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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 1 of 16

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 "out-
group" cultures. The study concludes that there is strong empirical evidence to
support the presence of judging bias within the dominant culture.
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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 3 of 16

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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 4 of 16

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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 5 of 16

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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 6 of 16

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 page 8 of 16

___ 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 world-
making 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,
n36

into our view of malefemale, doctor-patient, and manufacturer-consumer relations. n37

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 --
n38

ones that a reasonable society would rely upon in contested situations. He must be able
n39

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). n40
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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 9 of 16

___ 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
n63

[*822] movement has had such appeal to people of color, women, gays and lesbians. n64

Stories inject a new narrative into our society. They demand attention; if aptly told,
n65

they win acceptance or, at a minimum, respect. This is why women demand to tell
n66

their account of forced sex, why cancer victims insist that their smoking was a
n67

redressable harm despite the tobacco companies' pathetic warnings, and why patient
n68

advocates demand a fundamental restructuring of the doctor-patient relationship. n69

___ 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. n70

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
n71

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
n72

unredressable, unintentional discrimination and the redressable, intentional kind, Charles

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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
n73

this sort of unconscious racism. Under Lawrence's test, unconscious racism is

n74

redressable if, in light of prevailing cultural meanings and understandings, the action is
racist.n75

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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 11 of 16

___ 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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 13 of 16

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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 14 of 16

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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 15 of 16

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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Framework (Policy Comparison) answers page 16 of 16

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.