly exclusion from the
term human
 General Dishonor
Calls into question the ability for slaves to achieve full honor within civil society.

Goes beyond just the notion of respect but questions the ability for Black people to even be considered
human.

Fugitive-Slave Acts and “One a Slave Always a Slave.”

 Gratuitous Violence
Refers to real, symbolic, and stimulated instances of violence that exceed the reason.

Often used in films to describe violence that does not serve the plot in anyway.

Wilderson and Patterson take it a step further to explain the inherently excessive nature of black death.
 Afro-Pessimism vs Afro-Optimism
Afro Pess

Static ontology—slavery is always the conditions of black people in society

Blackness is a structural antagonism

Uses tools such as psychoanalysis to explain how we always have a tendency to generate anti-blackness
cuz of society

No State action—black people need to look more inward in communities or radical politics. Or ultimately
topple power and start new there.

Afro-Pess, Black Nihilism, and several others

Afro-Optimism

Blackness exists as a para-ontological being. Means it has a fluid being, dynamic, and changes. Fluid
nature of blackness is not a structural antagonism but is lived as different people

Blackness is lived, embodied, and performed.

Most agree Black people need to go beyond their current condition in order to achieve progress.

Afrofuturism, black sovereignty, and the Undercommons

 Undercommons
Blackness as Para-ontological

Good Debt vs Bad Debt—Bad Debt is socially related, small moments of togetherness that can exist
beyond the state. Those versions of bad debt can never be paid back. Alts reject move to state action
and fiat.

Critiques the limitations of humanism, citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and the other university

Undercommons—a critique of fiat.

 Afrofuturism
Both academic and cultural practice that aims to connect the African diaspora and move beyond
Blackness as enslavement.

Envisions new worlds beyond current structures of anti-blackness

Utilizes music, art, performance, film, social media, and speech.

 Black Disability Studies
Authors make similar args

Blackness is intrinsically tied to notions of ability vs disability

Black women as superheroes but ultimate hysterical subject

Black men labelled as monstrous athletics but also stereotyped as irrational

Crack vs Cocaine distinction bleeds into medicine.

 What is the point?
It wins a lot.

Since it’s introduction it has dramatically altered how we conceptualize both K debate and policy
debate.

As it grows as a field, so too will the field of Black Studies, as such more arguments will evolve

Outside Debate

Sexton-Radical Passivity>

Build better institutions against anti-black violence.

AFF:

Progress—it is possible. Progress occurs through the state through expanding citizenship through one
better for America

Slavery is not an inevitable one, one that has formed recent institutions.

Black Studies: Pickens

Afrofuture: Octavia Butler

Underc: Fred Botom

Afro-Pes: Frank B Wilderson or Calvin Norred

Teams read a form of Afrofuturism and say that is the basis for how we understand the world.

Non-black people reading anti-blackness: They will read black scholarship but don’t be weird. Don’t just
be a debate round thing.