I'm gonna go with Fuck Everyone.

It's really disgusting how black people are appropriating white culture for their own ends.

So debate competitions have been a joke for a while. I can't wait for this to go mainstream and watch Hilary Clinton and Romney go at each other like this in 2016.

I think it is just a debate style specific to CEDA.

It depends what kind of debate; there are many different types of competition within the world of debate geekery, each with their own rules and expectations. From what I know of CEDA this behavior is par for course (minus the "niggas", of course); a big factor here being the strict limit on time, which necessitates staccato run-on sentences and encourages a lack of clarity.

I was recently watching one of Scholagladiatria's videos on the differences between sport fencing and HEMA, and he made some points about sport fencing that I think would be illustrative here as well! Basically, what you have to remember is that debate competitions are debate *competitions* - they aren't so much about the act of debating (of swaying a potentially hostile audience over to your point of view), so much as they are about finding ways to Score Pointsm within the framework of rules set forth by the judging body. In fencing or kendo, combatants are encouraged to thwack away at each other with reckless abandon in order to score points faster than the other guy can, despite this sort of behavior being absolutely suicidal in a real fight (hence the dilemma faced by would-be competitive HEMAtists - how does one implement rules whilst maintaining realism?). Competitive debate is much the same way, operating in its own world by its own rules that may have little or no relevance to the less glamorous realms of practical, academic, or even internet debate.

Still hilariously stupid.

That's pretty much it. Saying "this debate will never convince anyone of anything other than your stupidity" is like saying a Tae Kwon Do competition will never convince anyone that you are a mega-badass manslayer.

It's like ah ah uh uh duhhh ah ah get it? Eh eh eh.

In light of Tob's link, what these women need to do is study old school auctioneers. Their flow is terrible and they stutter. The occasional "nigger" ends up sounding like Torettes Syndrome. But I could see how you could do this right and make it stick. Also: check out how Amy Goodman does her closing credits for Democracy Now. She spits those words out like machine gun bullets.

Well, epee fencing comes close to a real fight avoiding hits while trying to hit the other guy.

FUCK the right of way rule in foil and saber though. Not even expert directors (fencing refs) can keep all that shit straight, and you've never seen a more pointless competition until you've seen saber fencing. The majority of duels last less than a second.

Why do you think they failed?

Fuck Salon

"Pushing for alternative ways for Black people to exist and thrive in hyper-militarist regimes is important political work", particularly given the context of the debate, has got to be one of the most cynical and depressing sentences I've read in recent years. I wish I could send that link back to EvilHomer 2004, when me and my fellow leftard college buddies were handing out Obama leaflets at the Howard Dean afterparties.


Anyway, I don't know a thingabout the reaction to this debate outside of what I'm seeing here on poeTV, and I cannot say how accurate it is to classify the backlash on the whole as racist. Yet even I noted the racist undertones of *this* videoclip! This video is edited in such a way as to diminish clarity and to over-emphasize (almost pornographically so) the young lady's use of the word "nigga". Definitely racist. However, the rest of Professor Cooper's article is less persuasive. I don't see how teaching young black women to BS as well as rich white trusties can be considered progress, her fixation on binary political identities comes off as quaint and paranoid, and she never actually explains *why* the critics are wrong. She simply buries the issues below a load of vitriolic ad hominem attacks - which is, ironically, rather racist of her.

There's some interesting information in that article, though. Like, apparently, the Towson team shown in this video did NOT initiate the nigga'ing! In actual fact, it was started by the opposing team, a group of African American students from the University of Oklahoma, who used the word in order to humanize the debate. The Towson girls took issue with this performative tactic and tried (successfully, as it turned out) to punish them for it. The Oklahoma team actually sounds like it had a far more compelling argument, while the Towson team (who, incidentally, were arguing the pro-fascist side of the resolution) were the champions of orthodoxy! There's one really nice quote buried in there... hang on...

"we should not present scenes of suffering within the academy… because the academic machine will become a spectator that merely feeds its libido by consuming pain narrations." ~ Towson

... which, translated from Academese into English, means: "Oh Heavens! My monocle! Your rubbernecking is most inappropriate!" One of the Towson girls then pulls a Gmork, telling her fellow black people to shut up about racism.

Near as I can tell, Towson won, not by presenting a compelling argument in favor of the security-industrial complex, but simply by undermining their opponents' unorthodox strategy with a focused blast of propriety. Which makes the racist backlash against them all the more baffling!

Yeah, I sniffed more than a little racism in this clip too; it feels like it was made to say, "this is what happens when niggers try to be as smart as white people".

Not that I can agree with praising these kids either. Credit to them for mental agility and flexibility, but if you can't operate within the rules and guidelines of the competition, go home. Also, aren't there supposed to be academic advisors of some kind working with the kids? They sure as hell weren't doing their job.

I have a love/hate relationship with Brittney Cooper; maybe half the time she's right on the money with regard to race in America, but then the other time she's hilariously wrong. A couple weeks back she told of the time she was taking up two seats on a crowded train (one seat for her, with some of her stuff spilling over to the next seat), when a white passenger tried to push her stuff back her way so he could sit down. A textbook case of racism.

"...including a more performative style of debate that incorporates rap music, poetry and personal anecdotes."

But that's not what I consider to be debate. That's akin to making emotional arguments or rallying the crowd, as opposed to presenting evidence and lines of reasoning.

It's why I don't consider any political debates with candidates to be actual debates. Hardly any information of value is presented, little to no evidence or rationale is given for a speaker's position that isn't emotional, and the whole thing is just an attempt at turning the whole thing into a campaign ad.

Yeah SPK

There's also a heavy dose of
"white people debate like this: deetdeedee deedo
black people debate like this: doo-doot doot doot doot-doo-doot"

But the important part here is Fuck Salon.

And after a quick look at the political/economic commentator who put this up, fuck him too. He's a piece of shit for sure. But sometimes even a piece of shit is right about the turds floating next to him in the great septic tank that is American intellectual discourse. Jesus H

I'll take Giant Steps Backward in the Name of Racial Pride for 00 please, Alex.

>>Hardly any information of value is presented

But SPK, could you not level the same accusations against competitive debates? After all, one of most striking features of competitive debates, particularly CEDA, is how nigh incomprehensible they can be. While there usually aren't as many appeals to emotion (they do still occur, just not with the same frequency), top-level competitive debates are often a dizzying blur of jargon and baroque reasoning, presented at such remarkable speeds that, hopefully, your opponents won't be able to make heads or tails of what you said until it's too late. I'm a fairly intelligent person with a background in debate, but I don't mind admitting that most of what is said in a CEDA style debate sounds like "wonkwonkwonkwonk" to me. Can such information really be said to be valuable? Is that truly any "better" than Kennedy-esque political debates?

See also: "soft-science" academia in general, particularly in the wake of postmodernism.

Anyway, I could go on, but Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu's about to drop onto the front page and I've got to write up a lengthy rebuttal against it.

If all that's being graded is presentation, then it's a poetry slam, not a debate.

Again, a problem that is frequently leveled against all the soft-sciences! One might argue that the way these debates are conducted is but a single symptom of a much deeper malaise.