2020 Afropessimism Aff

Poopyhead 123
 Links
-While the enslavement of blacks coming from the middle passage is
traditionally associated with the United States. The shattering effects of the
African Diaspora can Be seen Far and wide. The impact of the middle passage
on Afro Venezuelans can still be felt today. Many of these inequities mirror
those of our own nation.
Minority Rights Group, "Afro-Venezuelans," https://minorityrights.org/minorities/afro-
venezuelans/
Historical context Enslaved Africans were transported to Venezuela mostly in the eighteenth
century to work on the numerous cocoa plantations. Despite proposals by Simón Bolívar, ‘The
Liberator’, slavery was not abolished upon independence in 1811, but rather some forty years
later with the Law of Abolition of Slavery of 1854. By that time the enslaved population had
substantially declined due both to economic factors and the common practice of manumission.
Profile Because until 2011 Venezuela had not collected data on its black population since 1920,
is estimated to be 7 to 60 percent of the total population . While the 2011 census allowed
community members to self-identify for the first time, the reported figures – 0.7 per cent of
the total population identified themselves as Afro-descendant and 2.9 per cent as black,
compared to 51.6 per cent as brown and 43.6 per cent as white – were far lower than the
likely actual proportion. Afro-Venezuelans have traditionally lived in the rural coastal zones of
the country, but have begun to migrate to urban centres like Caracas in large numbers.
Although Afro-Venezuelans have contributed to and are largely assimilated into mainstream
Venezuelan or Creole culture, this population has still retained some of its own cultural heritage.
The use of traditional drums in Afro-Venezuelan music, as well as dance and African-based
spirituality demonstrate this. Current issues Historically, urban and rural Afro-Venezuelans have
not identified themselves in ethnic terms, but rather according to their class and geographic
position. This may be due to a general lack of consciousness, but may also be an explicit denial
of blackness because it is devalued in this society. Due to increased mobilization by local NGOs,
Afro-Venezuelans, and youth in particular, are beginning to reaffirm their identity and culture.
Despite the existence of some notable Afro-Venezuelans in high-level positions in the
government and private sector, Afro-Venezuelans continue to be the victims of discrimination
and racial prejudice. This discrimination can be especially violent in poorer areas where police
forces still often act with impunity and racial profiling is rampant. Moreover, nearly 40 per
cent of Venezuelans live under the poverty line and the concentration of people of African
descent in poorer regions and neighborhoods suggest that poverty rates are higher among this
population. Furthermore, the community struggles for acceptance and recognition: many
Venezuelans do not regard Afro-Venezuelans as a distinct group and the government still has no
official data on their numbers. However, music and other cultural forms of expression have
helped the community gain some visibility in recent years. An important milestone for the
community came in 2011 when for the first time the community were able to self-identify as
Afro-descendant in the national census. Until then, there had been no official classification for
the community.
-We do not draw offense from our opponent but instead from the topic itself.
The framing of the topic only serves to highlight the inherent bias of NSDA
when deciding topics for public forum debate they fail to realize that
antiblackness is the first and foremost issue that should be addressed in every
topic. Instead they assume that civil society is not only inevitable but also good
they only create this topic on top of this faulty assumption.
Wilderson 03, Frank, award-winning author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and
Apartheid. He is one of two Americans to hold elected office in the African National Congress
and is a former insurgent in the ANC’s armed wing, 2003 (Frank B. III “Introduction:
Unspeakable Ethics” Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Strucure of U.S. Antagonisms, Pg 15-
16) GG

Regarding the Black position, some might ask why, after claims successfully made on the state by the
Civil Rights Movement, do I insist on positing an operational analytic for cinema, film studies,
and political theory that appears to be a dichotomous and essentialist pairing of Masters and
Slaves? In other words, why should we think of today’s Blacks in the US as Slaves and everyone else
(with the exception of Indians) as Masters? One could answer these questions by demonstrating how nothing
remotely approaching claims successfully made on the State has come to pass. In other words, the
election of a Black President aside, police brutality, mass incarceration, segregated and
substandard schools and housing, astronomical rates of HIV infection, and the threat of being
turned away en masse at the polls still constitute the lived experience of Black life . But such
empirically based rejoinders would lead us in the wrong direction; we would find ourselves on “solid” ground, which

would only mystify, rather than clarify, the question. and empirical markers of stasis and change, all of which could be
turned on their head with more of the same.Underlying such a downward spiral into sociology, political science, history, and/or public policy debates
would be the very rubric that I am calling into question: [This Creates]The grammar of suffering known as
exploitation and alienation, the assumptive logic whereby subjective dispossession is arrived
at in the calculations between those who sell labor power and those who acquire it . The Black qua
the worker. Orlando Patterson has already dispelled faulty ontological grammar in Slavery and Social Death,

where he demonstrates how and why work, or forced labor, is not a constituent element of
slavery. Once the “solid” plank of “work” is removed from slavery, then the conceptually
coherent notion of “claims against the state”— the proposition that the state and civil society
are elastic enough to even contemplate the possibility of an emancipatory project for the
Black position—disintegrates into thin air. The imaginary of the state and civil society is parasitic on
the Middle Passage. Put another way: no slave, no world. And, in addition, as Patterson argues, no slave is in
the world. If, as an ontological position, that is, as a grammar of suffering, the Slave is not a laborer but an anti-
Human, a positionality against which Humanity establishes, maintains, and renews its
coherence, its corporeal integrity; if the Slave is, to borrow from Patterson, generally dishonored,
perpetually open to gratuitous violence, and void of kinship structure , that is, having no relations
that need be recognized, a being outside of relationality , then our analysis cannot be approached through the rubric
of gains or reversals in struggles with the state and civil society, not unless and until the interlocutor first explains how the Slave is of the world . The

onus is not on one who posits the Master/Slave dichotomy, but on the one who argues there
is a distinction between Slaveness and Blackness. How, when, and where did such a split occur? The woman at the gates
of Columbia University awaits an answer.
 ROTB
The role of the ballot is to resist anti-blackness in every instance. Anything else
is just intellectual gymnastics to circumvent true discussions of race and
oppression.
Smith 13, Elijah “A Conversation in Ruins: Race and Black Participation in
Lincoln Douglas Debate.” Vbriefly. September 6, 2013
At every tournament you attend this year look around the cafeteria and take note of which students are not sitting amongst you and
your peers. Despite being some of the best and the brightest in the nation, many students are alienated from and choose to not
participate in an activity I like to think of as homeplace.
In addition to the heavy financial burden associated
with national competition, the exclusionary atmosphere of a debate tournament discourages
black students from participating. Widespread awareness of the same lack of participation in policy debate has led to a
growing movement towards alternative styles and methods of engaging the gatekeepers of the policy community, (Reid-Brinkley 08)
while little work has been done to address or even acknowledge the same concern in Lincoln Douglas debate .Unfortunately,
students of color are not only forced to cope with a reality of structural violence outside of
debate, but within an activity they may have joined to escape it in the first place . We are facing
more than a simple trend towards marginalization occurring in Lincoln Douglas, but a culture of exclusion that locks
minority participants out of the ranks of competition . It will be uncomfortable, it will be hard, and it will
require continued effort but the necessary step in fixing this problem, like all problems, is the community as a whole
admitting that such a problem with many “socially acceptable” choices exists in the first place .
Like all systems of social control, the reality of racism in debate is constituted by the singular choices that institutions, coaches, and
students make on a weekly basis. I have watched countless rounds where competitors
attempt to win by rushing to
abstractions to distance the conversation from the material reality that black debaters are
forced to deal with every day. One of the students I coached, who has since graduated after leaving debate, had an adult
judge write out a ballot that concluded by “hypothetically” defending my student being lynched at the tournament. Another debate
concluded with a young man defending that we can kill animals humanely, “just like we did that guy Troy Davis”. Community
norms would have competitors do intellectual gymnastics or make up rules to accuse black
debaters of breaking to escape hard conversations but as someone who understands that experience, the
only constructive strategy is to acknowledge the reality of the oppressed , engage the discussion from
the perspective of authors who are black and brown, and then find strategies to deal with the issues at hand. It hurts to
see competitive seasons come and go and have high school students and judges spew the same hateful things you expect to hear at
a Klan rally. A
student should not, when presenting an advocacy that aligns them with the
oppressed, have to justify why oppression is bad. Debate is not just a game, but a learning
environment with liberatory potential. Even if the form debate gives to a conversation is not
the same you would use to discuss race in general conversation with Bayard Rustin or Fannie
Lou Hamer, that is not a reason we have to strip that conversation of its connection to a
reality that black students cannot escape.

By not addressing racism first and foremost in the debate round it only serves
to further perpetuate white supremacy Outside the realm of debate.
Lopez, 2003 (Gerardo [Professor of Political Science], "The (Racially Neutral) Politics of
Education: A Critical Race Theory Perspective", Educational Administration Quarterly Vol. 39,
No. 1 (February 2003) 68-94, 6/28, eaq.sagepub.com/content/39/1/68.full.pdf)
Our understanding of events, as told by Schattschneider and others, suggests that the incident was not in any way a race riot. Such
negation not only suggests the riot had nothing to do with racism but altogether disregards the pent-up frustration and rage of the
African American community. The reason for this mislabeling, in my opinion, has to do with a constricted understanding of what
constitutes a race riot. For Schattschneider (1960), the event in question failed to meet this definition because “most of the shops
looted and 80 Educational Administration Quarterly Downloaded from eaq.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIB on June
26, 2015 the property destroyed by the Negro mob belonged to Negroes” (p. 2). For [officials]Mayor La Guardia and
Congressman Powell, the event was not a race riot because there was no “physical violence
between Blacks and Whites” (Capeci, 1977). In essence, a race riot, according to these definitions, can only
occur if there are objective facts or discernable evidence of violence between two groups.
Anything short of direct contact or aggression fails to be included in this definition. By refusing
to label the 1943 incident a race riot, individuals not only strip the event of its racial
underpinnings but render its social and political significance meaningless . The riot becomes a
mere conflict, where chaos and destruction ruled for a short period of time. In effect, such reasoning leads us to believe that
the public boiling-over of African Americans had little to do with racism or the reality of being Black in a
White society. Instead, it becomes an unfortunate and isolated incident that simply got out of hand. Moreover, because
individuals failed to identify racism as a key element of the riot, White power and privilege
were protected and reified. Because Blacks were not “rioting” against a White power
structure, [thus] there was no need to fundamentally change the social and living conditions
for African Americans in Harlem. Although the riots did open the possibility for increased political representation for
Black Americans, there was little fundamental change in social and economic power relations
between Blacks and Whites. As such, the overall event and public protest did little to
substantially alter the gross social and economic inequities in New York City during this
particular period in history. How could Schattschneider—along with other key political figures, researchers, and scholars
—not see racism as an underlying cause of this riot? Why was this incident not labeled a race
riot, despite the fact that the collective anger of African Americans was targeted mainly at
symbols of White power such as the New York Police Department? How could Schattschneider use an example that
describes blatant racial conflict without highlighting issues of White supremacy and social power ?
Answers to these questions rest, in part, on the fact that racism and its effects are rarely discussed or
acknowledged in society (Omi & Winant, 1986; Tatum, 1997; West, 1993a). There is a problematic silence
that surrounds issues of racism—a silence that is difficult to broach . In fact, most people would
rather not discuss racism whatsoever because the topic itself is uncomfortable and unpleasant
(Anzaldúa, 1990; Tatum, 1997; West, 1993a, 1993b). As a result of this disquieting silence, most individuals fail to
identify its magnitude and breadth and limit its scope to superficial manifestations like
prejudice, discrimination, and blatant intolerance (Delgado & Stefancic, 1995, 2001; Matsuda, 1996; Tatum,
1997). In fact, most people view racism as the enactment of overt racial acts—for example, name
calling, burning crosses, hate crimes, and so forth—while ignoring the deeper , often invisible,
and more insidious forms of racism that occur on a daily basis (Parker, 1998; Scheurich & Young, 1997;
Tyson, 1998). In addition, when discussions of racism do occur, people overwhelmingly focus on
explicit acts, believing that racism is perpetrated by “bad people” who dislike others because
of something as arbitrary and innocuous as their skin color. Although this type of blatant racism certainly
does occur, such a belief incorrectly assumes that it is only found at this surface level and does
not penetrate our institutions, organizations, or ways of thinking (Bell, 1995b; Delgado, 1995a; Omi &
Winant, 1986; Parker, Deyhle, & Villenas, 1999; Scheurich & Young, 1997; Tatum, 1997; Williams, 1995a, 1995b ). This limited
perspective, therefore, only protects White privilege by highlighting racism’s blatant and
conspicuous aspects, while ignoring or downplaying its hidden and structural facets (Harris, 1995;
Scheurich & Young, 1997; Tyson, 1998). Needless to say, most individuals do not discuss the topic of racism at
all (Fine, Powell, Weis, & Mun Wong, 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; Sleeter, 1996). They ignore it because they believe the topic is too
unpleasant (Anzaldúa, 1990), because they feel that racism is a thing of the past (Bell, 1995b), because they do
not see themselves as “raced” individuals (Fine et al., 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; Haney López, 1995a, 1995b), or because they feel
that the race problem is not theirs to solve (Tatum, 1997). Others feel that because they, as individuals, do not hold racist beliefs,
then the topic is somewhat external and impertinent in their daily lives (Frankenberg, 1993). In
all of these cases, such
beliefs—individually and collectively—domesticate and minimize the role of race and racism
in the larger social order.
 Alt
The alternative is to burn it down – why stop at the neg– civil society is
inseparable from its foundation
Farley 4 (Anthony Paul, Associate Profess @ Albany Law School, “Perfecting Slavery”,
http://www.luc.edu/law/activities/publications/lljdocs/vol36_no1/farley.pdf, Accessed: 11/9/11, )

What is to be done? Two hundred years ago, when the slaves in Haiti rose up, they, of necessity,
burned everything: They burned San Domingo flat so that at the end of the war it was a charred
desert. Why do you burn everything? asked a French officer of a prisoner. We have a right to burn
what we cultivate because a man has a right to dispose of his own labour, was the reply of this
unknown anarchist.48 The slaves burned everything because everything was against them.
Everything was against the slaves, the entire order that it was their lot to follow, the entire
order in which they were positioned as worse than senseless things, every plantation,
everything.49 “Leave nothing white behind you,” said Toussaint to those dedicated to the end of
white-overblack. 50 “God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time.”51 The
slaves burned everything, yes, but, unfortunately, they only burned everything in Haiti.52 Theirs was
the greatest and most successful revolution in the history of the world but the failure of their fire to
cross the waters was the great tragedy of the Nineteenth century.53 At the dawn of the Twentieth
century, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “The colorline belts the world.”54 Du Bois said that the problem of
the Twentieth century was the problem of the colorline.55 The problem, now, at the dawn of the
Twenty-first century is the problem of the colorline. The colorline continues to belt the world.
Indeed, the slave power that is the United States now threatens an entire world with the death
that it has become and so the slaves of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, those with nothing but
their chains to lose, must, if they would be free, if they would escape slavery, win the entire
world. win the entire world. VIII. TRAINING We begin as children. We are called and we become our
response to the call. Slaves are not called. What becomes of them? What becomes of the broken-
hearted? The slaves are divided souls, they are brokenhearted, the slaves are split asunder by what
they are called upon to become. The slaves are called upon to become objects but objecthood is not
a calling. The slave, then, during its loneliest loneliness, is divided from itself. This is schizophrenia.
The slaves are not called, or, rather, the slaves are called to not be. The slaves are called unfree
and thus the living can never be and so the slaves burst apart and die. The slaves begin as
death, not as children, and death is not a beginning but an end. There is no progress and no
exit from the undiscovered country of the slave, or so it seems. We are trained to think through a
progress narrative, a grand narrative, the grandest narrative, that takes us up from slavery. There is
no up from slavery. The progress from white-over-black to white-over-black to white-overblack. The
progress of slavery runs in the opposite direction of the past-present- future timeline. The slave
only becomes the perfect slave at the end of the timeline, only under conditions of total
juridical freedom. It is only under conditions of freedom, of bourgeois legality, that the slave
can perfect itself as a slave by freely choosing to bow down before its master. The slave
perfects itself as a slave by offering a prayer for equal rights.  The system of marks is a plantation.
The system of property is a plantation. The system of law is a plantation. These plantations, all
part of the same system, hierarchy, produce white-overblack , white-over-black only, and that
continually. The slave perfects itself as a slave through its prayers for equal rights. The plantation
system will not commit suicide and the slave, as stated above, has knowing non-knowledge of
this fact. The slave finds its way back from the undiscovered country only by burning down
every plantation. When the slave prays for equal rights it makes the free choice to be dead, and it
makes the free choice to not be.
 Extensions
-Racism outweighs – the proper frame of mind is a prerequisite to fair policy
making
Memmi 2000 (Albert, Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ U of Paris, Naiteire, Racism,
Translated by Steve Martinot, 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 cannot
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 history in which we still largely live.
It is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which [person] man is not
[themself] 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.”fn22 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 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 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 once 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.
 30 Speaks Theory
Interp- The judge should give both teams 30 speaker points following the round
Violation- None this is a norm for the judge to follow
Standards-
SPEAKER POINTS ARE BROKEN.
Unconscious prejudice – racism, heteronormativity, ableism, etc. – still guides judges’
decision making. None of us are free from bias, and speaker points are awarded based
on this paradigm: who can live up best to the white, male cisgender etc, standard.
Thus, you should give us and our opponents the highest possible speaks – two
standards:
A) Topic Education
a) Without having to focus on pandering and tailoring speeches to the exact
preferences of judges debater can solely focus on learning about the
topic and speaking about what they believe are good arguments
B) Clash
a) Debaters can focus instead on fitting the norms of the white man to
actually engaging in the topic this leads to more clash in the debate
round and more education.
Voters- No Voters