GMU KL-Round 5 Neg vs
Oklahoma CR
1NC
Interpretation and violation- the aff should be a topical defense of the
resolution
This interpretation is grammatically correctResolved before a colon reflects a legislative forum
Army Career College 13 # 12. Punctuation -- The Colon and Semicolon, United States Army
Warrant Officer Career College, Last Reviewed: December 19, 2013,
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/wocc/ColonSemicolon.asp
The colon introduces the following: A list, but only after "as follows," "the following," or a noun for which the list is an appositive: Each
scout will carry the following: (colon) meals for three days, a survival knife, and his sleeping bag. The company had four new officers: (colon) Bill Smith,
Frank Tucker, Peter Fillmore, and Oliver Lewis. A long quotation (one or more paragraphs): In The Killer Angels Michael Shaara wrote: (colon) You
may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and that war [the Civil War].
(The quote continues for two more paragraphs.) A formal quotation or question : The President declared: (colon) "The only thing we have
to fear is fear itself." The question is: (colon) what can we do about it? A second independent clause which explains the first: Potter's motive is clear:
(colon) he wants the assignment. After the introduction of a business letter: Dear Sirs: (colon)Dear Madam: (colon) The details following an
announcement For sale: (colon) large lakeside cabin with dock A
formal resolution, after the word "resolved :" Resolved:
(colon) That this council petition the mayor.
The United States splits sovereignty among federal and state governments
Andrew Power 13 et al, Active Citizenship and Disability: Implementing the Personalisation of
Support, Cambridge University Press, Jan 14, 2013, Page 88
The United States has a unique political and geographical landscape which provides a complex territorial system of
administration of disability support policy. It has an intricate federal-state level relationship , with different institutions
and actors who can shape disability support policy in many different ways and at various different scales. At the federal level the
United States is a constitutional republic in which the president, Congressional and judiciary share
powers reserved for the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.
This promotes a model of debate, as dialogue- normative restrictions are
key to its potential
Galloway 7 DINNER AND CONVERSATION AT THE ARGUMENTATIVE TABLE: RECONCEPTUALIZING DEBATE AS AN ARGUMENTATIVE DIALOGUE, Ryan Galloway, Assistant
Professor and the Director of Debate at Samford University, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate,
Vol. 28 (2007)
Taking the resolution as an invitation to a dialogue about a particular set of ideas would preserve the
affirmative team’s obligation to uphold the debate resolution. At the same time, this approach licenses debaters
to argue both discursive and performative advantages. While this view is broader than many policy teams would like, and
certainly more limited than many critical teams would prefer, this approach captures the advantages of both modes of debate
while maintaining the stable axis point of argumentation for a full clash of ideas around these values. Here, I
begin with an introduction to the dialogic model, which I will relate to the history of switch-side debate and the current controversy. Then, I will defend
my conception of debate as a dialogical exchange. Finally, I will answer potential criticisms to the debate as a dialogue construct. Setting the
Argumentative Table: Conceptualizing Debate as a Dialogue Conceiving debate as a dialogue exposes a means of bridging the divide between the policy
community and the kritik community. Here I will distinguish between formal argument and dialogue. While formal argument centers on the demands
of informal and formal logic as a mechanism of mediation, dialogue tends to focus on the relational aspects of an interaction. As such, it emphasizes the
give-and-take process of negotiation. Consequently, dialogue emphasizes outcomes related to agreement or consensus rather than propositional
correctness (Mendelson & Lindeman, 2000). As
dialogue, the affirmative case constitutes a discursive act that
anticipates a discursive response. The consequent interplay does not seek to establish a propositional truth,
but seeks to initiate an in-depth dialogue between the debate participants. Such an approach would have little use for
rigid rules of logic or argument, such as stock issues or fallacy theory, except to the point where the participants agreed that these were functional
approaches. Instead, a dialogic approach encourages evaluations of affirmative cases relative to their performative benefits, or whether or not the case
is a valuable speech act. The move away from formal logic structure toward a dialogical conversation model allows for a broader perspective regarding
the ontological status of debate. At the same time, a dialogical approach challenges the ways that many teams argue speech act and performance theory
in debates. Because there are a range of ways that performative oriented teams argue their cases, there is little consensus regarding the status of
topicality. While some take topicality as a central challenge to creating performance-based debates, many argue that topicality is wholly irrelevant to
the debate, contending that the requirement that a critical affirmative be topical silences creativity and oppositional approaches. However, if
we
an invitation to dialogue, our attention must
move from the ontology of the affirmative case to a consideration of the case in light of exigent opposition
(Farrell, 1985). Thus, the initial speech act of the affirmative team sets the stage for an emergent response . While
move beyond viewing debate as an ontologically independent monologue—but as
most responses deal directly with the affirmative case, Farrell notes that they may also deal with metacommunication regarding the process of
negotiation. In this way, we may conceptualize the affirmative’s goal in creating a “germ of a response” (Bakhtin, 1990) whose completeness bears on
the possibility of all subsequent utterances. Conceived as a dialogue, the affirmative speech act anticipates the negative response. A
failure to
adequately encourage, or anticipate a response deprives the negative speech act and the emergent dialogue of
the capacity for a complete inquiry . Such violations short circuit the dialogue and undermine the potential
for an emerging dialogue to gain significance (either within the debate community or as translated to
forums outside of the activity). Here, the dialogical model performs as a fairness model, contending that the
affirmative speech act, be it policy oriented, critical, or performative in nature , must adhere to normative
restrictions to achieve its maximum competitive and ontological potential.
Two net benefitsFirst, Fairness- They justify arbitrarily changing the question of the debate
to an infinite number of potential frameworks, destroying predictable
limits and ensuring the Aff always wins. The community chooses
resolutionally divided ground because it is balanced and educational.
Arguments that aren’t linked to the plan are amorphous and unstable. A
narrow, mutually agreed-upon understanding of the topic is a pre-requisite
to meaningful research and strategy.
This is a pre-condition to debate
Shively 00 Partisan Politics and Political Theory, Ruth Lessl, Assistant Prof Political Science at Texas
A&M, p. 181-2
The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The
ambiguists must say “no” to—they must reject and limit—
some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say “yes” to some things. In particular, they must say “yes” to the
must recognize the role of agreement in political contest , or the basic
accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that
agreement marks the end of contest—that consen- sus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is
perfect—if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We
agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their
applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate . As John
Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the
idea of rational per- suasion. This means, first, that they
corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no
argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we
cannot argue about
something if we are not com- municating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have
utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being
debated before we can debate it . For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone
who thinks euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one’s target audience simply thinks everyone is
resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows
that it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is
being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms
of their disagree- ments. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an under- standing of the complaint at hand. And a
demonstrator’s audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and
how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation
rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
Fairness exists to ensure both sides have a voice
Burch 8 CAFA’S IMPACT ON LITIGATION AS A PUBLIC GOOD, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch,
Assistant Professor, Cumberland School of Law, 6/5/2008, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW,
http://cardozolawreview.com/Joomla1.5/content/29-6/BURCH.29.6.pdf
Given this shortcoming, the second procedural justice component is fairness. Fairness arguments are typically offered as policy reasons to trump
pursuit of certain reform proposals and aggregate social goals;101 however, I
use fairness here (and in assessing CAFA) as a
supplemental constraint rather than a substitute. Employing a deontological conception of fairness to balance utility aids in, not only
distributing procedural costs and correcting procedural errors, but also in ensuring that the procedural system does not
disproportionately favor or burden plaintiffs or defendants.102 Put differently, process should disperse the risk of error and
the cost of access as evenly as possible. Neither party hould have an advantage.103 This idea of “fairness” as avoiding lopsided
distribution of error can be likened to the concept of “neutrality.”104 To be sure, some imparity in distributing risks may be
inevitable. Finally, although analogous to fairness, participation—manifested as adequate representation in the class context—humanizes process.105
In its simplest form, participation
necessitates that those who are bound by a decision have an opportunity to
take part (and be heard) in adjudication.106 Moreover, it encompasses inherent rights to present evidence, observe the proceedings, crossexamine witnesses, and hear the judge’s decision.107 And participation, even in class litigation, affords litigants dignity by granting
them a forum in which to tell their story.108 “Storytelling” has been criticized when used to demonstrate satisfaction with process as a
proxy for “justice.”109 I use the term here, however, for its cathartic value only when situated within this larger procedural
fairness framework.
Second decision-making skillsStasis fostered by topical advocacy creates rigorous testing
Galloway 7 DINNER AND CONVERSATION AT THE ARGUMENTATIVE TABLE: RECONCEPTUALIZING DEBATE AS AN ARGUMENTATIVE DIALOGUE, Ryan Galloway, Assistant
Professor and the Director of Debate at Samford University, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate,
Vol. 28 (2007)
Germaneness and other substitutes for topical action do not accrue the dialogical benefits of topical
advocacy. A Siren’s Call: Falsely Presuming Epistemic Benefits In addition to the basic equity norm, dismissing the idea that debaters
defend the affirmative side of the topic encourages advocates to falsely value affirmative speech acts in the
absence of a negative response. There may be several detrimental consequences that go unrealized in a
debate where the affirmative case and plan are not topical . Without ground, debaters may fall prey to a
siren’s call, a belief that certain critical ideals and concepts are axiological, existing beyond doubt without
scrutiny . Bakhtin contends that in dialogical exchanges “the greater the number and weight” of counter-words,
the deeper and more substantial our understanding will be (Bakhtin, 1990). The matching of the word to the
counter-word should be embraced by proponents of critical activism in the activity, because these
dialogical exchanges allow for improvements and modifications in critical arguments. Muir argues that “debate puts
students into greater contact with the real world by forcing them to read a great deal of information” (1993, p. 285). He continues, “[t]he constant
consumption of material...is significantly constitutive. The information grounds the issues under discussion, and the process shapes the relationship of
the citizen to the public arena” (p. 285). Through
the process of comprehensive understanding, debate serves both as
a laboratory and a constitutive arena. Ideas find and lose adherents. Ideas that were once considered
beneficial are modified, changed, researched again, and sometimes discarded altogether. A central
argument for open deliberation is that it encourages a superior consensus to situations where one side is
silenced. Christopher Peters contends, “The theory holds that antithesis ultimately produces a better consensus, that the
clash of differing, even opposing interests and ideas in the process of decision making...creates decisions
that are better for having been subjected to this trial by fire” (1997, p. 336). The combination of a competitive
format and the necessity to take points of view that one does not already agree with combines to create a
unique educational experience for all participants. Those that eschew the value of such experience by an
axiological position short-circuit the benefits of the educational exchange for themselves, their opponents,
as well as the judges and observers of such debates.
Switch-side debate fosters critical thinking skills
Harrigan 8 AGAINST DOGMATISM: A CONTINUED DEFENSE OF SWITCH SIDE DEBATE, Casey
Harrigan, University of Georgia, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 29 (2008)
Switch side debate (SSD)
is an argumentative model that requires students to debate both the affirmative and
negative sides of the resolution over the course of a multiple- round tournament. In practice, SSD requires that debaters’
arguments are frequently divorced from personal conviction; in many cases students are required by the topic to take a
position and argue vigorously on behalf of views that they disagree with. Debaters with ideological beliefs are thrust into the
position of the Devil’s Advocate , assuming the side of the opposition and needing to understand the
arguments of the opposing view well enough to argue on their behalf. Instead of approaching the debate topic from
the perspective of personal belief, students often choose arguments from a strategic and competitive
perspective . Because of SSD, the purpose of debate is not to convince others to accept a certain argument
as preferable or “true”, but rather to choose the strongest and most intellectually rigorous position that has
the greatest chance of prevailin g under scrutiny (and thus earning a competitive victory). Policy debate, an activity with few
formal rules and requirements, developed this norm of arguing both sides of a topic for pragmatic, pedagogical, and
social reasons. Practically, the contemporary format of tournament contests would be much more difficult to maintain if the tournament
directors were not able to require that an equal number of competitors debate on the affirmative and negative in any given round. Were students free to
choose their own sides, it seems likely that debaters who held strong views for or against the statement of the resolution would choose to debate
exclusively on that side. Given the generally liberal leanings of the debate community and inevitable biases in topic construction, an unequal division
between the sides would be unavoidable (Cripe, 1957). This would make pairing debate rounds much more difficult, if not impossible. While such
pragmatic justifications for SSD are persuasive, they are admittedly secondary to the greater consideration of pedagogy. Although it is certainly true
that debate is a game and that its competitive elements are indispensable sources of motivation for students who may otherwise be apathetic about
academic endeavors, the
overwhelming benefits of contest debating are the knowledge and skills taught through
participation. The wins and losses (and somewhat-cheesy trophies), by and large, are forgotten with the passage of time. However, the
educational values of debate are so fundamental that they eventually become ingrained in the decisionmaking and thought processes of debaters, giving them a uniquely valuable durability . To this end, SSD is
essential. The benefits of debating both sides have been noted by many authors over the past fifty years . To
name but a few, SSD has been lauded for fostering tolerance and undermining bigotry and dogmatism (Muir, 1993),
creating stronger and more knowledgeable advocates (Dybvig and Iversion, 2000), and fortifying the social forces
of democracy by guaranteeing the expression of minority viewpoints (Day, 1966). Switching sides is a crucial element of
debate’s pedagogical benefit; it forms the gears that drive debate’s intellectual motor. Additionally, there are social benefits to the practice of requiring
students to debate both sides of controversial issues. Dating back to the Greek rhetorical tradition and the tension between Plato and the Sophists,
great value has been placed on the benefit of testing each argument relative to all others in the
marketplace of ideas. Like those who argue on behalf of the efficiency-maximizing benefits of free market competition, it is believed that
arguments are most rigorously tested (and conceivably refined and improved) when compared to all available
alternatives. Even for beliefs that have seemingly been ingrained in consensus opinion or in cases where the public at-large is unlikely to accept
a particular position, it has been argued that they should remain open for public discussion and deliberation (Mill, 1975). Along
these lines, the greatest benefit of switching sides, which goes to the heart of contemporary debate, is its inducement of
critical thinking. Defined as “reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Ennis, 1987), critical
thinking learned through debate teaches students not just how to advocate and argue, but how to decide
as well. Each and every student, whether in debate or (more likely) at some later point in life, will be placed in
the position of the decision-maker. Faced with competing options whose costs and benefits are initially unclear, critical
thinking is necessary to assess all the possible outcomes of each choice, compare its relative merits, and
arrive at some final decision about which choice is preferable. In some instances, such as choosing whether to eat Chinese or Indian food
for dinner, the importance of making the correct decision is minor. For many other decisions, however, the implications of choosing
an imprudent course of action are potentially grave . Although the days of the Cold War are over, and the risk that “the next Pearl
Harbor could be ‘compounded by hydrogen’” (Ehninger and Brockriede, 1978) is greatly reduced, the manipulation of public support
before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 points to the continuing necessity of training a well- informed and
critically-aware public (Zarefsky, 2007). In the absence of debate-trained critical thinking, uninformed
politicians and manipulative leaders would be much more likely to draw the country, and possibly the
world, into conflicts with incalculable losses in terms of human well- being. As Louis Rene Beres writes, “with such
learning, we Americans could prepare...not as immobilized objects of false contentment, but as authentic citizens of an endangered planet” (2003).
Thus, it is not surprising that critical
thinking has been called “the highest educational goal of the activity” (Parcher,
arguing from conviction can foster limited critical thinking skills, the element of switching sides
is necessary to sharpen debate’s critical edge and ensure that decisions are made in a reasoned manner
1998). While
instead of being driven by ideology. Debaters trained in SSD are more likely to evaluate both sides of an
argument before arriving at a conclusion and are less likely to dismiss potential arguments based on prior beliefs (Muir, 1993). In addition,
debating both sides teaches “ conceptual flexibility ,” where decision- makers are more likely to reflect upon
the beliefs that are held before coming to a final opinion (Muir, 1993). Exposed to many arguments on each
side of an issue, debaters learn that public policy is characterized by extraordinary complexity that
requires careful consideration before action. Finally, these arguments are confirmed by the preponderance of
empirical research demonstrating a link between competitive SSD and critical thinking (Allen, Berkowitz, Hunt
and Louden, 1999; Colbert, 2002).
Political simulation creates a deliberative active-learning environment
Hanghoj 8 PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming, Thorkild Hanghøj,
PhD Dissertation
Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies University of Southern Denmark, 2008,
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hu
m/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf
The two preceding sections discussed how Dewey views play as an imaginative activity of educational value, and how his assumptions on creativity and
dramatic rehearsal , which
assumes that social actors deliberate by projecting and choosing between various scenarios for future
action. Dewey uses the concept dramatic rehearsal several times in his work but presents the most extensive elaboration in Human Nature and
Conduct: Deliberation is a dramatic rehearsal (in imagination) of various competing possible lines of action... [ It] is an experiment in
finding out what the various lines of possible action are really like (...) Thought runs ahead and foresees
outcomes, and thereby avoids having to await the instruction of actual failure and disaster. An act overtly tried out is irrevocable, its consequences
cannot be blotted out. An act tried out in imagination is not final or fatal. It is retrievable (Dewey, 1922: 132-3). 85 This excerpt
illustrates how Dewey views the process of decision making (deliberation) through the lens of an imaginative drama
metaphor. Thus, decisions are made through the imaginative projection of outcomes, where the “possible competing
playful actions represent a critique of rational means-end schemes. For now, I will turn to Dewey’s concept of
lines of action” are resolved through a thought experiment. Moreover, Dewey’s compelling use of the drama metaphor also implies that decisions
cannot be reduced to utilitarian, rational or mechanical exercises, but that they have emotional, creative and personal qualities as well. Interestingly,
there are relatively few discussions within the vast research literature on Dewey of his concept of dramatic rehearsal. A notable exception is the
phenomenologist Alfred Schütz, who praises Dewey’s concept as a “fortunate image” for understanding everyday rationality (Schütz, 1943: 140). Other
attempts are primarily related to overall discussions on moral or ethical deliberation (Caspary, 1991, 2000, 2006; Fesmire, 1995, 2003; Rönssön, 2003;
McVea, 2006). As Fesmire points out, dramatic rehearsal is intended to describe an important phase of deliberation that does not characterise the
whole process of making moral decisions, which includes “duties and contractual obligations, short and long-term consequences, traits of character to
be affected, and rights” (Fesmire, 2003: 70). Instead, dramatic rehearsal should be seen as the process of “crystallizing possibilities and transforming
them into directive hypotheses” (Fesmire, 2003: 70). Thus, deliberation can in no way guarantee that the response of a “thought experiment” will
be successful. But what it can do is make
the process of choosing more intelligent than would be the case with
“blind” trial-and-error (Biesta, 2006: 8). The notion of dramatic rehearsal provides a valuable perspective for understanding
educational gaming as a simultaneously real and imagined inquiry into domain-specific scenarios. Dewey
defines dramatic rehearsal as the capacity to stage and evaluate “acts”, which implies an “irrevocable” difference between acts that are “tried out in
imagination” and acts that are “overtly tried out” with real-life consequences (Dewey, 1922: 132-3). This description shares obvious similarities with
games as they require participants to inquire into and resolve scenario-specific problems (cf. chapter 2). On the other hand, there is also a striking
difference between moral deliberation and educational game activities in terms of the actual consequences that follow particular actions. Thus,
when
it comes to educational games, acts are both imagined and tried out, but without all the real-life
consequences of the practices, knowledge forms and outcomes that are being simulated in the game world. Simply put, there is a difference
in realism between the dramatic rehearsals of everyday life and in games, which only “play at” or simulate the stakes and 86 risks that characterise the
“serious” nature of moral deliberation, i.e. a real-life politician trying to win a parliamentary election experiences more personal and emotional risk
than students trying to win the election scenario of The Power Game. At the same time, the
lack of real-life consequences in
educational games makes it possible to design a relatively safe learning environment , where teachers can stage
particular game scenarios to be enacted and validated for educational purposes. In this sense, educational games are able to provide a
safe but meaningful way of letting teachers and students make mistakes (e.g. by giving a poor political presentation) and
dramatically rehearse particular “competing possible lines of action” that are relevant to particular educational goals (Dewey, 1922: 132). Seen from this
pragmatist perspective, the educational
value of games is not so much a question of learning facts or giving the
“right” answers, but more a question of exploring the contingent outcomes and domain-specific processes
of problem-based scenarios.
These skills are key to solving all existential global problems
Lundberg 10 Tradition of Debate in North Carolina in Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate in the
21st Century, Christian O. Lundberg, Professor of Communications @ University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, 2010, p311
The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and democracy is that it presumes that the primary
pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But the democratic capacities built by debate are not limited to speech—as indicated earlier,
debate builds capacity for critical thinking , analysis of public claims, informed decision making , and better
public judgment. If the picture of modem political life that underwrites this critique of debate is a pessimistic view of increasingly labyrinthine
and bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid scientific and technological change outpacing the capacities of the citizenry to comprehend them, and
ever-expanding insular special-interest- and money-driven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that these conditions warrant giving up on
debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the
citizenry's capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that theorists of democracy such as Ocwey in The Public awl Its Problems place
such a high premium on education (Dewey 1988,63, 154). Debate
provides an indispensible form of education in the
modem articulation of democracy because it builds precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to research
and be informed about policy decisions that impact them, to son rhroueh and evaluate the evidence for and
relative merits of arguments for and against a policy in an increasingly infonnation-rich environment, and to prioritize their time
and political energies toward policies that matter the most to them. The merits of debate as a tool for building democratic
capacity-building take on a special significance in the context of information literacy. John Larkin (2005, HO) argues that one of the primary
failings of modern colleges and universities is that they have not changed curriculum to match with the challenges of a new information environment.
This is a problem for the course of academic study in our current context, but perhaps more important, argues Larkin, for the future of a citizenry that
will need to make evaluative choices against an increasingly complex and multimediatcd information environment (ibid-). Larkin's study tested the
benefits of debate participation on information-literacy skills and concluded that in-class debate participants reported significantly higher self-efficacy
ratings of their ability to navigate academic search databases and to effectively search and use other Web resources: To analyze the self-report ratings of
the instructional and control group students, we first conducted a multivariate analysis of variance on all of the ratings, looking jointly at the effect of
instmction/no instruction and debate topic . . . that it did not matter which topic students had been assigned . . . students in the Instnictional [debate)
group were significantly more confident in their ability to access information and less likely to feel that they needed help to do so----These findings
clearly indicate greater self-efficacy for online searching among students who participated in (debate).... These results constitute strong support for the
effectiveness of the project on students' self-efficacy for online searching in the academic databases. There was an unintended effect, however: After
doing ... the project, instructional group students also felt more confident than the other students in their ability to get good information from Yahoo
and Google. It may be that the library research experience increased self-efficacy for any searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144)
Larkin's study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that debate
in the college classroom plays a critical
role in fostering the kind of problem-solving skills demanded by the increasingly rich media and
information environment of modernity. Though their essay was written in 1992 on the cusp of the eventual explosion of the Internet
as a medium, Worthcn and Pack's framing of the issue was prescient: the primary question facing today's student has changed from how to best
research a topic to the crucial question of learning how to best evaluate which arguments to cite and rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable
cornucopia of materials. There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate as a model for democratic deliberation. But
cumulatively, the
evidence presented here warrants strong support for expanding debate practice in the classroom as
enhancing democratic deliberative capacities . The unique combination of critical thinking
skills, research and information processing skills, oral communication skills, and capacities for listening
and thoughtful, open engagement with hotly contested issues argues for debate as a crucial component of
a rich and vital democratic life. In-class debate practice both aids students in achieving the best goals of college and university
education, and serves as an unmatched practice for creating thoughtful, engaged , open-minded and selfcritical students who are open to the possibilities of meaningful political engagement and new articulations of democratic life. Expanding
this practice is crucial, if only because the more we produce citizens that can actively and effectively engage
the political process, the more likely we are to produce revisions of democratic life that are necessary if
democracy is not only to survive, but to thrive. Democracy faces a myriad of challenges , including: domestic
and international issues of class, gender, and racial justice; wholesale environmental destruction and the potential
for rapid climate change; emerging threats to international stability in the form of terrorism, intervention and new
possibilities for great power conflict; and increasing challenges of rapid globalization including an increasingly volatile
global economic structure. More than any specific policy or proposal, an informed and active citizenry that
deliberates with greater skill and sensitivity provides one of the best hopes for responsive and effective
democratic governance, and by extension, one of the last best hopes for dealing with the existential challenges to
democracy [in an] increasingly complex world.
a technology for
Democratic deliberation is preferable to their public conversation modelbest addresses social ills
Tonn 5 Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public, Mari Boor Tonn, Associate Professor of
Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 8,
Number 3, Fall 2005, pp. 405-430 (Article) Published by Michigan State University Press, DOI:
10.1353/rap.2005.0072
Perhaps the most conspicuous effort at replacing public debate with thera- peutic dialogue was President Clinton’s Conversation on Race, launched in
mid-1997. Controversial from its inception for its ideological bent, the initia- tive met further widespread criticism for its encounter-group approaches
to racial stratification and strife, critiques echoing previously articulated con- cerns—my own among them6—that certain dangers lurk in employing
private or social communication modes for public problem-solving.7 Since then, oth- ers have joined in contesting the treating
of public
problems with narrative and psychological approaches, which—in the name of promoting civility, cooperation, personal
empowerment, and socially constructed or idiosyn- cratic truths—actually work to contain dissent , locate systemic social
prob- lems solely within individual neurosis, and otherwise fortify hegemony .8 Particularly noteworthy is Michael
Schudson’s challenge to the utopian equating of “conversation” with the “soul of democracy.” Schudson points to pivotal differences in the goals and
architecture of conversational and democ- ratic deliberative processes. To him, political (or democratic) conversation is a contradiction in terms.
Political deliberation entails a clear instrumental pur- pose , ideally remaining ever mindful of its implications beyond an
individual case. Marked by disagreement —even pain—democratic deliberation contains transparent prescribed
procedures governing participation and decision mak- ing so as to protect the timid or otherwise weak. In
such processes, written records chronicle the interactional journey toward resolution, and in the case of writing law especially, provide accessible
justification for decisions ren- dered. In
sharp contrast , conversation is often “small talk” exchanged among family,
friends, or candidates for intimacy, unbridled by set agendas, and prone to egocentric rather than
altruistic goals. Subject only to unstated “rules” such as turn-taking and politeness, conversation tends to
advantage the gregarious or articulate over the shy or slight of tongue.9 The events of 9/11, the onset of war
with Afghanistan and Iraq, and the subsequent failure to locate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have resuscitated some faith in debate, argument, warrant, and facts as crucial to the pub- lic sphere. Still, the romance with
public conversation persists. As examples among communication scholars, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell’s 2001 Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture
treated what she termed “the rhetoric of con- versation” as a means to “manage controversy” and empower non-dominant voices10; multiple essays in a
2002 special issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs on deliberative democracy couch a deliberative democratic ideal in dialogic terms11; and the 2005
Southern States Communication Convention featured family therapist Sallyann Roth, founding member and trainer of the Public Conversations
Project, as keynote speaker.12 Representative of the dialogic turn in deliberative democracy scholarship is Gerard A. Hauser and Chantal BenoitBarne’s critique of the traditional procedural, reasoning model of pub- lic problem solving: “A deliberative model of democracy . . . constru[es]
democracy in terms of participation in the ongoing conversation about how we shall act and interact—our political relations” and “Civil society redirects
our attention to the language of social dialogue on which our understanding of political interests and possibility rests.”13 And on the political front,
British Prime Minister Tony Blair—facing declining poll numbers and mounting crit- icism of his indifference to public opinion on issues ranging from
the Iraq war to steep tuition hike proposals—launched The Big Conversation on November 28, 2003. Trumpeted as “as way of enriching the Labour
Party’s policy making process by listening to the British public about their priorities,” the initiative includes an interactive government website and
community meetings ostensi- bly designed to solicit citizens’ voices on public issues.14 In their own way, each treatment of public conversation
positions it as a democratic good, a mode that heals divisions and carves out spaces wherein ordinary voices can be heard. In certain ways, Schudson’s
initial reluctance to dismiss public conversation echoes my own early reservations, given the ideals of egalitarianism, empow- erment, and mutual
respect conversational advocates champion. Still, in the spirit of the dialectic ostensibly underlying dialogic premises, this essay argues that various
negative consequences can result from transporting conversa- tional and therapeutic paradigms into public problem solving. In what fol- lows, I extend
Schudson’s critique of a conversational model for democracy in two ways: First, whereas Schudson primarily offers a theoretical analysis, I interrogate
public conversation as a praxis in a variety of venues, illustrating how public “conversation” and “dialogue” have been coopted to
silence rather than empower marginalized or dissenting voices. In practice, public conversa- tion easily can emulate
what feminist political scientist Jo Freeman termed “the tyranny of structurelessness” in her classic 1970 critique of conscious- nessraising groups in the women’s liberation movement,15 as well as the key traits Irving L. Janis ascribes to “groupthink.” 16 Thus,
contrary to its promo- tion as a means to neutralize hierarchy and exclusion in the public sphere, public
conversation can and has accomplished the reverse . When such moves are rendered transparent, public conversation and
dialogue, I contend, risk increasing rather than diminishing political cynicism and alienation. Second, whereas Schudson focuses largely on ways a
conversational model for democracy may mute an individual’s voice in crafting a resolution on a given question at a given time, I draw upon insights of
Dana L. Cloud and oth- ers to consider ways in which a therapeutic, conversational approach to public problems can stymie productive, collective
action in two respects.17 First, because conversation
has no clearly defined goal, a public conversation may engender
inertia as participants become mired in repeated airings of personal experiences without a mechanism to
lend such expressions direction and clo- sure. As Freeman aptly notes, although “[u]nstructured groups may be very
effective in getting [people] to talk about their lives[,] they aren’t very good for getting things done . Unless
their mode of operation changes, groups flounder at the point where people tire of ‘just talking.’” 18 Second, because the
thera- peutic bent of much public conversation locates social ills and remedies within individuals or dynamics of
interpersonal relationships, public conversations and dialogues risk becoming substitutes for policy formation
necessary to cor- rect structural dimensions of social problems. In mimicking the emphasis on the individual in therapy,
Cloud warns, the therapeutic rhetoric of “healing, consolation, and adaptation or adjustment” tends to “encourage citizens to perceive political issues,
conflicts, and inequities as personal failures subject to personal amelioration.”19
Case
Legal reform strategies don’t coopt ethics and enable extra-legal strategies
for change
Smith 12 The Moral Limits of the Law: Settler Colonialism and the Anti-Violence Movement, Andrea
Smith, Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside, Settler Colonial Studies, 2:2,
69-88, DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648842
In the debates prevalent within Native sovereignty and racial justice movements, we are often presented
with two seemingly orthogonal positions – long-term revolutionary extra-legal movements or short- term reformist legalist
strategies . Short-term legal strategies are accused of investing activists within a white supremacist and settler colonial system that is incapable of
significant change. Meanwhile, revolutionaries are accused of sacrificing the immediate needs of vulnerable
populations for the sake of an endlessly deferred revolution. The reality of gender violence in Native communities highlights
the untenability of these positions. Native women’s lives are at stake now – they cannot wait for the revolution to
achieve some sort of safety. At the same time, the short-term strategies often adopted to address gender violence have often increased
violence in Native women’s lives by buttressing the prison industrial complex and its violent logics. While this reformist versus revolutionary dichotomy
suggests two radically different positions, in reality they share a common assumption: that the only way to pursue legal reform is to fight for laws that
that reinforce the appropriate moral statement (for instance, that
the only way to address violence against Native women is
through the law and to make this violence a ‘crime’ ). Because the US legal system is inherently immoral and colonial, however,
attempts to moralise the law generally fail. It is not surprising that the response to these failures is to simply give up on
pursuing legal strategies. However, the works of Derrick Bell, Christopher Leslie, and Sarah Deer, while working in completely different areas
of the law, point to a different approach. We can challenge the assumption that the law will reflect our morals and
instead seek to use the law for its strategic effects. In doing so, we might advocate for laws that might in fact contradict some of
our morals because we recognize that the law cannot mirror our morals anyway. We might then be free to engage in a relationship
with the law which would free us to change our strategies as we assess its strategic effects . At the same time, by
divesting from the morality of the law, we then will also simultaneously be free to invest in building our own
forms of community accountability and justice outside the legal system. Our extra-legal strategies would
go beyond ceremonial civil disobedience tactics designed to shame a system that is not capable of shame. Rather, we
might focus on actually building the political power to create an alternative system to the
heteropatriarchal, white supremacist, settler colonial state.
Pragmatism is the best political method- learning the details of policymaking is key address social ills
Mclean 1 The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope, David E. McClean, Presented at the 2001
Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, http://www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm
There is a lot of philosophical prose on the general subject of social justice. Some of this is quite good, and some of it is
quite bad. What distinguishes the good from the bad is not merely the level of erudition. Displays of high erudition are gratuitously reflected in much of
the writing by those, for example, still clinging to Marxian ontology and is often just a useful smokescreen which
shrouds a near total
disconnect from empirical reality . This kind of political writing likes to make a lot of references to other
obscure, jargon-laden essays and tedious books written by other true believers - the crowd that takes the fusion of Marxian and
Freudian private fantasies seriously. Nor is it the lack of scholarship that makes this prose bad. Much of it is well "supported" by footnotes referencing a
lode of other works, some of which are actually quite good. Rather, what
makes this prose bad is its utter lack of relevance to
extant and critical policy debates, the passage of actual laws, and the amendment of existing regulations
that might actually do some good for someone else. The writers of this bad prose are too interested in our arrival at some social
place wherein we will finally emerge from our "inauthentic" state into something called "reality." Most of this stuff, of course, comes from those steeped
in the Continental tradition (particularly post-Kant). While that tradition has much to offer and has helped shape my own philosophical sensibilities, it
is anything but useful when it comes to truly relevant philosophical analysis , and no self-respecting
Pragmatist can really take seriously the strong poetry of formations like "authenticity looming on the ever remote horizons of
fetishization." What Pragmatists see instead is the hope that we can fix some of the social ills that face us if we
treat policy and reform as more important than Spirit and Utopia. Like light rain released from pretty clouds too high in
the atmosphere, the substance of this prose dissipates before it can reach the ground and be a useful component in a discussion of medicare reform
or how to better regulate a pharmaceutical industry that bankrupts senior citizens and condemns to death HIV patients unfortunate enough to have
been born in Burkina Faso - and a regulatory regime that permits this. It is
often too drenched in abstractions and references to
a narrow and not so merry band of other intellectuals (Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault, Lukács, Benjamin) to be of
much use to those who are the supposed subject matter of this preternatural social justice literature. Since I have no particular allegiance to these
other intellectuals, no particular impulse to carry their water or defend their reputations, I try and forget as much as I can about their writings in order
to make space for some new approaches and fresh thinking about that important question that always faces us - "What is to be done?" I am, I think,
lucky to have taken this decision before it had become too late. One might argue with me that these other intellectuals are not looking to be taken
seriously in the construction of solutions to specific socio-political problems. They are, after all, philosophers engaged in something called
philosophizing. They are, after all, just trying to be good culture critics. Of course, that isn't quite true, for they often write with specific reference to
social issues and social justice in mind, even when they are fluttering about in the ether of high theory (Lukács, for example, was a government officer,
albeit a minister of culture, which to me says a lot), and social
justice is not a Platonic form but parses into the specific
quotidian acts of institutions and individuals. Social justice is but the genus heading which may be described better with reference to
its species iterations- the various conditions of cruelty and sadism which we wittingly or unwittingly permit. If we wanted to, we could reconcile the
grand general theories of these thinkers to specific bureaucracies or social problems and so try to increase their relevance. We could construct an
account which acts as a bridge to relevant policy considerations. But such attempts, usually performed in the reams of secondary literature generated by
their devotees, usually make things even more bizarre. In any event, I don't think we owe them that amount of effort. After all, if they wanted to be
relevant they could have said so by writing in such a way that made it clear that relevance was a high priority. For Marxians in general, everything tends
to get reduced to class. For Lukács everything tends to get reduced to "reification." But society
and its social ills are far too intricate to
gloss in these ways, and the engines that drive competing interests are much more easily explained with reference to animal drives and fears
than by Absolute Spirit. That is to say, they are not easily explained at all. Take Habermas, whose writings are admittedly the most
relevant of the group. I cannot find in Habermas's lengthy narratives regarding communicative action, discourse ethics, democracy and ideal speech
situations very much more than I have found in the Federalist Papers, or in Paine's Common Sense, or in Emerson's Self Reliance or Circles. I simply
don't find the concept of uncoerced and fully informed communication between peers in a democratic polity all that difficult to understand, and I don't
much see the need to theorize to death such a simple concept, particularly where the only persons that are apt to take such narratives seriously are
already sold, at least in a general sense. Of course, when you are trying to justify yourself in the face of the other members of your chosen club (in
Habermas's case, the Frankfurt School) the intricacy of your explication may have less to do with simple concepts than it has to do with parrying for
respectability in the eyes of your intellectual brethren. But I don't see why the rest of us need to partake in an insular debate that has little to do with
anyone that is not very much interested in the work of early critical theorists such as Horkheimer or Adorno, and who might see their insights as only
modestly relevant at best. Not
many self-respecting engaged political scientists in this country actually still take
these thinkers seriously, if they ever did at all. Or we might take Foucault who, at best, has provided us with what may reasonably
be described as a very long and eccentric footnote to Nietzsche (I have once been accused, by a Foucaltian true believer, of "gelding" Foucault with other
similar remarks). Foucault, who has provided the Left of the late 1960s through the present with such notions as "governmentality," "Limit,"
"archeology," "discourse" "power" and "ethics," creating or redefining their meanings, has made it overabundantly clear that all of our moralities and
practices are the successors of previous ones which derive from certain configurations of savoir and connaisance arising from or created by,
respectively, the discourses of the various scientific schools. But I have not yet found in anything Foucault wrote or said how such observations may be
translated into a political movement or hammered into a political document or theory (let alone public policies) that can be justified or founded on
more than an arbitrary aesthetic experimentalism. In fact, Foucault would have shuddered if any one ever did, since he thought that anything as grand
as a movement went far beyond what he thought appropriate. This leads me to mildly rehabilitate Habermas, for at least he has been useful in exposing
Foucault's shortcomings in this regard, just as he has been useful in exposing the shortcomings of others enamored with the abstractions of various
Marxian-Freudian social critiques. Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is
long overdue, leftist
critics continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and
Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant
than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do suggest them) aimed at
curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism. I would like to suggest
that it is time for American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize
that they have a disease, and a disease regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery.
The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical "remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These
a litany of others including Derrida,
elaborate theoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in
various contexts, or whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven
forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our children safe
from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain
that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . .
These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens
when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country.
Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations "(italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need
for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or
an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own
implicit principle of successful action." Those
who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural
Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good reason. Another attribute of the Cultural
Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West, rather than some of the barbarous
methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered with
the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the
Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss
American society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous conclusion , i.e.
disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain. Leftist American
culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of their cynicism about America's
social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our
country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the
later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to
seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that
shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faith-based initiatives will be able to be
part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the
same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We who fancy ourselves philosophers would
do well to create from within ourselves
new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet
capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and
and from within our ranks a
"interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain
hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma
that undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of
peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus
value; the logic of international markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the
politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This
means going down deep into the guts of our
quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but
where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect
decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how
those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their overthrow commences. This
might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy pros who actually know what they
are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good
reason to listen to jargon-riddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the
so-called "managerial class."
Reforms are possible and desirable- tangible change outweighs the risk of
cooption
Omi and Winant 13 Resistance is futile?: a response to Feagin and Elias, Michael Omi, Associate
Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Howard Winant, Professor of Sociology at the
University of California, Santa Barbara and Director of the University of California Center for New Racial
Studies, 2013, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36:6, 961-973, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.715177
In Feagin and Elias’s account, white racist rule in the USA appears unalterable and 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 incomplete democracy in respect to race and racism issues, we agree. If
they mean that people of colour have no democratic rights or political power in the USA, 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 a
result; race-based wealth disparities widened tremendously. It
would be easy to conclude, as Feagin 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 there; perhaps because they are in substantial agreement with us. While we
argue that the right wing 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 mobiliza- tions, 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 incorpora- tion 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’ � cannot be merely symbolic if they are to be effective: oppositions must win real gains in the
§ Marked 08:28 §
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-
broadened and deepened democracy itself. They facilitated not only the
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. By no means do we think that the post-war
movement upsurge was an unmitigated success. Far from it: all the new social movements were subject to the same
‘rearticulation’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, p. xii) that produced the racial ideology of ‘colourblindness’ and its variants; indeed all these
movements confronted their mirror images in the mobilizations that arose from the political right to counter them. Yet even their
incorporation and containment, even their confrontations with the various ‘backlash’ phenomena of the past few
decades, even the need to develop the highly contradictory ideology of ‘colour- blindness’, reveal the transformative character of the
‘politicization of the social’. While it is not possible here to explore so extensive a subject, it is worth noting that it was the long-delayed
defined experience and identity. These demands
democratic gains made in the USA by the black movement and its allies, but also the political
eruption of racial subjectivity and self-awareness into the mainstream political arena that set off this transformation, shaping both the democratic and
anti- democratic social movements that are evident in US politics today.
Coalition building and progressive politics are empirically effective- the
alternative is right wing takeover
Frank and McPhail 5 Barack Obama’s Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention:
Trauma, Compromise, Consilience, and the (Im)possibility of Racial Reconciliation, Frank, David A.
McPhail, Mark Lawrence, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2005, pp. 571-593
(Article) DOI: 10.1353/rap.2006.0006, http://blog.umd.edu/tpg/files/2012/08/FrankMcPhail1.pdf
One hundred years later, legal
segregation fell to the civil rights movement, which also deployed a sophisticated
nonviolent strategy consisting of power- ful rhetorical appeals and found support in an emerging progressive
political agenda . According to Cornel West, a legacy of success can be claimed from the twentieth-century labor and civil rights movements:
Under Roosevelt the organized power of working people was made legitimate, and under Johnson one-half
of all black people and elderly (of all colors) were lifted out of poverty. These achievements—resulting from
intense organized struggle —may feel so far away, in both time and possibility, that holding them up as models may seem pointless.
But reclaiming this powerful democratic legacy is precisely the mission before the Democratic Party
today.25 With the assassinations of minister Malcolm X, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy, the fragmentation of
progressive move- ments in the late 1960s, and the rise of the New Right, the Roosevelt-Johnson model
withered. The failure of the old and new left, and of the larger progres- sive movement to cultivate common ground ,
identity, and values expressed in a cogent narrative explains, in part, why the progress made during the civil rights
era has crested , and in some ways, regressed.26 In the late 1960s, the pro- gressive narrative dissolved into a mélange of competing identity
groups, each with its own trauma, grievance, and demand. The southern strategy of the Republicans complemented the
splintering of the left into “identity groups.” This combination produced a conservative majority that
divided blacks and whites, many of whom shared economic deprivation. Lacking a narrative that could braid
the ethnic groups around a shared purpose , neoliberals appeased blacks and appealed to whites, playing
both sides against the other . Clinton’s “Sister Souljah strategy,” in which he directly confronted Jesse Jackson to secure a greater share of
the Southern white vote, is a prime illustration.27Al Gore sought but did not achieve a similar oppor- tunity in the 2000 election to distance himself
from Reverend Sharpton. Some believe Gore lost because he was perceived to be “an Al Sharpton Democrat.”28In the wake of King’s death, the
civil
rights movement, led by men such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, has failed to craft an effective multiracial narrative.
This history forms the backdrop of the Sharpton and Obama speeches to the 2004 Democratic
Convention. Sharpton presented a narrative that invoked the material realities of the racial contract, one that featured African American trauma
with a narrative that rehearsed traditional themes, reinforcing the val- ues of those who attended the convention and other like-minded observers, but
not reaching beyond them. In contrast, Obama’s
narrative harkened back to the Roosevelt-Johnson legacy of shared
purpose and coalition , and embraced a vision of America grounded in the enlightened ideals of a social contract that espoused human equality,
dignity, and justice regardless of race, class status, or ethnic origin.
Progressive reform is the best chase at success- otherwise you are just
speaking to an echo chamber
Frank and McPhail 5 Barack Obama’s Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention:
Trauma, Compromise, Consilience, and the (Im)possibility of Racial Reconciliation, Frank, David A.
McPhail, Mark Lawrence, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2005, pp. 571-593
(Article) DOI: 10.1353/rap.2006.0006, http://blog.umd.edu/tpg/files/2012/08/FrankMcPhail1.pdf
Sharpton’s narrative casts George Bush as the obstacle to, and the Democratic Party as a tool for, reparations. His speech
fails to sufficiently acknowledge that many whites in the audience were suffering from the after- shocks of their
own traumas. The speech also does not grant blacks the agency to deal with the conditions they face nor
allow that Democrats and John Kerry needed the adherence of some white southerners to win the White
House. While it may be noble and cathartic to speak unvarnished truths, reinforcing the values of those
who already agree , African Americans have made the most progress when they have nested their politics
and fate in multiracial move- ments, casting rhetorical visions designed to persuade a composite audience .
Policy focus doesn’t cause cooption
Stoker 10 Blockages on the road to relevance: why has political science failed to deliver? Gerry stoker,
Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton, (S72–S84) & 2010 European Consortium for
Political Research
Before looking at some of the intellec- tual challenges that have come to grip, let
me consider one objection that I find less
convincing . One proffered reason to object to relevance is that when political scientists have pursued relevance they
have often ended up putting their resea- rch into the hands of established power holders and simply acted to
provide so-called expert judgement to underwrite partisan policymaking (Norton, 2004; Piven, 2004). There is the kernel of a truth in this observation,
as an engaged political science is inherently connected to the play of power. The
political scientist in pursuit of relevance, however,
does not need to be a technician of the state working for power and against the power- less. There are some
cases in which political scientists have sided with power and some in which they have not. A careful and
detailed empirical study by a variety of American academics (Macedo, 2005) into the failings of the political
system of the United States – a study under the auspices of the American Poli- tical Science Association – has produced a set of reform
measures that are suffi- ciently radical not to be seen as a defence of the status quo. There are difficulties and
challenges that social scientists have dealing with power. Political scientists, in particular, should be sensitive to these issues but this objection to
relevance is not one of the strongest.
Demanding action from the state does not mean you believe it- it can be
helpful within and outside of state action
Smith 10 Building Unlikely Alliances: An Interview with Andrea Smith, cofounder of the national
organizations INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and The Boarding School Healing Project, 2010,
http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/10-building-unlikely-alliances-an-interview-with-andrea-smith/
Until you have an alternative system, then there is no “outside” of the current system. I don’t think there is
a pure place in which to work, so you can work in many places, including inside the state . I think there is no reason
not to engage in electoral politics or any other thing. But it would probably be a lot more effective if, while we
are doing that, we are also building alternatives . If we build the alternatives, we have movements to hold
us accountable when we work within the system and we also have more negotiating power . It can actually
be helpful. In terms of, say, state repression, if we have some critical people within the state then we might
be able to do something about it. We might think about them as a way to relieve some of the pressure while
trying to build the alternatives. I don’t think it is un-strategic to think about it like that. I am just not the kind of person who ever says,
“never do ‘x’.” You always have to be open-minded and creative . It may not work out. You may get co-opted or something
bad might happen. But if we really knew the correct way to do something we would have done it by now .
Reformism and speaking the language of elites is empirically successful
Kazin 11 Has the U.S. Left Made a Difference? Michael Kazin, co-editor of Dissent, Spring 2011,
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/has-the-u-s-left-made-a-difference
BUT WHEN POLITICAL RADICALS made a big difference, they generally did so as decidedly junior
partners in a coalition driven by establishment reformers. Abolitionists did not achieve their goal until
midway through the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln and his fellow Republicans realized that the promise of
emancipation could speed victory for the North . Militant unionists were not able to gain a measure of
power in mines, factories, and on the waterfront until Franklin Roosevelt needed labor votes during the New Deal. Only
when Lyndon Johnson and other liberal Democrats conquered their fears of disorder and gave up on the
white South could the black freedom movement celebrate passage of the civil rights and voting rights acts.
For a political movement to gain any major goal, it needs to win over a section of the governing elite (it doesn’t
hurt to gain support from some wealthy philanthropists as well). Only on a handful of occasions has the Left achieved such a victory, and never under
its own name. The divergence between political marginality and cultural influence stems, in part, from the kinds of people who have been the mainstays
of the American Left. During just one period of about four decades—from the late 1870s to the end of the First World War—could radicals authentically
claim to represent more than a tiny number of Americans who belonged to what was, and remains, the majority of the population: white Christians
from the working and lower-middle class. At the time, this group included Americans from various trades and regions who condemned growing
corporations for controlling the marketplace, corrupting politicians, and degrading civic morality. But this period ended after the First World War—due
partly to the epochal split in the international socialist movement. Radicals lost most of the constituency they had gained among ordinary white
Christians and have never been able to regain it. Thus, the wage-earning masses who voted for Socialist, Communist, and Labor parties elsewhere in the
industrial world were almost entirely lost to the American Left—and deeply skeptical about the vision of solidarity that inspired the great welfare states
of Europe. Both before and after this period, the
public face and voice of the Left emanated from an uneasy alliance :
between men and women from elite backgrounds and those from such groups as Jewish immigrant
workers and plebeian blacks whom most Americans viewed as dangerous outsiders. This was true in the abolitionist
movement—when such New England brahmins as Wendell Phillips and Maria Weston Chapman fought alongside
Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. And it was also the case in the New Left of the 1960s, an
unsustainable alliance of white students from elite colleges and black people like Fannie Lou Hamer and
Huey Newton from the ranks of the working poor. It has always been difficult for these top-and-bottom insurgencies to present themselves as
plausible alternatives to the major parties, to convince more than a small minority of voters to embrace their program for sweeping change. Radicals
did help to catalyze mass movements. But furious internal conflicts, a penchant for dogmatism, and hostility toward both nationalism and organized
religion helped make the political Left a taste few Americans cared to acquire. However, some of the same qualities that alienated leftists from the
electorate made them pioneers in generating an alluringly rebellious culture. Talented orators, writers, artists, and academics associated with the Left
put forth new ideas and lifestyles that stirred the imagination of many Americans, particularly young ones, who felt stifled by orthodox values and
social hierarchies. These ideological pioneers also influenced forces around the world that adapted the culture of the U.S. Left to their own purposes—
from the early sprouts of socialism and feminism in the 1830s to the subcultures of black power, radical feminism, and gay liberation in the 1960s and
1970s. Radical ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and social justice did not need to win votes to become popular. They just required an audience. And
leftists who were able to articulate or represent their views in creative ways often found one. Arts created to serve political ends are always vulnerable to
criticism. Indeed, some radicals deliberately gave up their search for the sublime to concentrate on the merely persuasive. But as George Orwell, no
aesthetic slouch, observed, “the opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” IN A SENSE, the radicals
who made the most difference in U.S. history were not that radical at all . What most demanded, in essence,
was the fulfillment of two ideals their fellow Americans already cherished: individual freedom and
communal responsibility. In 1875, Robert Schilling, a German immigrant who was an official in the coopers, or cask-makers, union, reflected
on why socialists were making so little headway among the hard-working citizenry: ….everything that smacks in the least of a curtailment of personal or
individual liberty is most obnoxious to [Americans]. They believe that every individual should be permitted to do what and how it pleases, as long as the
rights and liberties of others are not injured or infringed upon. [But] this personal liberty must be surrendered and placed under the control of the
State, under a government such as proposed by the social Democracy. Most American radicals grasped this simple truth. They demanded that the
promise of individual rights be realized in everyday life and encouraged suspicion of the words and power of all manner of authorities—political,
economic, and religious. Abolitionists, feminists, savvy Marxists all quoted the words of the Declaration of
Independence, the most popular document in the national canon. Of course, leftists did not champion self-reliance, the notion that an
individual is entirely responsible for his or her own fortunes. But they did uphold the modernist vision that Americans should be
free to pursue happiness unfettered by inherited hierarchies and identities. At the same time, the U.S. Left—like its
counterparts around the world—struggled to establish a new order animated by a desire for social fraternity. The labor motto “An injury to one is an
injury to all” rippled far beyond picket lines and marches of the unemployed. But American leftists who articulated this credo
successfully did so in a patriotic and often religious key , rather than by preaching the grim inevitability of
class struggle. Such radical social gospelers as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edward Bellamy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., gained
more influence than did those organizers who espoused secular, Marxian views . Particularly during times of economic
hardship and war, radicals promoted collectivist ends by appealing to the wisdom of “the people” at large. To gain a sympathetic hearing, the Left
always had to demand that the national faith apply equally to everyone and oppose those who wanted to reserve its use for privileged groups and
undemocratic causes.