Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Black Nationalism Affirmative - HSS 2015
Black Nationalism Affirmative - HSS 2015
Black Nationalism Affirmative - HSS 2015
This is strategic because you defend state action but link to none of the DAs. Some
of the DAs with deontological impacts could be threatening BUUUUUUT yall get to
defend circumvention on the aff because it doesnt really matter if the plan has
durable fiat. The perception by Black America of this horridly racist thing would be
enough to spur black nationalist movements. So because circumvention is a thing,
the links to the DAs dont really apply.. except maybe politics... but if youre reading
that against this aff.. hmm
1AC
Plan Texts
The end-result of this problem, of course, is the death of people, communities, and the
nation. Nevertheless, the consequences of this problem has failed to shock the majority into acting in a manner
consistent with human dignity and the urgency necessary to combat this never-ending war against certain
segments of society. The criminal justice system, for the most part, operates as a
contemporary system of slavery. For example, slavery, before it was "officially" done away with,
provided the majority with a system that kept them at the top, while also keeping Blacks at the bottom. After the
Civil War, slavery had lost its footing in the south and the advent of Black Codes and
Jim Crow took its place. However, it would not be too long before human dignity/rights would
prevail again, thus canceling "separate but equal." However, now the majority was left with
another problem, it was one of social control yet again. How could the majority control the masses
contemporarily without appearing as if it is denying the "others" human
dignity/rights? The answer to this question would come by way of the criminal
justice system. The criminal justice system, a supposedly democratic and impartial institution would later
punish and control the "others" in the name of democracy and fairness. In fact, it was during the 1980s when the
"war on drugs" in particular gained superior footing alongside the emergence of conservative criminology, which
really catapulted the administration of justice away from the rehabilitative practices won in the 1960s-70s and
toward a more punitive orientation. This shift within policy and academic criminology led to
the grave disparities and injustices presently recognized in the system today.
Nonetheless, the outcome of this paradox accentuates that although Blacks are citizens of the U.S.,
by way of the criminal justice system they have subjective citizenship (this is reflected in
disenfranchisement studies/stats). Blacks possess a citizenship that must be constantly
validated (e.g., birthers), and at any time their citizenship can lose its benefits if they
should ever come in contact with the criminal justice system, which is highly likely
because of differential law enforcement and the occupation of Black communities by law
enforcement. This partnership between the criminal justice system and racial demotion/subjugation is one
that maintains white supremacy. Today, the criminal justice system serves as a democratic function in
furthering white supremacy at the expense of minorities (mostly Blacks) and nobody speaks upon it because,
What
theoretically, the processes that govern the administration of justice are based on the consensus model.
furthercomplicates this absurdity is the advent or notion of colorblindness color ignorance
-that, in fact, the U.S. presently operates in a reality that excludes race as a factor in any
fashion. The use of colorblindness color ignorance as a reality is, of course, an
anecdotal expression of white conservation it is neither true nor achievable because
colorblindness color ignorance is the quintessential enemy of individualism. More
important, an adaptation to colorblindness color ignorance presents to society the
same issue that colorblindness color ignorance attempts to solve, a society in which
people cannot be themselves. Furthermore, many people wonder if a consciousness will
ever arise out the U.S. regarding the issue of subjective citizenship by way of
criminal sanctions, yet one must also wonder if it serves the best interests of the majority to rid it. Would the
majority be willing to sacrifice and allow others to be themselves and participate in the greater American society
without having to be someone else? Major contemporary implications regarding the criminal justice
system as a tool of racial control would be the post-911 era and the super
heightened surveillance complex that presently invades minority life. Although
many (regardless of race/ethnicity) in the U.S. are now complainants against the strong
surveillance state which now exists, they should be reminded that such a reality is nothing new to
minority communities - yet the majority only sees such mechanisms as strange when they
are the target. Until citizenship is conceptualized as an equal possession for all, the lives of certain sectors
within society will continue to be micro-managed via the criminal justice system, "democratically" of course.
those who have lived under auspices of validation and superiority for so long
However,
may soon need to rethink their position given the onslaught of the surveillance
complex which is slowly but surely becoming racially indiscriminate in its processes.
Now is the time to bind together as one despite these differences. Whether this is possible
or not remains to be seen.
At times during that seven-year period, the report noted, the government
blocked the Justice Department 's Office of the Inspector General from
determining whether the minimization guidelines had been implemented:
The FBI in the past has taken the position, over the OIGs objections, that it
was prohibited from disclosing FISA-acquired information to the OIG
for oversight purposes because the Attorney General had not designated
anyone in the OIG as having access to the information for minimization
reviews of other lawful purposes, and because there were no specific
provisions in the procedures authorizing such access.
2ACCase
Extensions
Extconsciousness key
Black Nationalism is possible consciousness is a vital first
step.
Fleming 08 Kenyatta Fleming, M.A. Candidate in Africana Studies at Clarke
Atlanta University, 2008 (The History of Black Nationalism and Internal Factors that
Prevented the Founding of an Independent Black Nation-State, Clarke Atlanta
University, January, Accessible Online at
http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1548&context=dissertations, accessed on 7-15-15)
For even the most staunch black nationalists, it would seem that the prospect of
founding an independent nation today is less likely than it was thirty years ago, but
that would be a mistake to assume . The success of black nationalists founding a
sovereign nation lies in their ability to correct their internal problems, develop a
wholistic view that incorporates every sector of African-American society, develop a
long range plan that addresses all facets of nationhood, and meets the needs of its
people. It may take several generations to bring the vision of black statehood into
fruition, but one must remember the long fight of African-Americans to free
themselves from enslavement as evidence of what it will take to make black
statehood a reality.
Extblack nationalism key
Black Nationalism is the only way to create freedom for blacks-
integration is forced assimilation that annihilates Black pride
and culture
Valls 10 (Andrew, assoc prof of political science Oregon State University, August
2010, A Liberal Defense of Black Nationalism, The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 104, No. 3, pages 467-481)//CC
Community black nationalists argued that justice demands the support of black
institutions and communities by the broader society. This argument focuses on the
costs to African Americans of integration as it was usually understoodcosts that
were unfair to impose on them. These costs are similar to the costs Kymlicka draws
attention to in his argument for autonomy for minority nations, and the
circumstances and vulnerabilities underlying the costs are also similar. Kymlicka
emphasized that a stable communal and institutional context are necessary for
individual freedom. Without these, individuals cannot make and carry out coherent
life plans. In the context of the civil rights movement and its aftermath, the
implications of this insight for the case of African Americans are clear. Under Jim
Crow, African Americans possessed something very close to a societal culture.
Though they operated under very adverse and unjust conditions, black institutions
schools, businesses, professional organizations, media, hospitals, churches, etc.
provided for a substantial degree of black autonomy. Though born of oppression,
these institutions took on a life of their own and came to be deeply valued by many
African Americans. Although the conditions that gave rise to black institutions were
unjust, undermining or destroying these institutions in the name of integration was
arguably another injustice. At the very least, the fate of these institutions should
have been an explicit topic of discussion during the civil rights movement and its
aftermath. Yet this issue was largely ignored (Peller 1995). After the civil rights
movement, and under the banner of integration, African Americans were essentially
told that racial discrimination and de jure segregation would no longer be tolerated
as a matter of policy, but that further progress toward racial equality would be
achieved through integration. This, in turn, would be achieved through, as Norman
Podhoretz put it, the gradual absorption of deserving Negroes one by one into
white society (quoted in Steinberg 1995, 110). This way of conceiving the route to
racial equality imposes enormous costs on African Americans and represents a great
disruption to the context in which they had formed their life plans. It undermines the
associative and communal ties that many deeply valued. It is also, many black
nationalists argued, incompatible with the self-respect of African Americans to place
themselves in the position of supplicants, hoping to be found deserving by whites.
Black nationalists often focused on the price of integration (Browne 1968, 51; Ture
and Hamilton 1992, 54)a price that they argued was unfair to impose as a
condition of racial equality, and a price that many whites, taking white culture and
institutions as normative, usually failed to see at all. Furthermore, the disruption of
African American communities and individuals had little analog in white
communities: African Americans were being asked to bear costs that white
Americans were not. Black individuals, institutions, and communities were to be
transformed, whereas their white counterparts were asked little, beyond
tolerating the presence of a few blacks. Hence, considerations of both liberty and
equality support black nationalist claims in resisting the costs that integration
imposed on African Americans, and support their alternative vision of maintaining
stable black communities and institutions . Now some might argue that the costs
associated with integrationthe disruption to African American individual life plans
and communitieswere necessary and inevitable, but this is not so, at least not to
the extent threatened by the dominant conception of integration. These costs are a
result of a set of policies that place little or no value on the continued health and
prosperity of black institutions and communities. An alternative set of policies might
offer African Americans a different array of choices: between participating in well-
funded, thriving white-dominated institutions, on the one hand, and participating in
well-funded, thriving black-dominated institutions on the other. But this is not the
set of choices African Americans were offered. Instead, the set of choices that
African Americans faced came to be, essentially, between wellfunded white
institutions on the one hand and black institutions that had been underfunded and
disadvantaged under Jim Crow and continued to be so during and after the civil
rights movement. They faced an intrinsically unfair set of choices that heavily
favored integration into white institutions. This is precisely the kind of coercive
assimilation pressure that national minorities have rightly resisted. There is, then, a
strong parallel between the black nationalist case for support of black institutions
and Kymlickas argument for national minority autonomy: members of a minority
should not have to pay costs that members of the majority do not, as the price of
participating in the communities and institutions of which they are members,
especially when such membership is a result not of their choices but of the
circumstances in which they find themselves.
Extracist policies key
Conclusion What the British and American people gain in security from the surveillance
activities of the NSA and GCHQ is modest in comparison to what they lose in security.
These practices also strip away their moral rights to privacy and freedoms .
The utilitarian appeal put forth by the British and American officials who support these
practices has been shown to be unsustainable in a utilitarian framework largely
because they determine the dictates of utility with a fundamental lack of
understanding of the pleasures and pains involved . [end page 38] Therefore, according to
Mills theory of utility, these surveillance programs are expedient rather than
ethical . Indeed, Mill writes, there have been many institutions throughout history
which have been justified by supposed appeals to utility, only to be condemned
later as blatantly unethical . One example which Mill cites is slavery: at one point in the
history of the United States, slavery was argued to be a necessity of social existence
because the social benefits outweighed the drawbacks .36 It has since been clarified,
however, that the institution is a violation of the utilitarian paradigm that each
ought to receive what he or she justly deserves. Mill writes, The entire history of
social improvement has been a series of transitions by which one custom or
institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence,
has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny .37
Indeed, history will show that the mass surveillance programs of the NSA and GCHQ
followed the dictates of expedience rather than ethics . This fact is evident in a remark by
the head of a British intelligence agency: Theres nothing in it for us in being more open about what we do.38 This
official is clearly more concerned about the efficiency of his organization than the good of British citizens. Indeed,
although the NSA and GCHQ appeal to utilitarianism in attempting to justify their
practices, when these practices ( i.e., their consequences ) are critiqued
according to the utilitarian framework, it becomes clear that these practices are
consistent with efficiency rather than utility . The negative consequences of
these activities clearly outweigh the positive ones: the NSA and GCHQ are
compromising rather than bolstering security in the United States and Britain, and they
are threatening the moral rights promoted in the utilitarian framework
rather than protecting them , so they are detracting from the peaceful
functioning of society rather than facilitating it . Government officials who approve of
the indiscriminate, large-scale spying on American and British citizens by the NSA and
GCHQ claim that, if their practices are limited, the world will go dark and chaos will
ensue. Although the utility behind this argument initially seems compelling , it
does not hold . Those who oversee the intelligence organizations are not fully
informed as to the pleasures [end page 39] and pains involved, and, hence, their ethical
calculus is skewed . In actuality, the negative consequences of these programs
outweigh the positive ones. As a result, these programs can be said to be
expedient rather than ethical , and they ought to be terminated .
They Say: your movement fails
All of their evidence is assumptive of the status quowe agree
that movements fail, but that is only because Black
populations lack solidarity in the absence of racist policies
thats the Price ev
JD: In your book, We Who Are Dark, you try to articulate a non-essentialist conception of black racial identity as the basis for political
we should
solidarity. Is it plausible to try to understand Barack Obamas campaign in these terms? TS: In my book, I claim that
think of black political solidarity as resting not on a common black identity, but on
the common experience of racism and the joint commitment to work together to
combat it. Despite the diversity within the black population in the US, Obama received overwhelming black support, not just in
the general election, where as a Democrat he could expect to get at least 88 per cent of the black vote, but also in the primary
against Clinton, where a number of blacks thought he was unfairly criticised because of his race. I think this black support, especially
in the south, reflects in part the historical commitment of blacks, despite their many internal differences, to stand together in the
fight for racial justice. Obama is seen by many blacks as a symbol of the successes of our collective historical struggle, and he gives
us hope that further progress lies ahead. Moreover, Obama received overwhelming black support despite the fact that his mother is
white and his father is not a descendent of black American slaves. Because he is generally regarded as black (given the one-drop
rule) and strongly identifies as black, he is accepted as an equal member in the black community and can lay claim to the legacy of
the historic African-American fight for justice. The fact that he attended a black church, is married to an African-American woman,
and has mastered elements of traditional black oratory also helped to solidify his black support. JD: Does an Obama victory also
Many whites
herald the end of a particular way of doing politics? Specifically, identity politics or the politics of recognition? TS:
are weary, and have long been weary, of black claims of grievance. Most whites are impatient
with black claims about the continuing significance of racism . They dont think there is a serious
race problem anymore, and they will point to Obamas election as proof that racism does not
affect black life chances, at least not in any serious way. They think that black political solidarity
is no longer necessary and that blacks should stop suggesting that America is a
racist society and reconcile with their fellow white citizens, dropping all talk of
black America. For some whites, this is the significance of Obamas victory-it undermines black claims of grievance and
puts the last nail in the coffin of black identity politics. The fact that Obama ran on a platform of racial
reconciliation, did not specify any concrete proposals for how to combat racial discrimination
in employment and housing or segregation in public schools, and did not make any
overt racial appeals to black voters only seems to buttress the legitimacy of this post-
racial stance. As this stance becomes more entrenched, and I expect it will, blacks will find it even
more difficult to put problems of racial injustice on the public agenda.
They Say: reformism
This was answered by Shelby and Pricereformism recreates
White Supremacy because whites are structurally positioned to
disadvantage black people. Only an independent system can
challenge
Black Nationalism
Posey 13 (Sean Posey - is a photographer, activist, and historian. He is the
Urban Issues Department chair at the Hampton Institute; September 13, 2013; The
Hampton Institute; Will Black Nationalism Reemerge?;
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/blacknationalism.html#.Va01ZvlVhBc)//CC
Shortly before he died, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) said in an interview with C-
Span, "Black Power has not been arrived at; we don't have Black Power yet."[24]
There is no political will to deal with the catastrophe facing black America. The
recent bankruptcy of Detroit, the largest majority black city in the nation, is a potent
reminder of that. Indeed, black political power is fading, ironically in the age of the
first black president. Liberal electoral politics by themselves cannot and will not
solve these problems, As Dr. Brittney Cooper pointed out after the fiftieth
anniversary of the March for Jobs and Freedom: "Black liberal advocacy in this
country for more jobs, less poverty, more education, less prisons, more life chances
and less gun deaths doesn't have a fighting chance without a visible radical
alternative."[25] Where will this all lead? Austerity, continued stagnation, and the
refusal to address urban and suburban poverty, puts black America at a crossroads.
It's unclear what impact the disappointing Obama legacy will have for the future of
black politics. Still, regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican occupies the
White House in 2017, it's doubtful any agenda addressing black communities will be
discussed, much less enacted. In the months and years ahead, it is possible that we
will see the rebirth of a new, almost certainly unique and unexpected version of
Black Nationalism. If so, it will come at the darkest hour, and if it does-look for it in
the whirlwind.
In recent years political theorists and philosophers have devoted a great deal of
attention to issues of nationalism, self-determination, and multiculturalism, and in
the process they have challenged the notion that liberal values and principles
require the integration and assimilation of minorities (see Kymlicka 1995; Laden and
Owen 2007; Levy 2000; Tamir 1993; Taylor 1994). Indeed, Will Kymlicka has
suggested that there is now a consensus among liberal theorists in support of
liberal [multi]culturalismthe idea that certain group rights are compatible with
liberal principles. The issue, he suggests, is no longer whether this is the case but
rather what specific policies and institutional arrangements are appropriate for
particular kinds of minorities (Kymlicka 2001, chap. 2). Despite this shift in liberal
theory toward a more friendly view of group rights, public and legal discourse in the
United States with regard to African Americans continues to emphasize integration
and colorblindness as the route to racial equality (Peller 1995; Cochran 1999). In the
case of other minorities, liberal theorists have shown that integration and group-
blindness impose considerable and unfair costs on minority group members, and
hence that justice requires groupconsciousness rather than group-blindness,
group autonomy rather than integration and assimilation. Yet this position
has not been prominent in liberal discourse on race. Liberal multiculturalists usually
focus on minorities that are defined foremost by cultural differences, and this has
led to an estrangement in work on minority rights, where African Americans are
treated in one literature and cultural minorities are treated in another. As one
observer put it, when liberal political theorists tackle matters of group difference,
they often evade race in general and the case of African Americans in particular. On
the subject of multicultural challenges to liberal neutrality, for instance, political
theorists tend to focus on minority groups with a high level of cultural cohesion
(Fogg-Davis 2003, 557). Because African Americans are not necessarily a cultural
minority, liberal theorists interested in minority rights have had too little to say
about them (but see Cochran 1999; Gutmann 1996; Ingram 2000; Spinner 1994).
2ACOff Case
2ACDA
2AC FrontlineStem
1. No linkplan gets circumvented, but still resolves the
impacts of the 1ACthats Schulberg and Reilly
2. No link: We are supporting the creation of new
institutions, not defending actions of existing state
institutions
3. Traditional risk assessment strips us of our relations to
others and our dignitythis obscures how structural
violence contributes to large-scale destruction
OBrien 2kPhD, environmental scientist and activist (Mary, 2000, MIT Press,
Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative to Risk Assessment,
Gigapedia, p. xvii-xviii,)
This book is based on the understanding that it is not acceptable for people to tell you that
the harms to which they will subject you and the world are safe or insignificant. You deserve
to know good alternatives to those harms, and you deserve to help decide which alternative
will be chosen. Underlying this book, however, is a less explicitly stated personal belief,
namely that we humans will never dredge up enough will to alter our habitual, destructive
ways of behaving toward each other and the world unless we simultaneously employ
information and emotion and a sense of relationship to othersother species, other cultures,
and other generations. Using information while divorced from emotion and using information
while insulated from connection to a wide net of others are how destruction of the Earth is
being accomplished. Risk assessment of narrow options is a classic example of using certain
bits of information in such a way as to exclude feeling and to artificially sever connections of
parts to the whole. Risk assessment rips you (and others) out of connection to the rest of the
world and reduces you (if you are even considered at all in the risk assessment) to a
number. You are then consigned to damage or death or risk, depending on how your
number is shuffled around in models, assumptions, and formulas and during risk
management. Assessment of the pros and cons of a range of reasonable alternatives allows the connections to
remain. The cultural emotions connected to a given alternative, for instance, can be a pro or a con, and may be
both, depending on which sector of the community you inhabit. An advantage or a disadvantage of a given
alternative can be social, religious, economic, scientific, or political. Risk assessment is one of the major
methods by which parts (corporations such as Monsanto or Hyundai, private landowners,
industrial nations) can act on their wants at the expense of wholes (e.g., whole communities
and countries, or the seventh generation from now) without appearing to be doing so. Risk
assessment lets them appear simply scientific or rational as they numerically estimate
whether or how many deaths or what birth defects will be caused, and ignore other regions
of human experience that also matter to people. Always, some groups of humans will be
trying to exercise their power at the expense of the whole. Decisions arrived at by risk
assessment can be homicidal, biocidal, and suicidal, but they are made every day. Risk
assessment is a premier process by which illegitimate exercise of power is justified. The
stakes of installing alternatives to risk assessment, therefore, are the whole Earth (just as
are the stakes of fashioning democratic control over corporations, or of requiring changes in
behavior of those who have wreaked irreparable damage). Installing alternatives assessment
is one step in the struggle to use information, feeling, and a sense of relationship to others
to stop socioenvironmental madness.
4. Victim Blaming DA: Their link continues the problematic
accusation that black people are responsible for white
Americas actionsthat proves inherency for the case
victim blaming is a reason to vote aff because it solidifies
the need for blacks to govern themselves rather than be
blamed for policy failures of the USFG
Bankeys positioning of himself at the borderland while excluding (multiply situated) black people in debate from that same space
Black people have never not had to be in close
makes little sense to those familiar with the history of race in America.
relation to whiteness. This is Dubois theory of double consciousness (which, though especially emblematic of black experience,
Black people have always existed in
is a way of understanding the world that can be learned by non-blacks).
an in-between space of blackness and whiteness with anti-blackness serving as the
context for this relationship. Black folks in America are always already in an interracial relationship
with whiteness; this is especially true in the context of debate. The tone of Bankeys criticism assumes black people
debate practices demonstrate the direct
exclude white people from their space, but MPJ and other
manner in which white people exclude black people from interracial dialogue in the
debate space. An even more recent example of how structural racism functions is the exclusion of Elijah Smith, the reigning
NDT champ, from the Kentucky Round Robin, and the attempt to change the rules pertaining to transfer students. We are
black people must be constantly
disappointed by this addition to the consistent complaint made by whites that
accessible to whites even while white people disavow the structure of policed
segregation in supposedly common spaces. In fact, it seems quite likely that this thesis will
inspire debate arguments that produce exclusions of black students rather than an
inclusive space of participation. We find it highly unlikely that it will produce an authentic communication or
disalienation. There are countless examples of the manner in which black people attempt
to meet the communicative and bodily expectations of dominant culture and
dominant debate. Code-switching is part and parcel of our interracial romance with
debate, an example of our commitment to compromise. Black people often code-
switch into white-people speak when dealing with white people while using black
language and tonal intonations (regionally specific) when in majority black spaces
(in fact, it seems that it is when we speak authentically in the presence of whites
share ourselves with whitesthat we are charged with the crime of being
intentionally unintelligible). Within debates, (vis--vis framework for example) there is a denial or a
disavowal of even the possibility of an engagement across rhetorical difference , which is the move Bankey makes.
He refuses to code switch in the thesis by not attempting to understand the kinship networks in debate for black people or to
engage in rhetorical practices to demonstrate a commitment to engaging difference at the level of method and performance.[9]
How often do we encounter white people who can code-switch (and no we dont mean the latest hip hop slang) into the
The black is always already at the
communicative and socio-political practices of black culture?
borderland. But double consciousness is something that for most peopleespecially non-blacksmust be learned and
practiced. We believe that these kinds of practices and attempts on the part of black people to meet whites more than half-way are
evident for those who choose to see. But also we must point out that in communication studies code-
switching, the vernacular, counter-publics, and many other concepts evoke the
double-sidedness of rhetorical practice in ways that complicate the very notion that
there could ever be a pure communication . We therefore invite Bankey to read the Communication Studies
section of the library as well as the Black Studies section. Our relationship to debate can easily be
described as an interracial love affair. The debate community is majority white and
whiteness characterizes the performative and stylistic norms of competitive policy
debate. We need not only refer to Reid-Brinkleys thesis for this kind of analysis. Shelton K. Hill and Pamela Stepps work on
black participation in debate and white stylistic practice has been overlooked for far too long. We think that our relationship
to debate is a romantic/desirous coupling, a flirtation across racial lines that has
often left many of us bruised and bloody at the hands of whiteness and white
people. We are in an abusive relationship, one that denigrates and maligns our
black thinking while engaged in (neo-)liberal efforts to capture our black bodies .
Nonetheless, we work to create an erotics of debate that can affirm our selves in the
face of such denigration. The borderland space that black debaters, judges,
coaches, and directors occupy offers a unique perspective from which to view both
the beauty and the ugliness of our community and its practices. Such a perspective
provides new insights and new avenues of engagement toward changing the
conditions necessary for producing new knowledgethe kind that does not block
the development of black thought based on misdirected accusations of anti-
intellectualism.
Deliberation across divided identities is hard . On a widely shared account, deliberation is what
Bessette calls the mild voice of reason2 exactly what is lacking in tough identity issues, at best an aspiration for
Deliberative
how opponents might one day learn to interact once their real differences are dissolved.
democrats influenced by Rawls might follow him in excluding the background culture from the
purview of public reason. But, as Benhabib points out, issues generated by the background
culture and its comprehensive doctrines can be especially pressing.3 Gutmann and Thompson
believe that deliberation can be extended to deep moral disagreements, but the precondition is
commitment on all sides to reciprocity, the capacity to seek fair terms of cooperation for its own
sake, such that arguments are made in terms the other side(s) can accept .4 Again,
mutual acceptance of reasonableness is exactly what is lacking in divided
societies. Gutmann and Thompson require adoption by all sides of a particular moral psychologyopenness to
persuasion by critical argumentthat is in fact not widely held, and explicitly rejected by (say) fundamentalist
Christians.5 Moreover,
they apply the reasonableness standard to the content of
contributions to debate, not just the motivation of speakers. Thus they are vulnerable to criticism from
difference democrats such as Young, who accepts reasonableness as a norm for motivation but not for the content
because that involves suppression of alternative communicative
of statements,
forms.6 More radical difference democrats and agonists see deliberation in terms of
the erasure of identity, a form of communication stuck in neutral that does not
recognize difference, partial in practice to well-educated white males, especially when it prizes
the unitary public reason advanced by Rawls and his followers. Those asserting identities for their part may feel
insulted by the very idea that questions going to their core be deliberated. What they want is instead cathartic
I argue for a discursive
communication that unifies the group and demands respect from others.7
democracy that can handle deep differences. The key involves partially decoupling the
deliberative and decisional moments of democracy, locating deliberation in engagement of
discourses in the public sphere at a distance from the sovereign state. I approach this
argument by examining two very different responses to divided societies. The first is agonistic, seeking robust
exchange across identities. The recent history of agonism owes much to Hannah Arendt, William Connolly, and
Bonnie Honig,8 but I focus on the work of Chantal Mouffe, because she explicitly advocates agonism against
deliberative democracy in plural societies. The second response is consociational, seeking suppression of
interchange through agreement among well-meaning elites. I do not treat these two as straw man extremes
between which a moderate path should be sought. Indeed, I argue that a defensible discursive democracy for
divided societies can develop elements of both.
Resolved
Resolved doesnt require certainty
Websters 9 Merriam Webster 2009
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolved)
# Main Entry: 1resolve # Pronunciation: \ri-zlv, -zolv also -zv or -zov\ # Function: verb # Inflected Form(s):
resolved; resolving 1 : to become separated into component parts; also : to become reduced by dissolving or
analysis 2 : to form a resolution : determine 3 : consult, deliberate
2ACNationalism PIC
2AC Frontline
1. Permute: do boththe aff reclaimed notions of nationalism to create
a new inclusive communal culturethats Price
From this theoretical standpoint, the possibility exists for active intervention by the marginal subject, historically
defined as the other" against which the universal subject is constituted, in the very structure that creates the
appearance of the universal. The power of the "universal" metanarrative operates through a matrix of constraints
by which "the subjection of localized, fragmented knowledge is a necessary condition for appearance of the
discourses of authority."58 However,if discourse is never actually totalized for the subject that is
discursive resistance remains possible. Thus, an identity can be
defined by an absence,
forged within the very discourse through which one's subjectivity has been denied
articulation.59 This potential for resistance also suggests that a measure of commonality may be found
between a feminist and a postmodern conception of subjecthood. (Elements Of the postmodern critique address the
ethical issue that feminism raises: the need to retain agency. They thus posit a subject that is capable Of resistance
and political action. This conception Of the subject is articulated not by retaining a Cartesian concept of agency but
by emphasizing that subjects who are subjected to multiple discursive influences create
modes Of resistance to those discourses out of the elements of the very discourses
that shape them. While the dialectical conception of the subject rests on a definition of agency that is
imported from the Cartesian subject as a given, the postmoderns attempt to formulate concepts of resistance and
creativity apart from Carte- Sian concepts. The capacity for resistance can be linked to a political agenda that
focuses on the formation of identities denied by the universal discourse of subjecthood. The destabilization of the
universal subject position through practices of resistance opens up a realm of cultural space for the establishment
attempts to problematize the norm become a
of identities that have been silenced. Thus,
precondition for articulating difference .61 Moreover, by operating within the dominant
discourse, subjects that have been historically denied participation can appropriate
and redeploy the terms of the dominant discourse. It is this cultural phenomenon of
discursive appropriationa parasitic redeployment Of the excess of dis- cursive meaningthat amounts to the
cultural practice of postmodern theory That (postmodernism) has achieved such diverse cultural currency as a term
terms are
thereby demonstrates what has been seen as one of postmodernism's most provocative lessons; that
by no means guaranteed their meanings, and that these meanings Can be
appropriated and redefined for different purposes , different contexts, and, more
important, different causes. In fact, this politics Of appropriation, for so long
exclusively the discursive preserve Of the colonizer, has more recently been crucial to
groups on the social margin, Who have preferred, under certain circumstances, to struggle for recognition
and legitimacy on es- tablished "metropolitan" political ground By operating within and utilizing the terms Of the
dominant dis- course in subversive fashion, new identities are shapedsubjectivities that emerge in an oppositional
relationship to the universal.
They Say: That Justifies Slurs
Under their interpretation, it wouldnt be okay to say the plan
because its racist. As long as there is a justification for the
effects of the plan, then it is justified. Same with other
discourse.
I believe the debate culture should establish well-developed red lines that place
restrictions on the verbal behavior in the debate classroom. To be sure, any ethical attempt to
refute, critique and deconstruct an opponents argument on the resolution should be encouraged. Yet attacks on
the selfconcepts and self- esteem of others should not be tolerated and are inconsistent with the
intent of academic debate. The existence of such red lines should not discourage vigorous debate, for there are
many available arguments that deal with substantive issues on any resolution. Our task as a community of debate
educators is to develop judging paradigms that integrate a commitment to the values of diversity and impartiality.
The judge should represent and enforce communal and personal values that exist to promote
the health of argument and the public sphere. At the same time, judges can remain
impartial adjudicators of substantive arguments. While some will cluck about political
correctness and censorship, the debate round is not a speakers corner or a talk show, it is a classroom. If it is a
classroom, then some preconditions must exist if students are to learn. Among these preconditions should be a
guarantee that a persons race, gender, ethnicity, etc., will not be the target of abuse or harassment.
1ARExt Stychin
Discourse shapes reality through social structures
Goueffic 96 -[Louise Goueffic. Author and speaker on discourse, BA graduate studies in
France, Breaking the patriarchal code 1996, http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Patriarchal-
Code-Linguistic-Sexual/dp/1879198177] N.H
To address this question, one can consider, for example, why one persons terrorist
is another persons freedom fighter; the contexts in which one would use the terms
liberal, collateral damage or axis of evil; what people mean by woman by
colour', 'hooded youths', 'male nurse', or 'spinster'; and how much information is
conveyed (or not) by the term 'domestic violence'. In addition, violent, shocking, or
high impact events, for example, war, provide vivid and highly charged contexts
where language is paramount. During the Second World War, the Japanese were
constructed as the dehumanized enemy, described as 'specimens' to be 'bagged'. In
Rwanda, during the 1994 genocide, the Tutsis were described as 'cockroaches', the
target of 'bush-clearing' by the Hutus, who were ordered to 'remove tall weeds'
(adults) and 'shoots' (children). The killing of people in wars has typically been re-
conceptualized as 'action', 'severe measures', 'evacuating', or 'rendering harmless'.
In many cases, 'war' has become 'conflict', 'killing fields' have become 'free fire
zones', and 'killing civilians' has become 'collateral damage' (Bourke, 1999,2001).
These re-conceptualizations help constitute particular versions of events, such as a
bombing, and particular social and power relations, such as those between 'us' and
the 'other' (whoever the doer(s) and the receiver(s) of an action may be). Similarly,
in terms of gender, the use of phrasing such as 'male nurse' or 'female doctor' or
'lady doctor' effectively constitutes particular versions of the social world, where it
is necessary or important for speakers to index gender in that way. The view of
language not as a fixed or closed system, but as dynamic, complex and subject to
change, assumes that every time we use language, we make meaningful selections
from the linguistic resources available to us (Antaki, 1994). This is hardly a
straightforward process, not least because these selections are embedded in a
local/immediate, as well as broader/institutional and socio-cultural context (Antaki,
1988,1994; Fairclough, 1992). Consider, for example, a public debate on the topic of
abortion. The language that may be used to write or talk about this topic must be
viewed in the context of the particular social occasion (e.g. at school, in parliament,
in the media); of the medium (e.g. spoken, written); of who argues (e.g. a doctor, a
leg- islator, a campaigner); for what purpose(s) (e.g. to convince, to change a
situation) and from what perspective. The range of perspectives on abortion may
vary according to the participants' age, sex, education, race, class, or religion, but
also their expecta- tions, experiences, knowledge, expertise, and involvement.
Different perspectives will also reflect and promote different assumptions (or
discourses, as we will see in Chapter 3) around gender, for example, about
women's position in a society, their relative power in terms of decision-making, the
role of parenting, a society's views about sex, and so on. It then becomes obvious
that in order to understand the role that language plays in establishing and
maintaining any social relations, including gender relations, we have to look outside
of language itself, at the wider social processes in which language plays a part
(Graddol and Swann, 1989).
1ARExt Schram
Their isolated instance of laptop sticker activism does
nothing but shut down interrogations of the structures that
informed the oppression
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.
Conquergood Module
**note dont read this with the other Schram and Stychin cards, it would critique
their focus on artificial meanings of words and would be a double turn**
1. Focus on written knowledge is an exercise of Western imperialism
that reproduces White Supremacy
Conquergood 2 (Dwight Conquergood was an associate professor of performance
studies at Northwestern University and an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and
Communication at the State University of New York , Masters in Communication
from the University of Utah, Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern
University Performance Studies Interventions and Radical Research
http://www.csun.edu/~vcspc00g/301/psinterventions-tdr.pdf //ekr)
Since the enlightenment project of modernity, the first way of knowing has the Of it
has qualified and repressed other Ways of knowing that are rooted in embodied
experience, oratory; and local contingencies. Between objective knowledge that is
consolidated in texts, and local know-how that circulates on the ground within a
community of memory and practice, there is no contest. It is the choice between
and "Old Wives' tales" (note the gendered as feminine). Michel Foucault coined the
term "subjugated knowledge's" to include all the local, regional, vernacular, naive
knowledges at the bottom of the hierarchy the low other of science (1980:81-84).
These are the nonserious ways of knowing that dominant culture neglects,
excludes, represses, or simply fails to recognize. Subjugated knowledges
have been erased because they are illegible; they exist, by and large, as active
bodies of meaning, outside of books, eluding the forces of inscription that would
make them legible, and thereby legitimate (see de Certeau 1998; Scott 1998). What
gets squeezed out by this epistemic violence is the whole realm of complex, finely
nuanced meaning that is embodied, tacit, intoned, gestured, improvised,
coexperienced, covertand all the more deeply meaningful because of its refusal to
be spelled out. Dominant epistemologies that link knowing with seeing are not
attuned to meanings that are masked, camouflaged, indirect, embedded, or hidden
in context. The visual/verbal bias Of Western regimes of knowledge blinds bewilders
researchers to meanings that are expressed forcefully through intonation, silence,
body tension, arched eyebrows, blank stares, and other protective arts of disguise
and secrecywhat de Certeau called "the elocutionary experience of fugitive
communication" (2000: 133; see Conquergood 2000). Subordinate people do not
have the privilege of explicitness, the luxury of transparency, the
presumptive norm Of clear and direct communication, free and open
debate on a level playing field that the privileged classes take for granted.
In his critique of the limitations of literacy, Kenneth Burke argued that print based
scholarship has built-in blind spots and a conditioned deafness: The [written] record
is usually but a fragment of the expression (as the written word omits all telltale
record of gesture and tonality; and not only may our literacy keep us from missing
the omissions, it may blunt us to the appreciation of tone and gesture, so that even
when we witness the full expression, we note only those aspects of it that can be
written down). ([1950] 1969:185) In even stronger terms, Raymond Williams
challenged the class-based arrogance of scriptocentrism, pointing to the error
and delusion of highly educated people who are so driven in on their reading
that they fail to notice that there are other forms of skilled, intelligent, creative
activity such as theatre and active politics. This error resembles that of the
narrow reformer who supposes that farm labourers and village craftsmen were once
uneducated, merely because they could not read. He argued that the contempt
for performance and practical activity, which is always latent in the highly literate,
is a mark of the observers limits, not those of the activities themselves ([1958]
1983:309). Williams critiqued scholars for limiting their sources to written materials;
I agree with Burke that scholarship is so skewed toward texts that even when
researchers do attend to extralinguistic human action and embodied events they
construe them as texts to be read. According to de Certeau, this scriptocentrism
is a hallmark of Western imperialism . Posted above the gates of modernity, this
sign: Here only what is written is understood. Such is the internal law of that
which has constituted itself as Western [and white] (1984:161).
Their focus on textual meaning of words is a form of Western academic
privilege that erases other forms of understanding
Conquergood 91 (Dwight Conquergood was an associate professor of performance
studies at Northwestern University and an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and
Communication at the State University of New York , Masters in Communication
from the University of Utah, Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern
University Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics,
http://www.csun.edu/~vcspc00g/301/RethinkingEthnog.pdf, //ekr)
The performance paradigm can help ethnographers recognize "the limitations Of
literacy" and critique the textualist bias of western civilization (Jackson, 1989).
Geertz (1973, p. 452) enunciates the textual paradigm in his famous phrase: "The
culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the
anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders Of those to whom they properly
belong." In other words, the ethnographer is construed as a displaced, somewhat
awkward reader Of texts. Jackson vigorously critiques this ethnographic textualism
(1989, p. 184): By fetishizing texts, it dividesas the advent of literacy itself did
readers from authors, and separates both from the world. The idea that "there is
nothing outside the text" may be congenial to someone whose life is confined to
academe, but it sounds absurd in the village worlds where anthropologists carry out
their work, where people negotiate meaning in face-to-face interactions , not as
individual minds but as embodied social beings. In other words, textualism tends to
ignore the flux Of human relationships, the ways meanings are created
intersubjectively as well as ' 'intertextually embodied in gestures as well as in
words, and connected to political, moral, and aesthetic interests. Though possessed
Of a long historical commitment to the spoken word rhetoric and communication
suffer from this same valorizing of inscribed texts. A recent essay in the Quarterly
Journal Of Speech (Brummett, 1990, p. 71; emphasis mine) provides a stunning
example of the field's extreme textualism: "Such a (disciplinary I grounding can only
come about in the moment of methodological commitment when someone sits
down with a transcript Of discourse and attempts to explain it to students Or
colleaguesin that moment we become scholars of communication." In the quest
for intellectual respectability through disciplinary rigor, some communication and
rhetorical scholars have narrowed their focus to language, particularly those
aspects of language that can be spatialized on the page, or measured and counted,
to the exclusion of embodied meanings that are accessible through
ethnographic methods of "radical empiricism" (Jackson, 1989). linguistic and
textualist bias Of speech communication has blinded many scholars to the
preeminently rhetorical nature of cultural performanceritual, ceremony,
celebration, festival, parade, pageant, feast, and so forth. It is not just in non-
western cultures, but in many so-called "modern" communities that cultural
performance functions as a special form of public address, rhetorical agency:
Cultural performances are not simple reflectors or expressions of culture or even of
changing culture but may themselves be active agencies of change, representing
the eye by which culture sees itself and the drawing board on which creative actors
sketch out what they Performative reflexivity is a believe to be more apt or
interesting "designs for living. condition in which a sociocultural group, or its most
perceptive members acting representa- tively, turn, bend Or reflect back upon
themselves, upon the relations, actions, symbols, meanings, codes, roles, statuses,
social Structures, ethical and legal rules, and other sociocultural components which
make up their public "selves." (Turner, 1986, p. 24)
2ACFiat PIC
2AC Frontline
1. No linkTheir args assume we are reformism and that the state
creates progressive laws
Black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched
centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery- skewed life chances, limited access to health and education,
premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment. I, too, am the afterlife of slavery. (2007, 6)
Wilderson III, in his Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structures of U.S. Antagonisms (2009),
Frank B.
powerfully frames slavery's afterlife as resulting in a form of social death for black
subjects and, more than this, he argues that black subjectivity is constituted as
ontological death. For Wilderson, " the Black [is) a subject who is always already positioned as Slave"
(2009, 7) in the United States, while everyone else exists as "Masters" (2009, 10 ).8
Studies of slavery's afterlife and the concept of social death have inarguably made
essential contributions to understandings of race.9 The strengths of such analyses lie in the salient ways they
have theorized broad social systems of racism and how they have demanded the foregrounding of suffering, pain,
violence, and death. Much of this scholarship can be put or is productively in conversation with Foucault's account
ofbiopolitics that, as I noted earlier, regulates at the level of the population. Where sovereignty 'took life and let
live,' in the contemporary sphere biopolitics works to 'make live.' However, certain bodies are not in the zone of
protected life, are indeed expendable and subjected to strategic deployments of sovereign power that 'make die.' It
is here that Foucault positions the function of racism. It is, he argues, "primarily a way of introducing a break into
the domain of life that is under power's control: the break between what must live and what must die" (2003b,
254). Thus, certain bodies/subjects are killed - or subjected to sovereign power and social death- so that others
might prosper. 10
Hartman
In Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (1997),
examines the 'must die' imperative of social death understood broadly as a lack of
social being-but she also illuminates how, within such a context, slave "performance
and other modes of practice . .. exploit[ed), and exceed[ed] the constraints of
domination" (1997, 54, my emphasis). Hartman analyzes quotidian enactments of slave
agency to highlight practices of "(counter)investment" (1997, 73) that produced "a
reconstructed self that negates the dominant terms of identity and existence" (1997,
72). 11 She thus argues that a form of agency is possible and that , while "the conditions of
domination and subjugation determine what kinds of actions are possible or effective"
(1997, 54), agency is not reducible to these conditions (1997, 55).'2 The questions that I
ask in this analysis travel in this direction, and aim to build on this aspect of Hartman's work. In doing so I make two
despite undeniable historical continuities and structural d)'namics, race is
key claims: first, that
also marked by discontinuity; and second, race is constantly reworked and transformed within
relations of power by subjects . 13
Brown, in his "Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery" (2009), has
14. Historian Vincent
examined a number of scholars who seemingly take up such a viewpoint, in that they broadly
position blackness as a totalizing state that, historically and in the present, renders
slavery synonymous with social death and blackness as always already synonymous
with slavery. Brown focuses specifically on the academic uptake and what he sees
as the problematic distillation and extension of Orlando Patterson's (1981) concept
of"slavery as social death;' where social death indicates a lack of social being. As a scholar of slavery,
Brown is most concerned with examining the limitations of this idea in relation to the enslaved, but he is also
interested in how the idea is used in relation to the present . For Brown, Patterson's
"slavery as social death," and contemporary usages of this concept to
account for the present, advance a troubling transhistorical
characterization of slavery He argues in line with I-Ierman Bennett (quoted in Brown 1009, 1133),
who has observed:
As the narrative of the slave experience, soclardeath assumes a uniform African, slave, and ultimately black subject
rooted in a static New World history whose logic originated in being property and remains confined to slavery. It
absorbs and renders exceptional evidence that underscores the contingent nature of experience and consciousness.
normative assumptions about the experiences of peoples of African descent
Thus,
assert a timeless, ahistorical, epiphenomenal "black" cultural experience .
there are
Their essay has an overly tendentious tone and sometimes misreads and misinterprets our book. Still
many points of agreement between the racial formation and systemic racism
theories. Where we disagree most strongly is over our respective understanding of racial
politics. Feagin and Elias focus so intensely on racism that they lose sight of the
complexities of race and the variations that exist among and within racially defined
groups. In their systemic racism account white racist rule is so comprehensive
and absolute that the political power and agency of people of colour virtually
disappear . Indeed, the white racial frame (Feagin 2009) is so omnipotent that white
racism seems to usurp and monopolize all political space in the USA. Yes, counter
framing is present, but it appears marginal at best, unable effectively to challenge the
pervasiveness, persistence and power of white racism. Since Feagin and Elias
dismiss ideas of racial democracy tout court, their perspective makes it difficult
to understand how anti-racist mobilization or political reform could ever
have occurred in the past or could ever take place in the future . They see
racism as so exclusively white that any notion of white anti-racism is virtually ignored
and completely unexplained.
Despite Feagin and Elias's good intentions of linking their analysis to anti-racist practice, we believe their
views have quite the opposite effect: without intending to do so, they dismiss the political
agency of people of colour and of anti-racist whites. In Feagin/Elias's view, systemic
racism is like the Borg in the Star Trek series : a hive-mind phenomenon that
assimilates all it touches. As the Borg announce in their collective audio message to intended
targets, Resistance is futile.
We have a smaller space than the main essay, so we'll dispense with a point-by-point refutation of their
understanding of racial formation theory. We assume readers of Racial Formation and of our other work know that
we consider racism a foundational and continuous part of US
we are not closet neocons, that
history (and indeed modern world history), that we agree that whites have been the
primary creators and beneficiaries of racist institutions and practices, and that we not only
respect but also situate ourselves in the black radical tradition, especially the Duboisian tradition. We will focus on
our fundamental point of disagreement with Feagin and Elias how we respectively
understand the very nature of racial politics in the USA.
Here we will engage Feagin and Elias on a few important questions that will highlight both where we agree and
where we disagree. Our topics are as follows:
What is distinctive about our own historical epoch in the USA from post-Second World War to the present with
respect to race and racism?
We discuss these questions with the intent of clarifying racial formation theory as well as sharpening the debate
with the systemic racism perspective. We appreciate the opportunity to do so.
Feagin and Elias think (white) racism shapes race . Although they read us quite selectively and
negatively here, they recognize that we also identify whites as the most comprehensive
practitioners and by far the greatest beneficiaries of racist practices. We agree that
racism is a ferocious force, a deeply structured-in dimension of US (and world) society. But
this is apparently not enough: Feagin and Elias also want to confine racist agency to whites
and whites alone. We argue that not all racism is white, and that people of colour can practise racism
as well.
like sex/gender or class. From this perspective, race shapes racism as much as racism
shapes race . Racial identities (individual and group), and other race-oriented concepts as well, are
unstable . They are not uniforms; races are not teams; they are not defined
solely by antagonism to one another . They vary internally and ideologically;
they overlap and mix; their positions in the social structure shift; in other words they are shaped by
political conflict.
white racist rule in the USA appears unalterable and
In Feagin and Elias's account,
permanent. There is little sense that the white racial frame evoked by systemic
racism theory changes in significant ways over historical time. They dismiss
important rearrangements and reforms as merely a distraction from more ingrained
structural oppressions and deep lying inequalities that continue to define US society (Feagin and Elias
2012, p. 21). Feagin and Elias use a concept they call surface flexibility to argue that
white elites frame racial realities in ways that suggest change, but are merely
engineered to reinforce the underlying structure of racial oppression .
Feagin and Elias say the phrase racial democracy is an oxymoron a word defined in the
dictionary as a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. If they mean the USA is a contradictory and
If they mean that people of
incomplete democracy in respect to race and racism issues, we agree.
colour have no democratic rights or political power in the US A, we disagree. The USA
is a racially despotic country in many ways, but in our view it is also in many respects a
racial democracy, capable of being influenced towards more or less inclusive and
redistributive economic policies, social policies, or for that matter, imperial policies.
What is distinctive about our own epoch in the USA (post-Second World War to the present) with respect to race and
racism?
Over the past decades there has been a steady drumbeat of efforts to contain and
neutralize civil rights, to restrict racial democracy, and to maintain or even increase racial
inequality. Racial disparities in different institutional sites employment, health,
education persist and in many cases have increased . Indeed, the post-2008 period has seen a
dramatic increase in racial inequality. The subprime home mortgage crisis, for example, was a major racial event.
Black and brown people were disproportionately affected by predatory lending practices; many lost their homes as
It would be easy to conclude, as Feagin
a result; race-based wealth disparities widened tremendously.
and Elias do, that white racial dominance has been continuous and unchanging
throughout US history. But such a perspective misses the dramatic twists and turns
in racial politics that have occurred since the Second World War and the civil rights era.
Feagin and Elias claim that we overly inflate the significance of the changes wrought by the civil rights movement,
and that we overlook the serious reversals of racial justice and persistence of huge racial inequalities (Feagin and
Elias 2012, p. 21) that followed in its wake. We do not. In Racial Formation we wrote about racial reaction in a
chapter of that name, and elsewhere in the book as well. Feagin and Elias devote little attention to our arguments
While we argue that the right wing
there; perhaps because they are in substantial agreement with us.
was able to rearticulate race and racism issues to roll back some of the gains of
the civil rights movement, we also believe that there are limits to what the right
could achieve in the post-civil rights political landscape .
So we agree that the present prospects for racial justice are demoralizing at best. But we do
not think that is the whole story. US racial conditions have changed over the post-
Second World War period, in ways that Feagin and Elias tend to downplay or neglect. Some of the major
reforms of the 1960s have proved irreversible; they have set powerful democratic
forces in motion. These racial (trans)formations were the results of unprecedented
political mobilizations, led by the black movement, but not confined to blacks
alone . Consider the desegregation of the armed forces, as well as key civil rights
movement victories of the 1960s: the Voting Rights Act , the Immigration and Naturalization Act
(Hart- Celler), as well as important court decisions like Loving v. Virginia that declared anti-
miscegenation laws unconstitutional. While we have the greatest respect for the late Derrick Bell, we
do not believe that his interest convergence hypothesis effectively explains all these
developments. How does Lyndon Johnson's famous (and possibly apocryphal) lament upon signing the Civil
Rights Act on 2 July 1964 We have lost the South for a generation count as convergence?
The US racial regime has been transformed in significant ways. As Antonio Gramsci
argues, hegemony proceeds through the incorporation of opposition (Gramsci
1971, p. 182). The civil rights reforms can be seen as a classic example of this process;
here the US racial regime under movement pressure was exercising its
hegemony . But Gramsci insists that such reforms which he calls passive
revolutions cann ot be merely symbolic if they are to be effective: oppositions
must win real gains in the process. Once again, we are in the realm of politics, not
absolute rule .So yes, we think there were important if partial victories that shifted
the racial state and transformed the significance of race in everyday life. And yes, we think
that further victories can take place both on the broad terrain of the state and on the
more immediate level of social interaction: in daily interaction, in the human psyche and across civil
society. Indeed we have argued that in many ways the most important accomplishment of the anti-racist movement
of the 1960s in the USA was the politicization of the social. In the USA and indeed around the globe, race-based
movements demanded not only the inclusion of racially defined others and the
democratization of structurally racist societies, but also the recognition and validation by both
the state and civil society of racially-defined experience and identity. These
demands broadened and deepened democracy itself . They facilitated not only the democratic
gains made in the USA by the black movement and its allies, but also the political advances towards equality, social
justice and inclusion accomplished by other new social movements: second-wave feminism, gay liberation, and
the environmentalist and anti-war movements among others.
historians argued
trade and slavery had denuded black people of any ancestral heritage from Africa. The Carter G. Woodson and W. E. B. Du Bois and the anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits the
that while enslaved Africans could not have brought intact social,
opposite. Their research supported the conclusion
political, and religious institutions with them to the Americas, they did maintain
significant aspects of their cultural backgrounds .32 Herskovits ex- amined Africanismsany practices that seemed to be identifiably Africanas
useful symbols of cultural survival that would help him to analyze change and continuity in African American culture.33 He engaged in one of his most heated scholarly disputes with the sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, a student of
Parks, who empha- sized the damage wrought by slavery on black families and folkways.34 More recently, a number of scholars have built on Herskovitss line of thought, enhancing our understanding of African history during the
categories of belonging, and social practices from Africa to America. For these scholars, the
domination, they could not have revolted as often as they did or shown the varied
manifestations of their resistance social control that so frustrated masters and compromised their power, sometimes fatally.38 The dynamics of
and slave resistance falsified Pattersons description of slavery even as the tenacity
of African culture showed that enslaved men, women, and children had arrived in
the Americas bearing much more than their tropical temperament. The cultural continuity and resistance schools of thought come together pow- erfully in an important
book by Walter C. Rucker, The River Flows On: Black Re- sistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America. In Ruckers analysis of slave revolts, conspiracies, and daily recalcitrance, African concepts, values, and cul- tural
culture even among second, third, and fourth generation creoles .39 He looks again at some familiar events in North
New York Citys 1712 Coromantee revolt 1741 conspiracy 1739 Stono
America and , the
rebellion in South Carolina, as well as the plots, schemes, and insurgencies of Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turnerdeftly teasing out the African origins of many of the attitudes and actions of the black
action against slavery corresponded to the various steps Africans made in the
process of becoming African American in culture, orientation, and identity
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