Verbatim Mac
Explanation
This is a critique of colorblind discussions of domestic
surveillance. The evidence in this file is mostly taken from an
online back-and-forth within leftist circles after the Snowden
revelations in 2013. Tim Wise, a prominent anti-racist activist and
writer, wrote a scathing article critiquing the publics response to
NSA spying. According to Wise, the outrage that many white people
expressed was a product of their privilege. Why was NSA spying so
outrageous? Why was it the top story in national newspapers and on
cable news channels? Wise suggests that this response was so
aggressive because white people were finally experiencing the same
kind of coercive surveillance that people of color have always
experienced in the United States. Instead of reacting with outrage,
the alternative suggests that one should react to revelations about
domestic surveillance with indifference because the existence of
this kind of surveillance regime should be obvious.
This critique links to affirmatives that do not discuss the
racially disparate effects of surveillance. If the affirmative
highlights the racial injustice of surveillance, the critique
becomes much less persuasive. The negative could potentially still
deploy a narrower focus tradeoff critique (time spent working
against NSA surveillance is time not spent working against police
brutality, etc.), but this isnt a particularly persuasive argument.
Strategically, the negative should develop another critique to read
against affirmatives that do highlight the racially disparate
effects of surveillance. Doing so will provide the negative with a
generic option against (nearly) all affirmatives.
In response to this critique, the affirmative has a wide variety
of options. Most importantly, the affirmative can suggest that
because the alternative ultimately agrees with the plan, the
permutation is the best option. As part of this argument, the
affirmative can also suggest that plan-inclusive alternatives are
illegitimate and that the desirability of the affirmatives policy
proposalnot just the reasons provided to support itshould be the
nexus issue of the debate. Many authors also disagree with Wises
argument; they suggest that anti-surveillance work is valuable for
people of color and that there is no necessary tradeoff between
this and working against other manifestations of racial
injustice.
One other option for the affirmative is to critique the word
colorblind on the grounds that it is ableist. There is a balanced
back-and-forth on this issue that will provide an opportunity for
students to debate language-related arguments in the context of a
counter-critique.
Negative1NC Colorblindness CritiqueFirst, the affirmatives
reaction to NSA surveillance is a product of white privilege. The
abuses theyre outraged with arent exceptions to the rule; they are
the rule. Wise 13 Timothy J. Wise, anti-racist activist and writer,
holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tulane University, 2013
(Whiteness, NSA Spying and the Irony of Racial Privilege, Tim Wises
blog, June 19th, Available Online at
http://www.timwise.org/2013/06/whiteness-nsa-spying-and-the-irony-of-racial-privilege/,
Accessed 02-17-2015)The idea that with this NSA program there has
been some unique blow struck against democracy, and that now our
liberties are in jeopardy is the kind of thing one can only believe
if one has had the luxury of thinking they were living in such a
place, and were in possession of such shiny baubles to begin with.
And this is, to be sure, a luxury enjoyed by painfully few folks of
color, Muslims in a post-9/11 America, or poor people of any color.
For the first, they have long known that their freedom was directly
constrained by racial discrimination, in housing, the justice
system and the job market; for the second, profiling and suspicion
have circumscribed the boundaries of their liberties unceasingly
for the past twelve years; and for the latter, freedom and
democracy have been mostly an illusion, limited by economic
privation in a class system that affords less opportunity for
mobility than fifty years ago, and less than most other nations
with which we like to compare ourselves.In short, when people
proclaim a desire to take back our democracy from the national
security apparatus, or for that matter the plutocrats who have
ostensibly hijacked it, they begin from a premise that is entirely
untenable; namely, that there was ever a democracy to take back,
and that the hijacking of said utopia has been a recent phenomenon.
But there wasnt and it hasnt been.
Second, their colorblind policy analysis perpetuates racism and
inequality. Wise 10 Timothy J. Wise, anti-racist activist and
writer, holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tulane University,
2010 (With Friends Like These, Who Needs Glenn Beck? Racism and
White Privilege on the Liberal-Left, Tim Wises blog, August 17th,
Available Online at
http://www.timwise.org/2010/08/with-friends-like-these-who-needs-glenn-beck-racism-and-white-privilege-on-the-liberal-left/,
Accessed 02-17-2015)Liberal Colorblindness and the Perpetuation of
RacismBy liberal colorblindness I am referring to a belief that
although racial disparities are certainly real and troubling and
although they are indeed the result of discrimination and unequal
opportunity paying less attention to color or race is a progressive
and open-minded way to combat those disparities. So, for instance,
this is the type of colorblind stance often evinced by teachers, or
social workers, or folks who work in non-profit service agencies,
or other helping professions. Its embodiment is the elementary
school teacher who I seem to meet in every town to which I travel
who insists they never even notice color and make sure to treat
everyone exactly the same, as if this were the height of moral
behavior and the ultimate in progressive educational pedagogy.But
in fact, colorblindness is exactly the opposite of what is needed
to ensure justice and equity for persons of color. To be blind to
color, as Julian Bond has noted, is to be blind to the consequences
of color, and especially the consequences of being the wrong color
in America. Whats more, when teachers and others resolve to ignore
color, they not only make it harder to meet the needs of the
persons of color with whom they personally interact, they actually
help further racism and racial inequity by deepening denial that
the problem exists, which in turn makes the problem harder to
solve. To treat everyone the same even assuming this were possible
is not progressive, especially when some are contending with
barriers and obstacles not faced by others. If some are dealing
with structural racism, to treat them the same as white folks who
arent is to fail to meet their needs. The same is true with women
and sexism, LGBT folks and heterosexism, working-class folks and
the class system, persons with disabilities and ableism, right on
down the line. Identity matters. It shapes our experiences. And to
not recognize that is to increase the likelihood that even the
well-intended will perpetuate the initial injury.
Third, their decision to highlight NSA surveillance instead of
ongoing, ubiquitous violence against people of color perpetuates
white supremacy. This outweighs the case. Wise 13 Timothy J. Wise,
anti-racist activist and writer, holds a B.A. in Political Science
from Tulane University, 2013 (Whiteness, NSA Spying and the Irony
of Racial Privilege, Tim Wises blog, June 19th, Available Online at
http://www.timwise.org/2013/06/whiteness-nsa-spying-and-the-irony-of-racial-privilege/,
Accessed 02-17-2015)So yeah, the government is spying on you
precious. And now youre pissed?This is the irony of privilege: the
fact that some have for so long enjoyed it, in its largely
unfettered state, is precisely why some of those those same persons
are now so exorcised at the thought of potentially being treated
like everyone else has been, forever; and it is also why the state
was able to get away with it for such an extended period. So long
as the only possible targets were racial and religious and class
others, shock and outrage could be kept at a minimum. And so the
apparatus of profiling and monitoring and snooping and data
collection and even targeted assassination grew like mushrooms in
the dark. And deep down, most of the same white folks who are now
so unhinged by the mere possibility and a remote one at that that
they will be treated like those others, knew what was going on.And
they said little or nothing. White liberals with some notable
exceptions mostly clucked their tongues and expressed how
unfortunate it was that certain people were being profiled, but
they rarely spoke out publicly, or challenged those not-so-random
searches at the airport, or dared to challenge cops when they saw
them harassing, or even brutalizing the black and brown. Plenty of
other issues were more pressing. The white conservatives, of
course, largely applauded either or both of those.And now, because
they mostly ignored (or even in some cases cheered) the violations
of Constitutional rights, so long as the violations fell upon
someone other than themselves, they are being freshly confronted
with the surly adolescent version of the infant to which they gave
birth, at least indirectly. And they arent too happy with his
insolence.Yeah, well, tell it to pretty much every Arab American,
every Persian American, every Afghan American, everyone with a
so-called Middle Eastern name walking through an airport in this
country for the past decade or more. Tell them how now youre
outraged by the idea that the government might consider you a
potential terrorist.Tell it to the hundreds of thousands of black
men in New York, stopped and frisked by the NYPD over the past
fifteen years, whose names and information were entered into police
databases, even though they had committed no crime, but just as a
precautionary measure, in case they ever decided to commit one.
Tell them how tight it makes you to be thought of as a potential
criminal, evidence be damned.Tell it to brown folks in Arizona, who
worry that the mere color of their skin might provoke a local
official, operating on the basis of state law (or a bigoted little
toad of a sheriff), to stop them and force them to prove they
belong in the country. Explain to them how patently offensive and
even hurtful it is to you to be presumed unlawful in such a way as
to provoke official government suspicion.Tell it to the veterans of
the civil rights struggle whose activities in the Black Panthers,
SNCC, the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, and the American Indian
Movement, among others were routinely monitored (and more to the
point actively disrupted and ripped apart) by government
intelligence agencies and their operatives. Tell them how
incredibly steamed you are that your government might find out what
websites you surf, or that you placed a phone call last Wednesday
to someone, somewhere. Make sure to explain how such activities are
just a step away from outright tyranny and surely rank up there
alongside the murder and imprisonment to which their members were
subjected. Indeed.And then maybe, just maybe, consider how
privilege being on the upside, most of the time, of systems of
inequality can (and has) let you down, even set you up for a fall.
How maybe, just maybe, all the apoplexy mustered up over the NSAs
latest outrage, might have been conjured a long time ago, and over
far greater outrages, the burdens of which were borne by only
certain persons, and not others.
Finally, the alternative is to react with indifference to NSA
surveillance. Yes, these abuses are bad. But theyre just more of
the same in a country that is not and has never been free for
people of color. Wise 13 Timothy J. Wise, anti-racist activist and
writer, holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tulane University,
2013 (Whiteness, NSA Spying and the Irony of Racial Privilege, Tim
Wises blog, June 19th, Available Online at
http://www.timwise.org/2013/06/whiteness-nsa-spying-and-the-irony-of-racial-privilege/,
Accessed 02-17-2015)Its not that Im not angry.Its not that Im not
disturbed, even horrified by the fact that my government thinks it
appropriate to spy on people, monitoring their phone calls to whom
we speak and when among other tactics, all in the supposed service
of the national interest.That any government thinks it legitimate
to so closely monitor its people is indicative of the inherent
sickness of nation-states, made worse in the modern era, where the
power to intrude into the most private aspects of our lives is more
possible than ever, thanks to the data-gathering techniques made
feasible by technological advance.That said, I also must admit to a
certain nonchalance in the face of the recent revelations about the
National Security Agencys snooping into phone records, and the
dust-up over the leaking of the NSAs program by Ed Snowden. And as
I tried to figure out why I wasnt more animated upon hearing the
revelations and, likewise, why so many others were it struck me.
Those who are especially chapped about the program, about the very
concept of their government keeping tabs on them in effect
profiling them as potential criminals, as terrorists are almost
entirely those for whom shit like this is new: people who have
never before been presumed criminal, up to no good, or worthy of
suspicion.In short, they are mostly white. And male. And
middle-class or above. And most assuredly not Muslim.And although I
too am those things, perhaps because I work mostly on issues of
racism, white privilege and racial inequity and because my mentors
and teachers have principally been people of color, for whom things
like this are distressingly familiar the latest confirmation that
the U.S. is far from the nation we were sold as children is hardly
Earth-shattering. After all, it is only those who have had the
relative luxury of remaining in a child-like, innocent state with
regard to the empire in which they reside who can be driven to such
distraction by something that, compared to what lots of folks deal
with every day, seems pretty weak tea.As Yasuragi, a blogger over
at Daily Kos reminded us last week:(This is) the nation that killed
protesters at Jackson and Kent State UniversitiesThe nation that
executed Fred Hampton in his bed, without so much as a warrant. The
nation that still, still, still holds Leonard Peltier in prison.
The nation that supported Noriega, the Shah, Trujillo, and dozens
of other fascist monsters who did nothing but fuck over their own
people and their neighbors. The nation of Joseph McCarthy and his
current-day descendants. The nation that allows
stop-and-frisk.Before all that: The nation that enforced Jim Crow
laws. Before that, the nation that built itself on slavery and the
slave trade. And before all of that, the nation that nearly
succeeded in the genocide of this continents indigenous peoples.So
why are you so surprised that our government is gathering
yottabytes of data on our phone calls?Lets be clear, its not that
the NSA misdeeds, carried out by the last two administrations, are
no big deal. Theyre completely indefensible, no matter the efforts
of the apologists for empire from the corporate media to President
Obama to Dick Cheney to legitimize them. A free people should not
stand for it.Problem is, we are not a free people and never have
been, and therein lies the rub.
They Say: Obama Apologism1. No link we dont think NSA
surveillance is good; we think its business-as-usual under Obama.
Outrage at NSA distracts from more important challenges to violence
against people of color.
2. No profit motive indict this radically oversimplifies. Wise
13 Timothy J. Wise, anti-racist activist and writer, holds a B.A.
in Political Science from Tulane University, 2013 (Profiting From
Racism? Reflections on White Allyship and the Issue of
Compensation, Tim Wises blog, August 17th, Available Online at
http://www.timwise.org/2013/06/whiteness-nsa-spying-and-the-irony-of-racial-privilege/,
Accessed 02-17-2015)As for the corollary argument that getting paid
while doing antiracism work somehow creates an incentive to
maintain the system, and so those who receive income from such work
are really frauds who dont want to see the system end, perhaps it
would do us well to think about the implications of this argument.
First, the argument would also apply to people of color who do the
work. If compensation for fighting a system of oppression by
definition means that one is vested in the maintenance of the
problem, that logic would have to apply across the board. Is that
what people believe? Thats certainly what right wingers and those
who support racism have long said about the civil rights
establishment: that they want to see racism continue so theyll be
able to keep their jobs and incomes. But if that argument is unfair
and absurd when made about people of color in the work, why is it
suddenly legitimate when applied to whites?And by this logic, one
could also say and would have to, by necessity that doctors profit
from illness and as such want to see people remain unhealthy. And
teachers, of any subject, profit from ignorance, and want to see
people remain uneducated. And that grunt soldiers on the front
lines profit from war, and really, deep down want to see war
continue because getting shot at is so much fun, and anyway, what
would they do if peace broke out? By this logic, the attorneys who
fought Big Tobacco were profiting off cancer no less so than the
attorneys who defended those companies and lied about the
cancer-causing properties of cigarettes.And by this logic,
organizations that do advocacy against poverty and on behalf of
poor people and communities fighting for things like a living wage,
or a more stable social safety net should only hire poor people to
do that work (which might be cool, actually), but then continue to
pay them a sub-poverty wage, in violation of the very things they
are fighting for, because the minute their incomes put the workers
above the poverty line they would be, under this logic, profiting
from the misery of others, and thus reveal themselves to be
automatic hypocrites.
They Say: Case OutweighsWhite Supremacy is a comparatively more
pressing impact. It is responsible for massive global violence and
oppression that risks human extinction. Comissiong 13 Solomon
Comissiong, Professor of African American Studies at the University
of Maryland-College Park, Education Consultant and Activist, holds
a B.A. in Communications and M.S. in College Student Personnel from
the University of Rhode Island, 2013 (The War on White Supremacy,
Black Agenda Report, March 30th, Available Online at
http://griid.org/2013/03/30/the-war-on-white-supremacy/, Accessed
10-16-2014)Despite the ill-intentioned war on terror, there is one
ideological war that would be well served, if aggressively
launched. An ideological war on White Supremacy would do humanity
immense favors, especially the people of color who are terrorized
by it, every day of their lives. White Supremacy is a most
nefarious ideology, created by white people for white people. White
Supremacy rears its hideous head throughout the globe and has been
responsible for well over 100 million deaths (i.e., African
Holocaust, Native American Holocaust). However, White Supremacy not
only kills bodies, it destroys minds. It is the programming to
believe that white people, their various cultures, and their mores
are inherently better than all other people and their respective
cultures period. People are taught, from a very young age, to
worship some of them most devilish white people the world has ever
known, simply because they are white. This is a vastly under-taught
aspect of White Supremacy.White Supremacy is often limited to being
described as some toothless hillbilly or muscle bound and hairless
white male with a Swastika etched in to his hollow, yet hate
filled, head. This is merely one minor aspect of White Supremacy.
White Supremacy, in its essence, is much, much more pervasive than
the physical form we are programmed to sometimes see in human
flesh. White Supremacy is most effective in its ideological form.
Everything else is a destructive manifestation of that
ideology.White Supremacy bores destructive holes into the
impressionable minds of children. White children are subconsciously
programmed to falsely believe that they are the champions of
humanity and that their contributions to the world vastly
overshadow that of people of color. White Supremacy blinds them to
myriad truths detailing the origins of sciences, medicine,
democracy and philosophy came out of African, not Europe. This
assembly-line type of programming sets in motion the next wave of
future white adults mentally equipped carry out the crimes of their
mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. It robs these
white children of humanity without them ever realizing they are
being developed to see the world in a most limiting and destructive
way. Without progressive social intervention many white youth are
bound to develop similar socially destructive ways as their
elders.Children of color, on the other hand, are systematically
programmed to, not only see white people as better than themselves,
but to also extol white people who carried out crimes against
humanity against people of color. Within the white settler colony,
otherwise known as the United States, children of color are
force-fed heaping platefuls of White Supremacy. It is a most
psychologically unhealthy meal. They are taught to call slave
masters their Founding Fathers, men who would have worked them to
death had these children been anywhere within the vicinity of these
devilish human beings. The likes of George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson all held enslaved
Africans against their will. George Washington and Andrew Jackson
were also notorious for their assaults on Indigenous people from
North America. It is very telling of how sadistic American society
is, that it would impose these kinds of men upon the minds of
children, especially children of color. This is exactly what white
supremacist societies do they force children of color to
assimilate. Those aforementioned men, when cited within classrooms
and homes, should be held as examples of what not to do. A humane
society would do this. The US is far from being a humane
society.The US is a society that routinely abuses and destroys the
lives of people of color. African/black and Indigenous/Latino/brown
communities are systematically targeted by way of this white
supremacist and institutionally racist war that is being waged upon
them. Mass incarceration, the Prison Industry Complex, and Police
Brutality are all very much lethal aspects of White Supremacy. In a
society that rewards European genocidal monsters, like Christopher
Columbus, it makes painful sense that the US would be a place that
harvests oppression much like farmers do fruits and vegetables. The
US is riddled with a legacy of strange fruit.Police brutality is a
most deleterious aspect of White Supremacy and Institutional
Racism. This is why police brutality disproportionately impact
people of color. Thanks to the work of the Malcolm X Grassroots
Movement we know that in 2012 a black person was murdered by law
enforcement at least every 36 hours. The white supremacist
corporate media did nothing to expose this story. And why would
they they are who they are because of White Supremacy. A revolution
to end White Supremacy truly will not be televised at least not on
CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS or the like.The so-called
entertainment industry is replete with white supremacist images,
messages, and is controlled by White Supremacy and Institutional
Racism. This is why the only images shown of Hip Hop Culture,
within the corporate medias usurped airwaves, are that of the most
virulently racist and stereotypical images of people of color.
These are the acceptable versions of blackness they feel
comfortable showing. Again, it matters little that Hip Hop is a
culture largely created by African/black youth. The white
supremacist power structure that controls the media, that makes
destructive images popular while suppressing revolutionary ones, is
no different than the white people who stole North America from
Indigenous people. Once in control of a resource they are hell-bent
on suppressing any semblance of resistance or justice. White
Supremacy is a social disease that infects entire societies,
person-by-person, community-by-community and nation-by-nation. It
is a plague that has only gotten stronger and more deceptive
throughout its existence, which spans over several hundred years.
If the US was a sincere and justice oriented nation it would wage
an all out war on the ideology of White Supremacy aimed at
destroying all vestiges of a most deadly and disproportionate white
power structure. The USs ongoing existence as a white settler
nation precludes it from waging a noble war on White Supremacy.
White Supremacy and Institutional Racism largely fuel this countrys
lifeblood. The USs wars are ultimately justified by White Supremacy
and capitalism. Historically these wars have been waged for white
men by white men. However, with the growing number of people of
color within the United States, the white power structure has
adapted to the times. In 2008 they selected their newest weapon
Barack Obama a brown-faced man willing to wage white
supremacist/capitalist/imperialist wars for the white power
structure he ultimately serves. This, unfortunately, has worked
like a lucky charm, thus converting legions of black people (who
previously opposed Euro-Americas imperialist wars) into
cheerleaders for the same reprehensible wars, simply because the
face of Euro-American white supremacy is now a brown one.The
struggle to end White Supremacy is one that must continue and grow
even stronger countless youth of color simply depend on it.
Resistance to white supremacist ideology is paramount. If you
believe in humanity (regardless of the color of your skin) you must
join in this resistance. White Supremacy is a most deadly social
malady. It has given birth to Apartheid, Jim Crow, mass murder,
chattel slavery the list literally goes on and on.People of color
must resist White Supremacy in every way they can. We must organize
ourselves to combat it teaching our youth to recognize it is an
important first step. People of color must collectively resist
White Supremacy, and good intentioned white people must play their
own critical roles within this struggle. It is the obligation of
any good intentioned white person to go in to white communities and
organize an end to the social disease there. After all, White
Supremacy emanates from white communities. It is frequently birthed
from ignorance and hatred, among several social maladies and
complexes.White people, it is your responsibility to put an end to
White Supremacy in your communities just as it is the
responsibility of men to bury Male Supremacy and sexual/physical
abuse of women. White Supremacy is killing masses of people
(physically and mentally). When will we all decide to wage a war on
this pervasive social illness/ideology, and put and end to it?
Humanity depends on our collective commitment to end it before it
metastasizes and puts an end to us all.
Racism is unacceptable. It outweighs other impacts. Memmi 99
Albert Memmi, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of
Paris, 1999 (Racism, Published by the University of Minnesota
Press, ISBN 0816631654, p. 163-165)The struggle against racism will
be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission,
probably never achieved. Yet, for this very reason, it is a
struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without concessions.
One cannot be indulgent toward racism; one must not even let the
monster in the house, especially not in a mask. To give it merely a
foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in other
people, which is to diminish what is human. To accept the racist
universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and
violence. It is to accept the persistence of the dark [end page
163] history in which we still largely live. It is to agree that
the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which man is not
himself an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates,
in sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of the
dominated; that is, it illuminates in a certain sense the entire
human condition. The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is,
and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the
ultimate passage from animality to humanity. In that sense, we
cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge.However, it remains
true that one's moral conduct only emerges from a choice; one has
to want it. It is a choice among other choices, and always
debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say,
broadly speaking, that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the
condition for the establishment of a human order, for which racism
is the very negation. This is almost a redundancy. One cannot found
a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism, because
racism signifies the exclusion of the other, and his or her
subjection to violence and domination. From an ethical point of
view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is "the
truly capital sin."22 It is not an accident that almost all of
humanity's spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for
orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of
theoretical morality and disinterested commandments. Such unanimity
in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such
sentiments. All things considered, we have an interest in [end page
164] banishing injustice, because injustice engenders violence and
death.Of course, this is debatable. There are those who think that
if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is
permissible. But no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest.
One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All unjust society
contains within itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably
smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with
respect. "Recall," says the Bible, "that you were once a stranger
in Egypt," which means both that you ought to respect the stranger
because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming one
again someday. It is an ethical and a practical appeal--indeed, it
is a contract, however implicit it might be. In short, the refusal
of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical
morality. Because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the
political choice, a just society must be a society accepted by all.
If this contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict,
violence, and destruction will be our lot. If it is accepted, we
can hope someday to live in peace. True, it is a wager, but the
stakes are irresistible.
They Say: Permute Do Both1. Perm severs advantage where the 1AC
reacted to NSA surveillance with outrage, the 1NC responded with
indifference. No take-backs: the case carries ethico-political
consequences that are intrinsic to voting Aff. Discourse is
meaningful and policy-relevant, especially in the context of
race.
2. Perm severs starting point where the 1AC prioritized NSA
surveillance, the 1NC prioritized abuses perpetrated against people
of color. Priority must be singular: policy advocacy cant start in
two places at one time.
3. Reject severance stable aff advocacy establishes the
groundwork for neg rejoinder. 2AC take-backs make negs job too
hard, discouraging arg innovation and case-specific critique
research. Err neg because of affs substantial opening move
advantage.
4. Colorblindness DA the 1AC was presented without reference to
the particular effects of surveillance on people of color.
Colorblind policy analysis perpetrates racism and racial inequality
thats Wise.
5. Focus DA
A. Link: the aff distracts focus from police violence against
people of color. Every minute spent worrying about NSA reform is a
minute not spent mobilizing against everyday brutality. YeaYouRite
14 YeaYouRite (@YeaYouRite), the pseudonym of a blogger at Daily
Kos who self-identifies as a New Orleans leftist, 2014 (The NSA Is
An Existential Problem. Police Brutality Is A Real Problem, Daily
Kos, August 22nd, Available Online at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/22/1323791/-The-NSA-is-an-existential-problem-Police-brutality-is-a-real-one,
Accessed 06-18-2015)At this point, no one needs any refreshers on
what's happening in Ferguson, Missouri. But how about what happened
to Eric Garner or John Crawford or Ezell Ford or Kajieme
Powell?These are just police killings in the past month, and just
people we know about (there's probably more), and only people
who've been killed. Many hundreds, if not thousands of others, were
beaten or wounded by police this past month. We have names and
faces that go with this problem. Police brutality is quite
real.When white people log into their email, I doubt most are
seriously worried that the NSA is going to steal their private
information and victimize them in some way. Yet if the Internet is
to believed, Lord Obama is taking all our freedom away through his
super-spy agency and big government. On the flip side, when black
people walk down the street, they are constantly worried about
being hassled or their sons or daughters being brutalized at the
hands of unaccountable local government.We don't have any names or
faces of people who've been murdered by the NSA or had their right
to vote taken away by the NSA or had their house taken away because
of predatory lending practices by the NSA. No one's home has been
destroyed by a freak weather-event caused by the NSA. The NSA
didn't bust unions or cut funding to the NIH. These are all real
problems with real victims.But even when it comes to supposed
victims of NSA spying, the anti-NSA crowd have to reach back all
the way to 2005 just to find some people whose communications were
intercepted, even though there's no proof any of those individuals
were themselves targeted.And another recent bombshell went totally
ignored by the anti-NSAers when we found out that Germany spied on
John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Does anyone else remember when
Merkel was shocked (SHOCKED I TELL YOU!) to learn that America has
a spy agency that does spying-type things on other countries, even
its allies? It's almost as if the anti-NSA ranting is one giant
exercise in white privilege.So, why do I bring this up? Am I an NSA
supporter? Am I a statist authoritarian who thinks you have no
right to privacy? No, as I've stated before, I think we should wind
down much of the bulk surveillance, mostly because it's so
expensive, but also because of the not-unfounded "slippery-slope"
argument.The reason I bring this up is because so many
fire-breathing liberals miss the forest for the trees. Every minute
you spend arguing against the NSA is a minute you spent arguing
against an existential problem, while there are real problems all
around us. Let's prioritize and agree to focus on the real affronts
to civil liberties happening in this country first, then worry
about the slippery slopes.
B. Impact: affs focus on NSA reform enables far worse policies
to continue. The critique outweighs the case. YeaYouRite 14
YeaYouRite (@YeaYouRite), the pseudonym of a blogger at Daily Kos
who self-identifies as a New Orleans leftist, 2014 (The NSA Is An
Existential Problem. Police Brutality Is A Real Problem, Daily Kos,
August 22nd, Available Online at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/22/1323791/-The-NSA-is-an-existential-problem-Police-brutality-is-a-real-one,
Accessed 06-18-2015)Media coverage can dictate policy. Endless
media coverage on the NSA got Obama to change certain NSA policies
and got the Amash Amendment to almost pass (by next year, it
probably will pass).There has been no legislative action on police
militarization or killing of unarmed black men. Why not? Because,
until now, liberals have mostly been screaming about bureaucrats
destroying our way of life with their metadata and bulk
collection.To those who claim this is a false equivalence or both
issues are symptoms of a larger problem of authoritarian
government, think of it like this: if we ended bulk collection on
Americans tomorrow, there would be no discernible improvement to
the conditions in minority communities, or even white communities
for that matter.One problem is pneumonia. The other is a mole which
may or may not become malignant down the road, so keep an eye on
it. But treat that pneumonia right now because it could kill
you.Another example would be to not to install energy-efficient
windows while your house is on fire. I'm not saying "don't worry
about the NSA." Intelligent people are perfectly capable of holding
two thoughts in their heads at once. I'm simply saying we need to
prioritize our problems. If you ask black or Latino or Middle
Eastern people whether they're more concerned about the NSA or, I
don't know, everything else from voting rights to student loans to
immigration to police killing their families, I don't need to tell
you what answer you're likely to get. People of color don't have
the luxury of worrying about big government, because they're too
busy being terrorized by local and state government.
6. Hoodwinking DA the permutation is bit criticism, not
fundamental criticism. This takes race-neutrality for granted as a
context-setting assumption, reinforcing its legitimacy and
diffusing the power of our critique.Calmore 99 John O. Calmore,
Reef C. Ivey II Research Professor of Law at the University of
North Carolina School of Law, 1999 (Random Notes of an Integration
Warrior - Part 2: A Critical Response to the Hegemonic Truth of
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Minnesota Law Review (83 Minn. L.
Rev. 1589), June, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via
Lexis-Nexis)In my personal view, critical race theory engages in
fundamental criticism as opposed to bit criticism. n45 Fundamental
criticism is directed toward challenging the prevailing set of
assumptions that the members of society share to establish the
context for their view of the world and themselves. Much of the
conflict over race and multi-culturalism is a conflict over the
context-setting assumptions that dominant society, institutions,
and culture have adopted. These assumptions are, in turn,
rigorously contested by the oppositional accounts of outsiders,
incorporated troublemakers, and marginalized insiders who argue
that those very assumptions [*1601] must be revised. This is
characterized as "fundamental criticism," because it challenges not
just bits or parts that could be changed or reformed within the
existing contextual frame, but, rather, the context itself. Through
contesting the foundational assumptions, the context itself is
potentially transformed by reformulating those very assumptions.
The same context cannot remain; it cannot be seen as capable of
adaptation. Bit criticism is a tinkering within. As people of color
are "integrated" within the mainstream, we tend to personify this
kind of systemic tinkering - reinforcing a feigned flexibility. Bit
criticism too often accepts feigned flexibility, surface change, as
something more radical or trans-formative than it really is. It
delays the overall transformation that is needed to make things
just. Hoodwinked liberal agents of change actually serve to
reinforce the social, institutional, and cultural context-setting
assumptions by accepting the legitimacy of their explanation and
justification their "truth."Critical race theorists, necessarily,
assert a freedom from the constraints of traditional scholarship.
This is not simply a matter of academic freedom. This is not simply
identity politics. Race-conscious experience and perspective are
the springboard from which we engage in a fundamental criticism of
an oppressive version of truth that tells lies about the colored
past, present, and future. This race-conscious point of view and
fundamentally critical orientation direct our appreciation that
reality is socially constructed and, moreover, it implores us to
engage in counter-hegemonic moves.
They Say: Surveillance Harms POCs1. Not uniquely yes, its
targeted. But thats business-as-usual for people of color who are
already subjected to much more intense violence and brutality by
state and local police. In the context of this everyday reality,
Internet data collection just isnt a big deal thats Wise.
2. Aff doesnt solve at best, the plan is a minor reform. What we
need is to overthrow the whole system of white supremacy. Khalek 13
Rania Khalek, independent journalist reporting on the underclass
and marginalized for Truthout, Extra, The Nation, Al Jazeera
America, and the Electronic Intifada, 2013 (Activists of Color Lead
Charge Against Surveillance, NSA, Truthout, October 30th, Available
Online at
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19695-activists-of-color-at-forefront-of-anti-nsa-movement#,
Accessed 06-18-2015)Former political prisoner and Black Panther
Party leader Dhoruba Bin-Wahad declared that "the United States has
moved into a full garrison police state," which "has been exported
and institutionalized all over the globe." His antidote? "We have
to put together an international movement to check the development
evolution of the modern national security state," which requires
linking globalized labor exploitation to the prison industry to the
war on terror to institutionalized white supremacy rooted in the
"European-settler state." Bin-Wahad was skeptical about the ability
of "legal" remedies to reform the system. "You cannot make the
police state better. You cannot reform white supremacy. We need to
abolish the system as it now stands," Bin-Wahad said.
They Say: No White Privilege Link1. Starting point link focusing
on NSA surveillance distracts attention from more important
struggles against racialized violence. What the aff didnt discuss
is more important than what they did discuss. Our critique impact
is hiding in plain sight. Wise 13 Timothy J. Wise, anti-racist
activist and writer, holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tulane
University, 2013 (Whiteness, NSA Spying and the Irony of Racial
Privilege, Tim Wises blog, June 19th, Available Online at
http://www.timwise.org/2013/06/whiteness-nsa-spying-and-the-irony-of-racial-privilege/,
Accessed 02-17-2015)Maybe it is time to remind ourselves that the
only things worse than what this government and its various law
enforcement agencies do in secret, are the things theyve been doing
blatantly, openly, but only to some for a long time now.This
nations government has killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and
Afghanistan, openly, in front of the world.This nations sanctions
on Iraq in the 90s contributed to the deaths of hundreds of
thousands more, by the admission of Secretary of State Albright.
All of it, out in the open. No secrets.This nation stood by and
even helped propagate massacre after massacre an attempted genocide
even in Guatemala throughout the 1980s; and not only did we not
hide that we were doing it, President Reagan openly praised the
architects of the slaughter while proclaiming they were committed
to social justice.We incarcerate 2.5 million people and have
roughly 7 million people under the control of the justice system in
all openly, and increasingly for non-violent offenses: more than
any nation on Earth.We have the highest child poverty rate in the
developed world, and there is nothing secret about it. Our leaders
dont even care about covering it up. In fact, an awful lot of them
just dont care. At all.These are the crimes of empire. These and a
lot more. And it didnt take Edward Snowden to tell you about them.
Theyve been hiding in plain sight for a long time.
2. Colorblindness link the 1AC was presented without reference
to the disparate racial impact of NSA surveillance. Reject
race-neutral policy analysis because it perpetuates marginalization
and oppression. Wise 10 Timothy J. Wise, anti-racist activist and
writer, holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tulane University,
2010 (With Friends Like These, Who Needs Glenn Beck? Racism and
White Privilege on the Liberal-Left, Tim Wises blog, August 17th,
Available Online at
http://www.timwise.org/2010/08/with-friends-like-these-who-needs-glenn-beck-racism-and-white-privilege-on-the-liberal-left/,
Accessed 02-17-2015)Beyond Individual Bias: How Liberals and the
Left Practice RacismBeyond the personal biases that exist to some
extent within all of us (including those who are progressive),
liberals and those on the left operate within institutional spaces
and even in our political activism in ways that contribute to
systemic racial inequity. This we do through four primary
mechanisms. The first is a well-intended but destructive form of
colorblindness. The second is an equally destructive colormuteness.
These mean, quite literally, a tendency among many on the white
liberal-left to neither see nor give voice to race and racism as
central issues in our communities and the institutions where we
operate, or their connection to and interrelationship with other
issues. Both liberal/left colorblindness and colormuteness
perpetuate the marginalization of people of color and their
concerns, in the larger society and within progressive formations
for social change.
3. Not a link of omission colorblind policy analysis is
complicit with white supremacy. That race wasnt central to the 1AC
was de facto agreement, not a harmless oversight. Jackson 6 Matthew
Jackson, Assistant Professor of English at Brigham Young
University, holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Education,
Culture, and Society from Brigham Young University, 2006 (The
Enthymematic Hegemony of Whiteness: The Enthymeme as Antiracist
Rhetorical Strategy, Journal of Advanced Composition, Volume 26,
Number 3/4, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via JSTOR,
p. 629-631)Toward a Pedagogy of Witnessing Against WhitenessIf, as
I argued in the beginning of this article, I am phenomenologically
positioned as a white person who is privileged by the dynamics of
my racialized society and I remain silent and inactive concerning
matters of whiteness, then I can be found guilty of being complicit
with the perpetuation of white supremacy. In order to resist this
type of complicity, I would argue that I must learn how to identify
whiteness as much as I can-acknowledging that I will have blind
spots-and to speak out and take action against whiteness to work
against it.For my purposes here, I would suggest that we think
about resisting whiteness in terms of developing a rhetorical
stance and a pedagogical positionality that is not relegated to the
confines of a particular course during a given semester but one
that aims at a more fundamental way of being-in-the-racial-world in
an ethical and political way. While I am using the term pedagogy
here in the traditional sense to focus primarily on our classrooms,
I want to invite a broader understanding of our pedagogies to
include our inter-actions that go beyond our academic environs and
into our everyday lives-into the seemingly mundane behaviors and
relations that make up much of our meaningful lives as white folks.
What I mean by this is that we must broaden our critical attention
[end page 629] to whiteness beyond our scholastic pedagogies to be
mindful of the ways that we "teach" and enact whiteness in the ways
that we live and interact with others when we are not in front of a
captive audience of students. For instance, where and with whom do
we choose to live, shop, recreate"; what media do we entertain and
what questions do we ask (or fail to ask) about it?Mills suggests
that a crucial aspect of the perpetuation of racism is simply the
failure to ask certain questions" (73). For my purposes here, this
means those difficult questions contesting the often missing or
silent premises of the doxa of white supremacy. I would add my
voice to the many that have argued that racism needs to become part
of the textpart of our formal and informal discourseas we develop
an exigency in identifying what may be racial grievances,
particularly where whiteness is concerned.The difficult choice for
whites is to speak or to remain silent. To oppose the enthymematic
hegemony of whiteness with its conceptual frameworks designed in
part to thwart and suppress such opposition, one has to think
against the grain. In order to reject the norming inequities of
whiteness, I must "speak out" and actively struggle against white
supremacy. The enthymematic arguments of white supremacy will
continue to prevail unless they are vigilantly, explicitly, and
overtly contested. And this is precisely why, if I choose to remain
silent, I can be understood to consent and be held accountable for
the consequences of complicity. And to those who would argue for
the viability of a detached, neutral, or objective stance on such
issues, Freire asks: "What is my neutrality, if not a comfortable
and perhaps hypocritical way of avoiding any choice or even hiding
my fear of denouncing injustice. To wash my hands in the face of
oppression" (101).What I am suggesting here is a way of being
imbued with a Freirean sensibility of questioning, of
problem-posing, of being critically self-reflexive and curious
about the racialized world in which we live without the hubris of
thinking that we have all of the answers or assuming that our
antiracist work is inherently ethical. I am suggesting that we
examine our whiteness and our investment in white supremacy more
closelythat we ask the hard [end page 630] questions. If we do not
know how to ask them, then we must put in the time and effort
required by antiracist thought and action.In summary, I have argued
that we can redefine the enthymeme for our postmodern condition and
make it rhetorically and pedagogically useful in antiracist and
counter-hegemonic work. I have argued that if I, as a part of "the
people," remain silent, I am in de facto agreement with arguments
for white supremacy as expressed in fragmented, mediated formal and
informal discourse. I have argued that an enthymematic view of
whiteness requires white people to actively and perpetually act and
speak out against dominant hegemonic ideologiesto disagree
explicitly with and make plain their underlying premises and
conclusions, to resist being complicit with the racist consequences
of those arguments. And I have also provided a framework for a
tenuous rhetorical stance and pedagogical positionality for whites
working against multifarious forms of white supremacy. This is not
a stance that positions me as "one who gets it" and is free then to
assume an unproblematic anti racist positionality, but rather one
that heightens my vigilance in my work with all others to
continually improve our ways of working against white
supremacy.23
They Say: Policy Rejoinder BestThe plan is important, but so is
the case. The plan-in-a-vacuum model prevents racial literacy
because it presumes that policies can be evaluated independently
from their racial contexts. The impact is hermeneutical injustice,
or the injustice of lacking the necessary concepts for
understanding social experiences. This is an important real world
impact. Headley 14 Clevis Headley, Associate Professor of
Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the University of Miami, 2014 (On Why Race Matters:
Teaching the Relevance of the Semantics and Ontology of Race,
Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms: Scholars of Color
Reflect, Edited by George Yancy and Maria del Guadalupe Davidson,
Published by Routledge, ISBN 9780415836692, p. 116-117)Racial
Literacy as an Antidote to Hermeneutical InjusticeRacial literacy
also has the potential to enable students to avoid two
incapacities: (a) the inability to correctly and effectively
understand the everyday materiality, or reality, of race, and (b) a
cultivated inability to meaningfully discuss the general semantics
and ontology of race. I explain to students that these incapacities
make them victims of hermeneutical injustice, the injustice of
lacking the necessary concepts for understanding a significant area
of their social experience.6 This hermeneutical deficit prevents
one from gaining access to crucial aspects of self-understanding.
For example, we can imagine the existential and epistemic vertigo
that can paralyze an individual who lives in a world in which race
is persistent, but the individual lacks a competent understanding
of the role of race in shaping the affairs of daily life. The
trauma associated with the realization and awareness that one is
indeed raced can be particularly troubling, especially if one
previously lived in an environment that sheltered one from the
practicality of understanding themselves as raced.Michael Monahan,
in his recent bold philosophical defense of the reality of race
against the racial abolitionists and racial eliminativists, has
enforced the inescapability of race and why attempts to transcend
race are destined to fail. [end page 116] Race, according to
Monahan, is not an annoying, irrelevant, and insidious contingent
property of persons that ought to be rejected. As he writes:One's
racial being is not a fixed and given essenceit is neither a
property that we simply possess, nor is it a strictly contingent
activity that we can choose to abandon. It is . . . more a sort of
location or context, and it is in this way, as inevitably
conditioning one's subjectivity, that racial reality must be
understood. One's Whiteness, Blackness, Asianness . . . is not
something that can be purely in the way the politics of purity
would have us believe, but it is also impossible for one to purely
not be raced, or simply decide by voluntary fiat how one is
raced.7We are all raced in that we are born into a human reality
infused by race. However, our race is not a dangerous fiction. And
as Monahan states in a different context:Race is something that we
do not something that we are, and it is, importantly, something
that we always do in concert with others, whose ways of doing race
inevitably shape the ways in which we are able to do (or not do)
race.8The claim that race is inescapable, as to be expected, is
bitterly resented by many White students, mainly because of the
perception that Whites are raceless and also because of the
unquestioned normativity of whiteness. Indeed, White students often
articulate their protest against race in terms of their not being
responsible for the sins of the past. At these times, I often
resort to the philosophical uses of history for the purpose of
getting students to understand that, although they were not present
at the founding of the United States as a sovereign entity, they
have been born into a society in which White skin color has been
privileged. The point is not that each and every White individual
in the past and in the present has been successful in accumulating
disproportionate amounts of wealth and opportunities, but that
White skin color has historically been used as a marker for access
to wealth and opportunities. Du Bois's "Psychological wages of
whiteness,"9 Cheryl Harris's notion of "whiteness as property,"10
and George Lipsitz's notion of the "possessive investment in
whiteness" are but three examples of this phenomenon.11 It should
be noted that I introduce these ideas not for the sake of
alienating my White students, but to set them on the path of
working through, as well as critically engaging with, their
inherited historical traditions in the hope that they will gain a
critical appreciation of how race has infused these diverse
traditions.
They Say: Attention Policing BadWere not policing attention;
were critiquing privilege. Shifting focus away from police violence
against people of color is a luxury of whiteness. Raushenbush 14
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Executive Religion Editor for The
Huffington Post, former Associate Dean of Religious Life and the
Chapel at Princeton University, former President of the Association
of College and University Religious Affairs, ordained Baptist
minister, holds a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological
Seminary and a B.A. in Religious and International Studies from
Macalester College, 2014 (What White People Can Do About the
Killing of Black Men in America, The Huffington Post, August 13th,
Available Online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/what-white-people-can-do-_b_5675759.html,
Accessed 08-18-2014)'Can we switch for just one day?' my friend
Sean jokingly asked me as we were working out at the gym. 'No, way'
I said firmly. You see, Sean is black and I am white and Sean was
suggesting that we swap races. In his plea, Sean was
none-too-subtly commenting that living life as a white man might be
easier than living as a black man. In my unwillingness to switch, I
acknowledged the privilege -- and safety -- that comes with being a
white person in 21st century America.There are a lot of events
vying to occupy the American mind these days such as Gaza, Iraq,
Ukraine, the immigration crisis, hate crimes against Sikhs, Ebola,
and Robin Williams' death. But in one way, the ability to switch
among these traumas is a white person's 'luxury.' For Sean, and for
many black Americans, the recent spate of black male deaths at the
hands of police in America is forced to occupy the primary
place.There is an epidemic in this country and its victims are
black men. Eric Garner died after being put in a stranglehold in
Staten Island in New York City, Michael Brown, was an 18-year-old
teenager killed in Ferguson, MO, and Ezell Ford was killed while
reportedly lying down in the street in Los Angeles.Black Americans
are rightfully outraged, but it will require all Americans to be
mobilized before the racism that undergirds these killings will end
and the deaths along with it. White Americans like me have to stop
channel surfing all the outrageously bad news from around the world
and focus on the death that is happening in our own cities to our
fellow Americans.I spoke to Rev. Tony Lee who is an
African-American pastor at Community of Hope AME Church in Prince
George's County, Maryland. Rev. Tony and I went to seminary
together and he has been a colleague I trust to speak the truth to
me about race in America. He called the recent deaths 'disturbing
but not surprising.'"The reason people are responding so strongly
is that these are examples of daily antagonisms felt by black
people on the street. This is part of a wider school-to-prison
pipeline and the ghettoization and de-humanization of black bodies.
Social media gets the word out much quicker and people are
responding to dead black men on the streets in LA, Ferguson and NYC
by saying 'wait, that is going on in our streets too.'"But social
media is part of the problem according to Rev. Lee. "The challenge
is for this to become a movement not just a moment. People are
expressing outrage with hashtags but they are not organizing.
Movements need organizing."Given that we are both pastors, I asked
Rev. Lee what the church should do and he offered some very
practical steps, including becoming advocates for police training,
holding police departments legally accountable for deaths, and
connecting with the efforts at a community level. Rev. Lee also
pointed out positive organizations that are doing great 'movement'
work like Black Youth Project that churches should be supporting
and partnering with.Rev. Lee was quick to mention that his church
has positive relations with the local policing because they have
been proactive in creating encounters where police can meet the
community and the community can meet police -- not only in crucial
moments when tensions are high -- but also during normal times when
the two can see the best of each other.According to Lee, the church
also needs to reclaim and proclaim the narrative about the worth of
black lives in the face of the criminalized depiction of black
people on TV, movies and in music. The wider church should be
involved in the celebration of the breadth and richness of the
black experience.I asked Rev. John Vaughn, Vice-President of Auburn
Seminary, what kind of response he would like to see from white
Americans. Rev. Vaughn responded via email that he hoped his white
friends would be vocal and articulate why these killings are not
'yet another isolated incident' and 'explore the premise that
racism is not a thing of the past.' Perhaps most importantly:
"Listen to your friends and colleagues of color about their
experiences and analysis of racism in America."I also pressed Rev.
Lee on what he would like to tell white Americans on how to show
solidarity. I was humbled by his response:We need to lock arms
amidst all of this. If the police feel they are above the law with
any one group, they will feel they are above the law with others.
We need to learn from the civil rights movement. It wasn't just
black folks, it was everybody, because it wasn't a black problem it
was a moral issue. We are remembering 40 years after the Freedom
Summer. That wasn't just black people risking their lives, it was a
community that went down to Mississippi because they knew that when
any group within the nation is marginalized then we can't be the
nation we want to be.The way I translate Rev. Lee's generous
invitation is 'show up.' White people need to get off the computer
and get involved with our voices, feet, votes and resources to help
make sure that this epidemic of black deaths in America ends. This
is not a 'black problem it is an American problem and it will take
all of us working together to solve it.
They Say: Ableism Critique of ColorblindNo link to the ableism
critique context is important. Michael 15 Ali Michael, Director of
K-12 Consulting and Professional Development at the Center for the
Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of
Pennsylvania, Director and Co-founder of the Race Institute for
K-12 Educators, holds a Ph.D. in Teacher Education from the
University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in Anthropology and
Education from Teachers College, 2015 (White Teachers, Whole
Classrooms, Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in
Education, Published by Teachers College Press, ISBN 0807755990, p.
18)Finally, I use the terms "colorblind" and "colormute" throughout
the book. I struggle with this decision because from a critical
disability perspective, these terms are ableist as they conflate an
unwillingness to see or talk about race with disability, rather
than political orientation, ignorance, and lack of skills or
experience. Although I do not want to perpetuate this ableism, I
use this language here because the terms are so prevalent in the
literature on race that I think the use of alternative terms would
be confusing. It is my hope that through the extensive exploration
of these terms in the context of race by prominent theorists such
as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Colorblind Racism) and Mica Pollock
(Colormute) that the words today have a unique meaning, wholly
different from the words "blind" and "mute" on which they are
built.
Reject public call-outs theyre a form of fake radicalism that
shuts down conversations and distracts from material change. A
private discussion about language choices is a better approach.
Ahmad 15 Asam Ahmad, Coordinator of the Youth Program at the
Metropolitan Action Committee for the Prevention of Violence
Against Women & Children, Coordinator of the It Gets Fatter
Projecta body positivity group started by fat queer people of
color, 2015 (A Note on Call-Out Culture, Briarpatch Magazine, March
2nd, Available Online at
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-note-on-call-out-culture,
Accessed 03-05-2015)Call-out culture refers to the tendency among
progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to
publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and
language use by others. People can be called out for statements and
actions that are sexist, racist, ableist, and the list goes on.
Because call-outs tend to be public, they can enable a particularly
armchair and academic brand of activism: one in which the act of
calling out is seen as an end in itself.What makes call-out culture
so toxic is not necessarily its frequency so much as the nature and
performance of the call-out itself. Especially in online venues
like Twitter and Facebook, calling someone out isnt just a private
interaction between two individuals: its a public performance where
people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are.
Indeed, sometimes it can feel like the performance itself is more
significant than the content of the call-out. This is why calling
in has been proposed as an alternative to calling out: calling in
means speaking privately with an individual who has done some
wrong, in order to address the behaviour without making a spectacle
of the address itself.In the context of call-out culture, it is
easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human
being, and that different human beings in different social
locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning
and growing. For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed
immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an
outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass
judgment on someones entire being, as if there is no difference
between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking
down the street (who is of course also someones friend). Call-out
culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex
teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of
individuals rather than to engage with them as people with
complicated stories and histories.It isnt an exaggeration to say
that there is a mild totalitarian undercurrent not just in call-out
culture but also in how progressive communities police and define
the bounds of whos in and whos out. More often than not, this
boundary is constructed through the use of appropriate language and
terminology a language and terminology that are forever shifting
and almost impossible to keep up with. In such a context, it is
impossible not to fail at least some of the time. And what happens
when someone has mastered proficiency in languages of
accountability and then learned to justify all of their actions by
falling back on that language? How do we hold people to account who
are experts at using anti-oppressive language to justify oppressive
behaviour? We dont have a word to describe this kind of perverse
exercise of power, despite the fact that it occurs on an almost
daily basis in progressive circles. Perhaps we could call it
anti-oppressivism.Humour often plays a role in call-out culture and
by drawing attention to this I am not saying that wit has no place
in undermining oppression; humour can be one of the most useful
tools available to oppressed people. But when people are reduced to
their identities of privilege (as white, cisgender, male, etc.) and
mocked as such, it means were treating each other as if our
individual social locations stand in for the total systems those
parts of our identities represent. Individuals become synonymous
with systems of oppression, and this can turn systemic analysis
into moral judgment. Too often, when it comes to being called out,
narrow definitions of a persons identity count for everything.No
matter the wrong we are naming, there are ways to call people out
that do not reduce individuals to agents of social advantage. There
are ways of calling people out that are compassionate and creative,
and that recognize the whole individual instead of viewing them
simply as representations of the systems from which they benefit.
Paying attention to these other contexts will mean refusing to
unleash all of our very real trauma onto the psyches of those we
imagine represent the systems that oppress us. Given the nature of
online social networks, call-outs are not going away any time soon.
But reminding ourselves of what a call-out is meant to accomplish
will go a long way toward creating the kinds of substantial,
material changes in peoples behaviour and in community dynamics
that we envision and need.
This is especially true in the context of ableism. Rejecting
their call out strategy is crucial to constructive activism.Kinzel
11 Lesley Kinzel, blogger and social justice writer, has written
for Newsweek and Marie Claire, was named one of the Feminist Presss
40 Feminists Under 40, 2011 (On our difficult language, and the
calling-out of, Two Whole Cakesa blog about body politics, social
justice activism, and pop-cultural criticism from a feminist
perspective, March 30th, Available Online at
http://blog.twowholecakes.com/2011/03/on-our-difficult-language-and-the-calling-out-of-same/,
Accessed 03-02-2012)We throw thats ableist or thats racist or thats
fatphobic around, I suspect, in the hope that such heavy
judgement-bearing words will shock and embarrass the speaker out of
using the offending language. And sometimes, it can work, at least
in the short term, when we are merely thinking of our own
self-preservation. But beyond that instant, this is not
constructive activism. Using surprise, guilt, or humiliation as
negative reinforcement to change behavior does nothing to instruct
the person in question on why their behavior is causing problems;
they stop simply because they dont want to get in trouble. While
the power shift this approach employs may feel awfully satisfying
to those of us who have labored under some degree of oppression for
much our liveswe get to dictate the terms of engagement, for
oncemerely shifting the power from one hand to another does nothing
to change the destructive use of said power against us.This
practice of shaming people into behaving a certain way or using
certain language does not truly address the underlying inclination;
it does not unpack the thinking that allowed that speaker to feel
entitled to say those things in the first place. Fear can be an
effective motivator, but its not often a productive one, if our
goal is broad and lasting cultural change. It is, after all, fear
that motivates folks of all sizes to diet, that keeps queer folks
in the closet, that makes women afraid to walk alone at night, that
compels people of color to keep their heads down even in the face
of overt discrimination and just get by. It is fear and shame that
locks the systems that marginalize us in place, and as Audre Lorde
has explained, in one of the most brilliant pieces of writing on
social justice ever put to paper, there is little we can do while
still holding on to the masters tools.Those of us who stand outside
the circle of this societys definition of acceptable women; those
of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference those of
us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older
know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to
stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make
common cause with those others identified as outside the structures
in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish.
It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.
For the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house. They
may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will
never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is
only threatening to those women who still define the masters house
as their only source of support.Ideally, people should stop using
certain language because they have developed an understanding of
why that language is oppressive, and how their use of it
contributes to inequality and marginalization, and not because they
are afraid or ashamed of confusing social repercussions they do not
understand. What we need is a commitment to giving people clear
explanationsbe they angry, or impassioned, or bluntof why their
words or behavior are problematic, or upsetting, or damaging. We
need to resist relying on comfortable jargon to call people out,
and to ditch the erroneous presumption that making someone feel
stupid will encourage them to read more about a subject. It doesnt
work. Fear and shame dont help people to understand how the
language we use and the actions we undertake, even in our own small
individual spheres, all conspire to create a social environment
that oppresses us. Fear breeds resentment and, sometimes, hatred.
These are not things we need more of. These are the things that put
us here in the first place.
Affirmative2AC Colorblindness Critique1. Wises critique is Obama
apologism. The alt embraces complacency and inaction. Case
outweighs. Halle 13 John Halle, Professor and Director of Studies
in Music Theory and Practice at Bard College, political activist
and writer, 2013 (Tim Wises game, Left Business Observer, July
12th, Available Online at http://lbo-news.com/2013/07/12/1938/,
Accessed 06-18-2015)As the mask comes off, revealing the Obama
administrations reactionary face, the spin deployed by its much
vaunted media team is beginning to lose its power to confuse and
misdirect. And with this, those whose business model involves
selling Obama as a species of pragmatic liberal are gradually
finding themselves parading their factual bankruptcy and rhetorical
dishonesty for all to see.A recent piece by Bruce Dixon excellently
takes down two of the worst of this variety: MSNBCs Joy-Ann Reid
and Melissa Harris Perry. But it is important to recognize that
they are not the only ones who have made careers for themselves in
the marketing, sales and distribution of the Obama brand. One of
the most successful, and arguably a more effective marketer than
the MSNBC cheerleading squad is the self described anti-racist Tim
Wise.Wise would, of course, vehemently object to being
characterized as an Obama apologist, though, as we shall see, the
ultimate effect of most of his work is to promote a multicultural
form of neoliberalism fully consonant with the administrations
views and which thereby strongly serves its political interests.
His real beat is as an anti-racist educator with several books to
his credit, a full schedule of speaking appearances at university
campuses, public high schools and police departments leading racial
sensitivity workshops as well as increasingly high profile media
appearances including on mainstream national cable outlets.Being
attuned to racial sensitivity is a job Wise takes seriously, as can
be seen in Wises blog entries and numerous tweets. A large fraction
of these involve policing the left for any claim, phrase, indeed,
any word which could be construed as insufficiently informed by the
historical injustices and atrocities visited on POCs (to use Wises
preferred acronym). Wise does not merely make note of these. Acting
as judge and jury, Wise reaches a verdict, imposes a sentence on
those he has found guilty, and the sentence is often death.This is,
unfortunately, not an exaggeration. When those who raised
concerns-soon borne out-of the potential of objectively reactionary
governance from the Obama administration enabled and aggravated by
its deadening effect on mass movements, they were described by Wise
as having become such an encumbrance as to render (them) all but
useless to the liberation movement prospective recipients of a
burning they will richly deserve.The hanging judgeThis is not the
only death threat to be found in Wises oeuvre. Another was
addressed to those who insist they arent racist because they have
black friends. I am going to shoot them, Wise declared. While these
were among the more unvarnished instances of eliminationist
rhetoric, the violent tone of his discourse suggests that Wise
fantasizes his targets being subjected to lynching, or at least
necklacing, as poetic justice for what he takes as their complicity
in crimes against peoples of color.That Wise grants himself the
authority to judge others motives and actions naturally raises the
question of what his qualifications are to do so. These are often
virtually non-existent with Wise simply inventing facts which are
subsequently used to attack, denigrate or belittle.A recent example
found Wise charging Glenn Greenwald with never hav[ing] sa[id] shit
about racial profiling, or surveillance of POC/Muslims. In reality,
Greenwald has a long history of speaking out on this issue-easily
obtained by a simple google search, as Greenwald noted in a 100
character rejoinder. This interaction subsequently revealed a third
salient feature of Wise: neither a retraction or apology from Wise
was extended. Having mounted his high horse, Wise not only exempts
himself from the requirements of factual accuracy but from basic
decency.Wises tone and sloppiness might be rationalized as
understandable overreactions to right wing provocations until one
recognizes that these attacks are not directed towards the right,
actual racists or those who promote objectively racist policies.
Rather Wise reserves much of his ire for those whom Obamas former
Press Secretary famously referred to as the professional left.
Included among these are left critics of Obama such as Greenwald,
Paul Street, and other barbituate leftists who preen as moral
superiors because (theyve) read Bakunin, and Zerzan, and Chomsky,
or because (they) once called a cop a pig to his face in Seattle or
some such thing.The purity of Wises animus towards the left was
impressively displayed in a recent series of tweets provoked by the
NSA disclosures and the Obama administrations efforts to retaliate.
Rather than welcome the revelations, Wise was quick to minimize
their importance, basing his dismissal on a transparently absurd
claim by Wise that NO people of color (are) shocked by Snowdens
revelations. None. POC assume this shit. #whiteprivilege lets u
ignore till now. When those who objected to this gross distortion
responded, they were red baited as white Marxists who fail to
appreciate that white supremacy is the glue that holds the U.S.
class system together, and if you dont KNOW that, yr an idiot.These
same white leftists according to Wise should congratulate
themselves on their irrelevance & wonder why most POC
apparently think they r full of crap According to Wise, Id be
effing amazed if any white leftists enamored of Snowden actually
new shit about movement building and how its done. And Lets b [sic]
clear: Glenn Greenwald was a moderately decent college debater who
thinks this is his moment. It isnt. You nor Snowden r
heroes.Smearing Snowden & OccupyThis final tweet removed the
veil from the game being played by Wise.As those who have followed
the matter are aware, the no heroes designation of Snowden and
Greenwald has been a staple of Obamas apologists, Reid,
Harris-Perry, and others, almost certainly circulating a focus
group tested talking point devised by White House media
specialists. By blandly parrotting this well worn establishment
smear, Wise revealed his membership within this cohort, with the
only difference between Wise and the others inhering in Wises
primary demographic being not the liberal MSNBC left but the
radical left associated with Zmag, Democracy Now and the Nation.
For this constituency, full throated defenses of Obamas policies
have long since failed to pass the laugh test. And so Wise is
always careful to note his disagreement with Obamas policies, his
service to the administration deriving from his reliable attacks on
the white privilege of left critics providing an easy
rationalization for complacency and inaction.Wises political
services were provided not only in the wake of the Snowden
disclosures but, more predictably, in response to the Occupy
movement about which Wise has had very little to say. Wises silence
was predictable given that OWS seeks to reconstruct a unified
movement directed against the plutocratic 1%, unifying rather than
dividing, as Wise would, the 99%. Rather than participate in OWS,
Wise contributed to a collection of essays entitled Occupying
Privilege in which readers will learn about white supremacy, medias
spin control, (mis)education, the criminal IN-justice system,
cultural appropriation, and racisms continued impact on people of
color and white people. No mention of Wall Street banks, housing
foreclosures overwhelmingly impacting POCs, trillion dollar
bailouts, as this would distract from the question of So, um, what
the hell is white privilege anyway, and do I have it? According to
Wise, The short answer is if youre white, yeah, you do. By helping
circulate the OWS/white privilege meme, Wise helped develop a much
brandished rhetorical bludgeon for the defenders of plutocracy
against what was the most successful attack on its foundations in
many years.Not just a potato chipThe above is somewhat misleading
in that it suggests that Wises central priority is the promotion of
the Obama brand. Rather it should be understood that the main
product Wise is selling is himself, specifically his racial
sensitivity franchise which he has indeed successfully marketed and
profited from handsomely, as noted above. There is a connection
between these two objectives: in order to be regarded as legitimate
by mainstream institutions from which his bread and butter income
derives, Wises criticisms need to remain within legitimate
boundaries, which in practice means narrowly directed towards race.
Attacks against white privilege are, for reasons mentioned above,
welcomed by the establishment. In contrast, those directed against
the real power in the hands of what is now an increasingly
multicultural elite are out of bounds. Wise understands these rules
of the game very well, and he plays it expertly.That said, it
should be noted that Wises rise to a position of public prominence
was crucially aided by the alternative media, especially at the
initial stages, most notably by Zmag where Wise first established a
media perch some two decades ago. This brings up the issue of why
was a figure who has so consistently expressed his contempt, or at
best, a distinct lack of enthusiasm for leftists and core aspects
of the left agenda continues to be welcomed by it with open arms.I
wont attempt to address this here, as the subject is perhaps best
left alone, though with the understanding that a similar trajectory
was followed by Melissa Harris Perry who began her rise accessing
authentic left outlets such as Democracy Now!, Laura Flanderss
GritTV, and The Nation. By this point, neither Wise nor Harris
Perry has any need of the ladder which was provided for them, and
so both are free to consolidate their positions by joining in
establishment attacks on the left agenda.While it is probably by
now too late to matter in their cases, it is encouraging that a
first flicker of recognition of the reactionary character of the
Wise/Harris Perry brand of multicultural neoliberalism is beginning
to be visible. As it has in many other quarters, the disclosures of
Greenwald and Snowden provided the impetus for a broader
examination of which side Wise is on. A good indication unearthed
by Doug Henwood was Wises having been engaged by Teach for America
a group which, as anyone with a minimal political awareness
understands, is devoted to the undermining of inner city education
and the whole sale layoffs of African American teachers to be
replaced by TFAs overwhelmingly white, underqualified, non-union
recruits.Wises having Stamp(ed) TFAs Anti-Racist Ghetto Pass
provoked a sharp response from Bruce Dixon at Black Agenda Report
who circulated a petition calling for Wise to cancel his scheduled
engagement with TFA. Unsurprisingly, Wise has rejected Dixons
request. More significantly, Dixon went further, raising doubts
about Wises competence, awareness and, ultimately, underlying
agenda: If this is how anti-racism education worksgiving cover to
organizations and policies that hurt people of color more than
anybody elseit might be time to re-think that whole contraption as
well.From Bruce Dixons lips to all of our ears. It is indeed time
to consider what use is served by the anti-racist education
industry and for one of its main operators, Tim Wise, to find a
new, preferably honest, and less destructive line of work.
2. Questioning our motives is a dangerous distraction. Our
analysis should center on policiesincluding surveillance. This
turns their focus DA.West 15 Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy
and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary, former
Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University,
holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University, 2015
(Facebook Post, April 23rd, Available Online at
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155468598900111&id=297452645110,
Accessed 04-24-2015)The escalating deaths and sufferings in Black
and poor America and the marvelous new militancy in our Ferguson
moment should compel us to focus on what really matters: The life
and death issues of police murders, poverty, mass incarceration,
drones, TPP (unjust trade policies), vast surveillance, decrepit
schools, unemployment, Wall Street power, Israeli occupation of
Palestinians, Dalit resistance in India, and ecological
catastrophe.Character assassination is the refuge of those who hide
and conceal these issues in order to rationalize their own
allegiance to the status quo. I am neither a saint nor prophet, but
I am a Jesus-loving free Black man in a Great Tradition who intends
to be faithful unto death in telling the truth and bearing witness
to justice. I am not beholden to any administration, political
party, TV channel or financial sponsor because loving suffering and
struggling peoples is my point of reference. Deep integrity must
trump cheap popularity. Nothing will stop or distract my work and
witness, even as I learn from others and try not to hurt others.
But to pursue truth and justice is to live dangerously. In the
spirit of John Coltranes LOVE SUPREME, let us focus on what really
matters: the issues, policies, and realities that affect precious
everyday people catching hell and how we can resist the lies and
crimes of the status quo!
3. Permute: do both. This means criticizing NSA surveillance
with an understanding that it is part of the ongoing, ubiquitous
abuse of people of color. The alt doesnt disagree with our policy
conclusions.
4. Yes, our impact is real. Mass surveillance actually and
disproportionately harms people of color. Voting aff is
anti-racist. Hudson 13 Adam Hudson, Reporting Fellow at Truthout,
holds a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University,
2013 (Facebook Post, July 7th, Available Online at
https://www.facebook.com/emmarosenthal/posts/10200579042093460,
Accessed 06-18-2015)My Twitter argument with Tim Wise about Edward
Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and mass surveillance (which caused a
maelstrom on Twitter because of how awful and one-dimensional his
arguments were) revealed a lot about how intellectually bankrupt
anti-racist liberalism is in the United States. Wise and a lot of
so-called anti-racist liberals (including Melissa Harris-Perry) use
their anti-racist analysis to defend Obama from any criticism
rather than seriously critique his policies. They'll belittle the
importance of issues like targeted killing, indefinite detention,
and mass surveillance, blame Republicans, or defend Obama's
egregious policies, even if they went on the record criticizing the
same thing when it happened under Bush. The fact of the matter is
that many of Obama's policies, such as privatizing education, mass
surveillance, indefinite detention, targeted killing and covert
wars, actually (and disproportionately) harm people of color in the
U.S. and around the world. A real "anti-racist" would call this out
rather than attack the people who've exposed such egregious
actions.
5. Reject aff-inclusive alternatives. They discourage meaningful
clash and over-reward agreement. Holistic comparisons based on
thesis-level disagreement better test strategic decision-making and
argument quality.
6. No focus tradeoff link neg oversimplifies.Dyson 15 Michael
Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, holds
a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University, 2015 (All Black
Lives Matter, The New Republic, April 24th, Available Online at
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121640/michael-eric-dyson-responds-cornel-west-all-black-lives-matter,
Accessed 04-24-2015)That epidemic has made some question the
release of my essay as the plague of black death spreads. Its good
to remember theres rarely a convenient or ideal time to engage
messy, complicated issues, although its hardly impossible to
address more than one issue at a time. On the Friday before my
essay on West published, I published an op-ed for the New York
Times on the killing of Walter Scott in South Carolina by North
Charleston police officer Michael Slager, arguing that the lived
experience of race for blacks often feels like terror, whether its
the fast terror of police killings or the slow terror of unmerited
school expulsions. Some have suggested that we should only deal
with police brutality and the killing of black folk. But most of us
are used to grappling at the same time with competing, or even
parallel, interests, and theres little