Explanation/Notes
1. This is a core negative topicality file. It is designed to respond to affirmatives
that do not defend the resolution. When responding to this genre of
affirmative, it is important to be specific and tailor your strategy as best you
can to the particulars of the case. It is also important to consider the
relationship between topicality and the other parts of your strategy. Students
are encouraged not to use the materials in this file in a one-size-fits-all manner.
2. When constructing the 1NC, you can introduce one or more modules. The
1NC in this file includes three modules, but students are welcome to construct a
shorter (or longer) shell. There are also optional modules to include when
debating affirmatives that discuss race and gender issues.
3. The 2NC/1NR materials are separated between “Essentials” (explanations
and extensions of 1NC modules) and “Responses to Aff Arguments.” There is no
pre-scripted “Global Overview” — students should prepare a specific overview
for each debate.
4. There is enough material in the 2NC/1NR sections to enable students to
completely develop this position in the negative block. If topicality is a smaller
part of the negative’s strategy, the blocks will need to be carefully edited to
effectively communicate necessary arguments within stricter time constraints.
5. In order to be ready to defend a topicality argument, students will need to
prepare a violation (“link”) explanation/extension and blocks to expected
affirmative link responses (“we meet because…,” “we are in the direction of the
topic because…,” “we are germane to the topic because…,” etc.). These
explanations need to be carefully tailored to the specific affirmative.
6. To facilitate productive practice debates, this edition of the file is
purposefully limited in scope. There are many other arguments that can (and
should) be included in a comprehensive topicality file. The goal of this file is not
to achieve completeness but to teach students how to better debate topicality
arguments.
1NC
1NC — Topicality USFG – Long version
Our interpretation is that the resolution should define the division of
affirmative and negative ground. It was negotiated and announced in advance,
providing both sides with a reasonable opportunity to prepare to engage one
another’s arguments.
This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or
assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine
the debate’s subject matter.
The affirmative violates this interpretation because they do not advocate that
the United States federal government substantially increase its ocean
exploration and/or development.
First, “United States federal government” means the three branches of the
central government. The affirmative does not advocate action by the USFG.
OECD 87 — Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Council, 1987 (“United
States,” The Control and Management of Government Expenditure, p. 179)
1. Political and organisational structure of government
The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states. States have their own
constitutions and within each State there are at least two additional levels of government,
generally designated as counties and cities, towns or villages. The relationships between
different levels of government are complex and varied (see Section B for more information).
The Federal Government is composed of three branches: the legislative branch, the executive
branch, and the judicial branch. Budgetary decisionmaking is shared primarily by the legislative
and executive branches. The general structure of these two branches relative to budget
formulation and execution is as follows.
Second, “its” implies ownership. Exploration or development of the ocean isn’t
topical unless it is “owned by” the USFG.
Gaertner-Johnston 6 — Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, founder of Syntax Training—a company
that provides business writing training and consulting, holds a Master’s Degree in
Communication from the University of Notre Dame, 2006 (“Its? It's? Or Its'?,” Business Writing—
a blog, May 30th, Available Online at
http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2006/05/its_its_or_its_.html, Accessed
07-04-2014)
A friend of mine asked me to write about how to choose the correct form of its, and I am happy
to comply. Those three little letters cause a lot of confusion, but once you master a couple of
basic rules, the choice becomes simple. Here goes:
Its' is never correct. Your grammar and spellchecker should flag it for you. Always change it to
one of the forms below.
It's is the contraction (abbreviated form) of "it is" and "it has." It's has no other meanings--only
"it is" and "it has."
Its is the form to use in all other instances when you want a form of i-t-s but you are not sure
which one. Its is a possessive form; that is, it shows ownership the same way Javier's or
Santosh's does.
Example: The radio station has lost its license.
The tricky part of the its question is this: If we write "Javier's license" with an apostrophe, why
do we write "its license" without an apostrophe?
Here is the explanation: Its is like hers, his, ours, theirs, and yours. These are all pronouns.
Possessive pronouns do not have apostrophes. That is because their spelling already indicates a
possessive. For example, the possessive form of she is hers. The possessive form of we is ours.
Because we change the spelling, there is no need to add an apostrophe to show possession. Its
follows that pattern.
Third, this requires that exploration or development be carried out by a federal
agency. Statutory language is clear.
CFR 6 — Code of Federal Regulations, last updated in 2006 (“Coastal Zone Management Act
Federal Consistency Regulations,” Title 15 › Subtitle B › Chapter IX › Subchapter B › Part 930 ›
Subpart C › Section 930.31, Available Online at http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/15/930.31,
Accessed 07-04-2014)
§ 930.31 Federal agency activity.
(a) The term “Federal agency activity” means any functions performed by or on behalf of a
Federal agency in the exercise of its statutory responsibilities. The term “Federal agency
activity” includes a range of activities where a Federal agency makes a proposal for action
initiating an activity or series of activities when coastal effects are reasonably foreseeable, e.g., a
Federal agency's proposal to physically alter coastal resources, a plan that is used to direct
future agency actions, a proposed rulemaking that alters uses of the coastal zone. “Federal
agency activity” does not include the issuance of a federal license or permit to an applicant or
person (see subparts D and E of this part) or the granting of federal assistance to an applicant
agency (see subpart F of this part).
(b) The term federal “development project” means a Federal agency activity involving the
planning, construction, modification, or removal of public works, facilities, or other structures,
and includes the acquisition, use, or disposal of any coastal use or resource.
(c) The Federal agency activity category is a residual category for federal actions that are not
covered under subparts D, E, or F of this part.
(d) A general permit proposed by a Federal agency is subject to this subpart if the general permit
does not involve case-by-case or individual issuance of a license or permit by a Federal agency.
When proposing a general permit, a Federal agency shall provide a consistency determination to
the relevant management programs and request that the State agency(ies) provide the Federal
agency with review, and if necessary, conditions, based on specific enforceable policies, that
would permit the State agency to concur with the Federal agency's consistency determination.
State agency concurrence shall remove the need for the State agency to review individual uses
of the general permit for consistency with the enforceable policies of management programs.
Federal agencies shall, pursuant to the consistent to the maximum extent practicable standard
in § 930.32, incorporate State conditions into the general permit. If the State agency's
conditions are not incorporated into the general permit or a State agency objects to the general
permit, then the Federal agency shall notify potential users of the general permit that the
general permit is not available for use in that State unless an applicant under subpart D of this
part or a person under subpart E of this part, who wants to use the general permit in that State
provides the State agency with a consistency certification under subpart D of this part and the
State agency concurs. When subpart D or E of this part applies, all provisions of the relevant
subpart apply.
(e) The terms “Federal agency activity” and “Federal development project” also include
modifications of any such activity or development project which affect any coastal use or
resource, provided that, in the case of modifications of an activity or development project which
the State agency has previously reviewed, the effect on any coastal use or resource is
substantially different than those previously reviewed by the State agency.
There are several reasons to prefer our interpretation.
First — Deliberation Skills. Topicality facilitates a process of successive debates
that develops important skills and fosters appreciation for multiple
perspectives. Abandoning the topic forecloses the educational and democratic
benefits of debate.
Lundberg 10 — Christian O. Lundberg, Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of
Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, holds a Ph.D. in
Communication Studies from Northwestern University, 2010 (“The Allred Initiative and Debate
Across the Curriculum: Reinventing the Tradition of Debate at North Carolina,” Navigating
Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century, Edited by Allan D. Louden, Published by the
International Debate Education Association, ISBN 9781617700293, p. 299)
In response to the first critique, which ultimately reduces to the claims that debate
overdetermines democratic deliberation and that it inculcates an unhealthy antagonism, a
number of scholars have extended the old maxim that dissent is critical to democracy in arguing
that debate is a critical tool for civic deliberation (Brookfield and Preskill 1999; Levinson 2003).
Gill Nichols (2000, 132) argues that a commitment to debate and dissent as a core component of
democracy is especially critical in the face of the complexity of modern governance, rapid
technological change, and an increasing need to deal with the nexus of science and public policy.
The benefits of in-class debate espoused by Stephen Brookfield, Meira Levinson, and Nichols
stem from the idea that debate inculcates skills for creative and open-minded discussion of
disputes in the context of democratic deliberation: on their collective accounting, debate does
not close down discussion by reducing issues to a simple pro/con binary, nor does it promote
antagonism at the expense of cooperative discussion. Rather, properly cultivated, debate is a
tool for managing democratic conflicts that foregrounds significant points of dispute, and then
invites interlocutors to think about them together creatively in the context of successive
strategic iterations, [end page 304] moments of evaluation, and reiterations of arguments in
the context of a structured public discussion.
Goodwin’s study of in-class debate practice confirms these intuitions. Goodwin’s study revealed
that debate produces an intense personal connection to class materials while simultaneously
making students more open to differing viewpoints. Goodwin’s conclusion is worth quoting at
length here:
Traditional teaching techniques like textbooks, lectures, and tests with right answers
insulate students from the open questions and competing answers that so often drive
our own interest in our subjects. Debates do not, and in fact invite students to consider
a range of alternative views on a subject, encountering the course content broadly,
deeply and personally. Students’ comments about the value of disagreement also offer
an interesting perspective on the nature of the thinking skills we want to foster. The
previous research . . . largely focused on the way debate can help students better
master the principles of correct reasoning. Although some students did echo this
finding, many more emphasized the importance of debate in helping them to recognize
and deal with a diversity of viewpoints. (Goodwin 2003, 158)
The results of this research create significant questions about the conclusion that debate
engenders reductive thinking and an antagonism that is unhealthy to democracy. In terms of the
criticism that debate is reductive, the implication of Goodwin’s study is that debate creates a
broader appreciation for multiple perspectives on an issue than the predominant forms of
classroom instruction. This conclusion is especially powerful when one considers debate as more
than a discrete singular performance, but as a whole process of inventing, discussing,
employing, and reformulating arguments in the context of an audience of comparatively
objective evaluators. In the process of researching, strategizing, debating, reframing stances,
and switching sides on a question, students are provided with both a framework for thinking
about a problem and creative solutions to it from a number of angles. Thus, while from a very
narrow perspective one might claim debate practices reduce all questions to a “pro” and a
“con,” the cumulative effects of the pedagogical process of preparing for, performing, and
evaluating a debate provide the widest possible exposure to the varied positions that a student
might take on an issue. Perhaps more significantly, in-class debate provides a competitive
incentive for finding as many innovative and unique approaches to a problem as possible, and
for translating them into publically useful positions.
Next - Constructive Constraints.
Absolute affirmative flexibility leaves the negative without meaningful ground
to advance well-developed counter-arguments. Establishing boundaries is
important because they spur imagination and innovation, improving the quality
of debates.
Thomas and Brown 11 — Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Southern California, founding member of the Critical and
Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association, holds a Ph. D. in
Communication from the University of Minnesota, and John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and
Adviser to the Provost at the University of Southern California, independent cochairman of the
Deloitte Center for the Edge, former Chief Scientist and Director of the Palo Alto Research
Center at Xerox, holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of
Michigan, 2011 (“A Tale of Two Cultures,” A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the
Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform, ISBN 1456458884, p. 35)
Learning Environments
We believe, however, that learning should be viewed in terms of an environment—combined
with the rich resources provided by the digital information network—where the context in
which learning happens, the boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and
information within it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way. Here,
boundaries serve not only as constraints but also, oftentimes, as catalysts for innovation.
Encountering boundaries spurs the imagination to become more active in figuring out novel
situations within the constraints of the situation or context.
Environments with well-defined and carefully constructed boundaries are not usually thought of
as standardized, nor are they tested and measured. Rather, they can be described as a set of
pressures that nudge and guide change. They are substrates for evolution, and they move at
varying rates of speed.
Next — Racial justice:
Policy debates over racial issues are productive and important. Meaningful
dialogue about what actions the government should take overcomes the
conversational impasse and paves the way for material change. Disavowing the
policy consequences of one’s ideological positions makes things worse, not
better.
Bracey 6 — Christopher A. Bracey, Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of
African & African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, holds a B.S. from the
University of North Carolina and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2006 (“The Cul De Sac of Race
Preference Discourse,” Southern California Law Review (79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1231), September,
Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
IV. A Foundation for Renewed Racial Dialogue
A deepened appreciation and open acknowledgment of this pedigree is crucial to restoring
public conversation on race preferences. Opponents of race preferences must come to
understand that this pedigree, if left unaddressed, tends to overwhelm the underlying merit of
arguments against race preferences in the eyes of proponents. At the same time, proponents
should understand that the deployment of these pedigreed rhetorical themes does not
necessarily signal agreement with the nineteenth-century racial norms from which they are
sourced. For both proponents and opponents, the avoidance of a rapid retreat into ideological
trench warfare not only preserves space for reasoned, substantive debate regarding race
preferences, but also allows for the possibility of overcoming our collective fixation on race
preferences as the issue in American race relations and advancing the conversation to reach the
larger issue of producing a more racially inclusive society.
Our failing public conversation on race matters not only presents a particularly tragic moment in
American race relations, but also evinces a greater failure of democracy. Sustained, meaningful
dialogue is a critical, if not indispensable feature of our liberal democracy. n260 It is through
[*1312] meaningful public conversation about what actions government should take (or
refrain from taking) that public policy determinations ultimately gain legitimacy. Conversation is
particularly important in our democracy, given the profoundly diverse and often contradictory
cultural and political traditions that are the sine qua non of American life. Under these particular
circumstances, "persons ought to strive to engage in a mutual process of critical interaction,
because if they do not, no uncoerced common understanding can possibly be attained." n261
Sincere deliberation, in its broadest idealized form, ensures that a broad array of input is heard
and considered, legitimizing the resulting decision. Under this view, "if the preferences that
determine the results of democratic procedures are unreflective or ignorant, then they lose
their claim to political authority over us." n262 In the absence of self-conscious, reflective
dialogue, "democracy loses its capacity to generate legitimate political power." n263
In addition to legitimizing the exercise of state authority in a liberal democracy, dialogue works
to promote individual freedom. The power to hash over our alternatives is an important
exercise of human agency. n264 If democracy is taken to mean rule by the people themselves,
then conversation and deliberation are the principal means through which we declare and
assert the power to shape our own belief systems. The roots of this idea of dialogue as freedompromoting are traceable to the Kantian view that individual motivation that is either uncriticized
or uncontested can be understood on a deeper level as a mode of subjugation. As Frank
Michelman explains, "in Kantian terms we are free only insofar as we are self-governing,
directing our actions in accordance with law-like reasons [*1313] that we adopt for ourselves,
as proper to ourselves, upon conscious, critical reflection on our identities (or natures) and
social situations." n265 Because "self-cognition and ensuing self-legislation must, to a like
extent, be socially situated," Michelman continues, "norms must be formed through public
dialogue and expressed as public law." n266 In this way, dialogue as democratic modus operandi
can be understood both as a material expression of freedom and as a mechanism to promote
individual freedom.
Robust dialogue on public policy matters also promotes the individual growth of the dialogue
participants. Conversation helps people become more knowledgeable and hold better
developed opinions because "opinions can be tested and enlarged only where there is a
genuine encounter with differing opinions." n267 Moreover, meaningful conversation serves to
broaden people's moral perspectives to include matters of public good, because appeals to the
public good are often the most persuasive arguments available in public deliberation. n268
Indeed, even if people are thinking self-interested thoughts while making public good
arguments, cognitive dissonance will create an incentive for such individuals to reconcile their
self interest with the public good. n269 At the same time, because political dialogue is a
material manifestation of democracy in action, it promotes a feeling of democratic community
and instills in the people a will for political action to advance reasoned public policy in the spirit
of promoting the public good. n270
For these reasons, the collective aspiration of those interested in pursing serious, sustained, and
policy-legitimating dialogue on race matters must be to cultivate a reasoned discourse that is
relatively free of retrograde ideological baggage that feeds skepticism, engenders distrust, and
effectively forecloses constructive conversation on the most corrosive and divisive issue in
American history and contemporary life. As the forgoing sections suggest, the continued
reliance upon pedigreed rhetorical themes has and continues to poison racial legal discourse.
Given the various normative and ideological commitments that might be ascribed to [*1314]
opponents of race preferences, the question thus becomes, how are we to approach the task of
breaking through the conversational impasse and creating intellectual space for meaningful
discourse on this issue?
One can imagine at least three responses to this question. As an initial matter, one might
subscribe to the view that pedigree is not destiny, and thus conclude that the family
resemblance tells us little, if anything, definitive about the normative commitments of today's
opponents of race preferences. Consider the argument that the benefits of white privilege do
not extend equally among all whites, and that policies that treat all whites as equally guilty of
racial subordination advance a theory of undesirable rough justice. n271 Although this argument
is a staple of modern opponents of race preferences, it would be a mistake to conclude that it
can only be deployed by those persons who normatively oppose race preferences. Indeed, one
might very well support race preferences, but believe quite strongly that such programs should
be particularly sensitive to individual candidate qualifications.
Similarly, although one might believe that diversity does not comport with merit based
decisionmaking in education and employment, it would be incorrect to interpret this belief as
necessarily indicative of a greater commitment to preserving status quo racial inequality. One
might reject the diversity rational as insufficient to justify a system of race preferences that one
strongly believes must be justified. In short, one may be inclined to simply engage the argument
and ignore the possibility of retrograde normative underpinnings.
Interestingly, a small cadre of scholars has adopted this approach. Derrick Bok and William
Bowen, in The Shape of the River, investigated whether racial minorities feel stigmatized or
otherwise adversely affected as a result of being denoted beneficiaries of affirmative action
policy in college admissions. n272 Thomas Ross has critically examined claims of collective white
innocence. n273 More recently, Goodwin Lui has researched the scope of the burden that
affirmative action in college admissions imposes upon aspiring white students. n274 In each
instance, these scholars chose to place to one side their skepticism about the normative
commitments of those advancing the viewpoint, and launch directly into substantive critiques of
that viewpoint.
[*1315] This approach, however, may prove unsatisfactory for those more strongly committed
to racial justice - those for whom it is not enough to simply challenge ideas in the abstract. As
the late Robert Cover famously wrote, "legal interpretation takes place within a field of pain and
death." n275 By this, he meant that the stakes of legal discourse are elevated when bodies are
on the line. A vigorous critique of the substantive position alone leaves the normative
underpinnings - the motivational force behind the proposal - dangerously intact. It may stymie
the particular vehicle that attempts to reinforce racial subordination, but it leaves unaddressed
the fundamental motive driving policy positions that seek to undermine racial minorities in the
first place.
At the other end of the responsive spectrum is wholesale rejection. One might view the
pedigree as providing good reason to dismiss opponents of race entirely. Proponents of this
view may choose to indulge fully this liberal skepticism and simply reject the message along with
the messenger. n276 The tradition of legal discourse on American race relations [*1316] has
been one steeped in racial animus and characterized by circumlocution, evasiveness, reluctance
and denial. When opponents avail themselves of rhetorical strategies used by nineteenthcentury legal elites, they necessarily invoke the specter of this tragic racial past. Moreover, their
continued reliance upon pedigreed rhetoric to justify a system that only modestly responds to
persistent racial disparities in the material lives of racial minorities suggests a deep,
unarticulated normative commitment to preserving the racial status quo in which whites remain
comfortably above blacks. The steadfast reliance upon pedigreed rhetoric, coupled with the
apparent disconnect between claims of racial egalitarianism and material conditions of racial
subordination as a result of persistent racial disparities, spoils the credibility of modern
opponents of race preferences and creates an incentive for proponents to dismiss them without
serious interrogation, consideration, and weighing of the arguments they advance.
The principal deficit of this approach is that it would serve only to concretize the existing
conversational impasse and subvert the larger aspiration of seeking constructive solutions to
pressing racial issues. It creates an incentive to view race matters in purely ideological terms
and further subverts the possibility of reasoned policy debate. Speaking of race matters in
purely ideological terms poses a serious impediment to racial conversation because, in
advancing one's position, one essentially argues that a particular set of circumstances demands
a particular outcome. In this [*1317] way, purely ideological race rhetoric functions much like
philosopher Immanuel Kant described in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. n277
According to Kant, a moral imperative is categorical insofar as it is presented as objectively
necessary, without reference to some purpose or outcome. The imperative is the end in and of
itself. As Kant explained, the moral imperative "has to do not with the matter of the action and
what is to result from it, but with the form and the principle from which the action itself follows;
and the essentially [sic] good in the action consists in the disposition, let the result be what it
may." n278 Because the moral imperative embodies that which is morally good, it necessarily
makes a claim about justice. In short, an act is deemed morally just to the extent that it retains
fidelity to the moral imperative.
By contrast, a policy argument reflects a set of choices or priorities and asserts a claim about the
impact of a particular set of decisions upon the world. n279 A policy argument does not
embody a claim to justice. Indeed, the correctness of a policy choice is often tested against the
backdrop of some agreed upon conception of justice. As the late Jerome Culp, Jr. explained:
Neither side of a moral debate is likely to be persuaded by proof that the policy claims
support or discredit their moral positions. Policy arguments can be disproved by
empirical evidence and challenged by showing in some situations the policy does not
work or has contrary results. To refute a moral claim, however, first requires some
agreement on the moral framework. Only then can one discuss whether the moral
policy advocated conforms to the agreed-upon framework. n280
Speaking about race matters in purely ideological or moral terms creates the impression that a
particular racial policy is rooted in some theory of what is morally just. In this way, opposition to
race preferences is made to appear "above the fray" of politics and less susceptible to public
choice debate. In addition, it enables opponents to claim that race [*1318] preferences merely
reflect the political whims of its proponents, unanchored by principle or a coherent theory of
social justice.
Second, reducing conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows opponents to
elide inquiry into whether the results of a particular preference policy are desirable. Policy
positions masquerading as principled ideological stances create the impression that a racial
policy is not simply a choice among available alternatives, but the embodiment of some higher
moral principle. Thus, the "principle" becomes an end in itself, without reference to outcomes.
Consider the prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional discourse. Colorblindness has
come to be understood as the embodiment of what is morally just, independent of its actual
effect upon the lives of racial minorities. This explains Justice Thomas's belief in the "moral and
constitutional equivalence" between Jim Crow laws and race preferences, and his tragic
assertion that "Government cannot make us equal [but] can only recognize, respect, and protect
us as equal before the law." n281 For Thomas, there is no meaningful difference between laws
designed to entrench racial subordination and those designed to alleviate conditions of
oppression. Critics may point out that colorblindness in practice has the effect of entrenching
existing racial disparities in health, wealth, and society. But in framing the debate in purely
ideological terms, opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of outcomes and make
viability determinations based exclusively on whether racially progressive measures exude
fidelity to the ideological principle of colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by
ideological exchange, which further exacerbates hostilities and deepens the cycle of
resentment. n282
Decide the debate using competing interpretations – you should vote for the team
that has the best vision for debate. Even if they have an educational approach their
interpretation allows hundreds of non-educational approaches.
Topical version of the aff – have the United States federal government provide substantial
funding to search for shipwrecks to uncover narratives that mourn the loss endured during the
Middle Passage.
1NC – Topicality USFG – Short version
Our interpretation is that the resolution should define the division of
affirmative and negative ground. It was negotiated and announced in advance,
providing both sides with a reasonable opportunity to prepare to engage one
another’s arguments.
This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or
assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine
the debate’s subject matter.
The affirmative violates this interpretation because they do not advocate that
the United States federal government substantially increase its ocean
exploration and/or development.
First, “United States federal government” means the three branches of the
central government. The affirmative does not advocate action by the USFG.
OECD 87 — Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Council, 1987 (“United
States,” The Control and Management of Government Expenditure, p. 179)
1. Political and organisational structure of government
The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states. States have their own
constitutions and within each State there are at least two additional levels of government,
generally designated as counties and cities, towns or villages. The relationships between
different levels of government are complex and varied (see Section B for more information).
The Federal Government is composed of three branches: the legislative branch, the executive
branch, and the judicial branch. Budgetary decisionmaking is shared primarily by the legislative
and executive branches. The general structure of these two branches relative to budget
formulation and execution is as follows.
Second, “its” implies ownership. Exploration or development of the ocean isn’t
topical unless it is “owned by” the USFG.
Gaertner-Johnston 6 — Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, founder of Syntax Training—a company
that provides business writing training and consulting, holds a Master’s Degree in
Communication from the University of Notre Dame, 2006 (“Its? It's? Or Its'?,” Business Writing—
a blog, May 30th, Available Online at
http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2006/05/its_its_or_its_.html, Accessed
07-04-2014)
A friend of mine asked me to write about how to choose the correct form of its, and I am happy
to comply. Those three little letters cause a lot of confusion, but once you master a couple of
basic rules, the choice becomes simple. Here goes:
Its' is never correct. Your grammar and spellchecker should flag it for you. Always change it to
one of the forms below.
It's is the contraction (abbreviated form) of "it is" and "it has." It's has no other meanings--only
"it is" and "it has."
Its is the form to use in all other instances when you want a form of i-t-s but you are not sure
which one. Its is a possessive form; that is, it shows ownership the same way Javier's or
Santosh's does.
Example: The radio station has lost its license.
The tricky part of the its question is this: If we write "Javier's license" with an apostrophe, why
do we write "its license" without an apostrophe?
Here is the explanation: Its is like hers, his, ours, theirs, and yours. These are all pronouns.
Possessive pronouns do not have apostrophes. That is because their spelling already indicates a
possessive. For example, the possessive form of she is hers. The possessive form of we is ours.
Because we change the spelling, there is no need to add an apostrophe to show possession. Its
follows that pattern.
Third, this requires that exploration or development be carried out by a federal
agency. Statutory language is clear.
CFR 6 — Code of Federal Regulations, last updated in 2006 (“Coastal Zone Management Act
Federal Consistency Regulations,” Title 15 › Subtitle B › Chapter IX › Subchapter B › Part 930 ›
Subpart C › Section 930.31, Available Online at http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/15/930.31,
Accessed 07-04-2014)
§ 930.31 Federal agency activity.
(a) The term “Federal agency activity” means any functions performed by or on behalf of a
Federal agency in the exercise of its statutory responsibilities. The term “Federal agency
activity” includes a range of activities where a Federal agency makes a proposal for action
initiating an activity or series of activities when coastal effects are reasonably foreseeable, e.g., a
Federal agency's proposal to physically alter coastal resources, a plan that is used to direct
future agency actions, a proposed rulemaking that alters uses of the coastal zone. “Federal
agency activity” does not include the issuance of a federal license or permit to an applicant or
person (see subparts D and E of this part) or the granting of federal assistance to an applicant
agency (see subpart F of this part).
(b) The term federal “development project” means a Federal agency activity involving the
planning, construction, modification, or removal of public works, facilities, or other structures,
and includes the acquisition, use, or disposal of any coastal use or resource.
(c) The Federal agency activity category is a residual category for federal actions that are not
covered under subparts D, E, or F of this part.
(d) A general permit proposed by a Federal agency is subject to this subpart if the general permit
does not involve case-by-case or individual issuance of a license or permit by a Federal agency.
When proposing a general permit, a Federal agency shall provide a consistency determination to
the relevant management programs and request that the State agency(ies) provide the Federal
agency with review, and if necessary, conditions, based on specific enforceable policies, that
would permit the State agency to concur with the Federal agency's consistency determination.
State agency concurrence shall remove the need for the State agency to review individual uses
of the general permit for consistency with the enforceable policies of management programs.
Federal agencies shall, pursuant to the consistent to the maximum extent practicable standard
in § 930.32, incorporate State conditions into the general permit. If the State agency's
conditions are not incorporated into the general permit or a State agency objects to the general
permit, then the Federal agency shall notify potential users of the general permit that the
general permit is not available for use in that State unless an applicant under subpart D of this
part or a person under subpart E of this part, who wants to use the general permit in that State
provides the State agency with a consistency certification under subpart D of this part and the
State agency concurs. When subpart D or E of this part applies, all provisions of the relevant
subpart apply.
(e) The terms “Federal agency activity” and “Federal development project” also include
modifications of any such activity or development project which affect any coastal use or
resource, provided that, in the case of modifications of an activity or development project which
the State agency has previously reviewed, the effect on any coastal use or resource is
substantially different than those previously reviewed by the State agency.
Vote negative
Racial justice:
Policy debates over racial issues are productive and important. Meaningful
dialogue about what actions the government should take overcomes the
conversational impasse and paves the way for material change. Disavowing the
policy consequences of one’s ideological positions makes things worse, not
better.
Bracey 6 — Christopher A. Bracey, Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of
African & African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, holds a B.S. from the
University of North Carolina and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2006 (“The Cul De Sac of Race
Preference Discourse,” Southern California Law Review (79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1231), September,
Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
IV. A Foundation for Renewed Racial Dialogue
A deepened appreciation and open acknowledgment of this pedigree is crucial to restoring
public conversation on race preferences. Opponents of race preferences must come to
understand that this pedigree, if left unaddressed, tends to overwhelm the underlying merit of
arguments against race preferences in the eyes of proponents. At the same time, proponents
should understand that the deployment of these pedigreed rhetorical themes does not
necessarily signal agreement with the nineteenth-century racial norms from which they are
sourced. For both proponents and opponents, the avoidance of a rapid retreat into ideological
trench warfare not only preserves space for reasoned, substantive debate regarding race
preferences, but also allows for the possibility of overcoming our collective fixation on race
preferences as the issue in American race relations and advancing the conversation to reach the
larger issue of producing a more racially inclusive society.
Our failing public conversation on race matters not only presents a particularly tragic moment in
American race relations, but also evinces a greater failure of democracy. Sustained, meaningful
dialogue is a critical, if not indispensable feature of our liberal democracy. n260 It is through
[*1312] meaningful public conversation about what actions government should take (or
refrain from taking) that public policy determinations ultimately gain legitimacy. Conversation is
particularly important in our democracy, given the profoundly diverse and often contradictory
cultural and political traditions that are the sine qua non of American life. Under these particular
circumstances, "persons ought to strive to engage in a mutual process of critical interaction,
because if they do not, no uncoerced common understanding can possibly be attained." n261
Sincere deliberation, in its broadest idealized form, ensures that a broad array of input is heard
and considered, legitimizing the resulting decision. Under this view, "if the preferences that
determine the results of democratic procedures are unreflective or ignorant, then they lose
their claim to political authority over us." n262 In the absence of self-conscious, reflective
dialogue, "democracy loses its capacity to generate legitimate political power." n263
In addition to legitimizing the exercise of state authority in a liberal democracy, dialogue works
to promote individual freedom. The power to hash over our alternatives is an important
exercise of human agency. n264 If democracy is taken to mean rule by the people themselves,
then conversation and deliberation are the principal means through which we declare and
assert the power to shape our own belief systems. The roots of this idea of dialogue as freedompromoting are traceable to the Kantian view that individual motivation that is either uncriticized
or uncontested can be understood on a deeper level as a mode of subjugation. As Frank
Michelman explains, "in Kantian terms we are free only insofar as we are self-governing,
directing our actions in accordance with law-like reasons [*1313] that we adopt for ourselves,
as proper to ourselves, upon conscious, critical reflection on our identities (or natures) and
social situations." n265 Because "self-cognition and ensuing self-legislation must, to a like
extent, be socially situated," Michelman continues, "norms must be formed through public
dialogue and expressed as public law." n266 In this way, dialogue as democratic modus operandi
can be understood both as a material expression of freedom and as a mechanism to promote
individual freedom.
Robust dialogue on public policy matters also promotes the individual growth of the dialogue
participants. Conversation helps people become more knowledgeable and hold better
developed opinions because "opinions can be tested and enlarged only where there is a
genuine encounter with differing opinions." n267 Moreover, meaningful conversation serves to
broaden people's moral perspectives to include matters of public good, because appeals to the
public good are often the most persuasive arguments available in public deliberation. n268
Indeed, even if people are thinking self-interested thoughts while making public good
arguments, cognitive dissonance will create an incentive for such individuals to reconcile their
self interest with the public good. n269 At the same time, because political dialogue is a
material manifestation of democracy in action, it promotes a feeling of democratic community
and instills in the people a will for political action to advance reasoned public policy in the spirit
of promoting the public good. n270
For these reasons, the collective aspiration of those interested in pursing serious, sustained, and
policy-legitimating dialogue on race matters must be to cultivate a reasoned discourse that is
relatively free of retrograde ideological baggage that feeds skepticism, engenders distrust, and
effectively forecloses constructive conversation on the most corrosive and divisive issue in
American history and contemporary life. As the forgoing sections suggest, the continued
reliance upon pedigreed rhetorical themes has and continues to poison racial legal discourse.
Given the various normative and ideological commitments that might be ascribed to [*1314]
opponents of race preferences, the question thus becomes, how are we to approach the task of
breaking through the conversational impasse and creating intellectual space for meaningful
discourse on this issue?
One can imagine at least three responses to this question. As an initial matter, one might
subscribe to the view that pedigree is not destiny, and thus conclude that the family
resemblance tells us little, if anything, definitive about the normative commitments of today's
opponents of race preferences. Consider the argument that the benefits of white privilege do
not extend equally among all whites, and that policies that treat all whites as equally guilty of
racial subordination advance a theory of undesirable rough justice. n271 Although this argument
is a staple of modern opponents of race preferences, it would be a mistake to conclude that it
can only be deployed by those persons who normatively oppose race preferences. Indeed, one
might very well support race preferences, but believe quite strongly that such programs should
be particularly sensitive to individual candidate qualifications.
Similarly, although one might believe that diversity does not comport with merit based
decisionmaking in education and employment, it would be incorrect to interpret this belief as
necessarily indicative of a greater commitment to preserving status quo racial inequality. One
might reject the diversity rational as insufficient to justify a system of race preferences that one
strongly believes must be justified. In short, one may be inclined to simply engage the argument
and ignore the possibility of retrograde normative underpinnings.
Interestingly, a small cadre of scholars has adopted this approach. Derrick Bok and William
Bowen, in The Shape of the River, investigated whether racial minorities feel stigmatized or
otherwise adversely affected as a result of being denoted beneficiaries of affirmative action
policy in college admissions. n272 Thomas Ross has critically examined claims of collective white
innocence. n273 More recently, Goodwin Lui has researched the scope of the burden that
affirmative action in college admissions imposes upon aspiring white students. n274 In each
instance, these scholars chose to place to one side their skepticism about the normative
commitments of those advancing the viewpoint, and launch directly into substantive critiques of
that viewpoint.
[*1315] This approach, however, may prove unsatisfactory for those more strongly committed
to racial justice - those for whom it is not enough to simply challenge ideas in the abstract. As
the late Robert Cover famously wrote, "legal interpretation takes place within a field of pain and
death." n275 By this, he meant that the stakes of legal discourse are elevated when bodies are
on the line. A vigorous critique of the substantive position alone leaves the normative
underpinnings - the motivational force behind the proposal - dangerously intact. It may stymie
the particular vehicle that attempts to reinforce racial subordination, but it leaves unaddressed
the fundamental motive driving policy positions that seek to undermine racial minorities in the
first place.
At the other end of the responsive spectrum is wholesale rejection. One might view the
pedigree as providing good reason to dismiss opponents of race entirely. Proponents of this
view may choose to indulge fully this liberal skepticism and simply reject the message along with
the messenger. n276 The tradition of legal discourse on American race relations [*1316] has
been one steeped in racial animus and characterized by circumlocution, evasiveness, reluctance
and denial. When opponents avail themselves of rhetorical strategies used by nineteenthcentury legal elites, they necessarily invoke the specter of this tragic racial past. Moreover, their
continued reliance upon pedigreed rhetoric to justify a system that only modestly responds to
persistent racial disparities in the material lives of racial minorities suggests a deep,
unarticulated normative commitment to preserving the racial status quo in which whites remain
comfortably above blacks. The steadfast reliance upon pedigreed rhetoric, coupled with the
apparent disconnect between claims of racial egalitarianism and material conditions of racial
subordination as a result of persistent racial disparities, spoils the credibility of modern
opponents of race preferences and creates an incentive for proponents to dismiss them without
serious interrogation, consideration, and weighing of the arguments they advance.
The principal deficit of this approach is that it would serve only to concretize the existing
conversational impasse and subvert the larger aspiration of seeking constructive solutions to
pressing racial issues. It creates an incentive to view race matters in purely ideological terms
and further subverts the possibility of reasoned policy debate. Speaking of race matters in
purely ideological terms poses a serious impediment to racial conversation because, in
advancing one's position, one essentially argues that a particular set of circumstances demands
a particular outcome. In this [*1317] way, purely ideological race rhetoric functions much like
philosopher Immanuel Kant described in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. n277
According to Kant, a moral imperative is categorical insofar as it is presented as objectively
necessary, without reference to some purpose or outcome. The imperative is the end in and of
itself. As Kant explained, the moral imperative "has to do not with the matter of the action and
what is to result from it, but with the form and the principle from which the action itself follows;
and the essentially [sic] good in the action consists in the disposition, let the result be what it
may." n278 Because the moral imperative embodies that which is morally good, it necessarily
makes a claim about justice. In short, an act is deemed morally just to the extent that it retains
fidelity to the moral imperative.
By contrast, a policy argument reflects a set of choices or priorities and asserts a claim about the
impact of a particular set of decisions upon the world. n279 A policy argument does not
embody a claim to justice. Indeed, the correctness of a policy choice is often tested against the
backdrop of some agreed upon conception of justice. As the late Jerome Culp, Jr. explained:
Neither side of a moral debate is likely to be persuaded by proof that the policy claims
support or discredit their moral positions. Policy arguments can be disproved by
empirical evidence and challenged by showing in some situations the policy does not
work or has contrary results. To refute a moral claim, however, first requires some
agreement on the moral framework. Only then can one discuss whether the moral
policy advocated conforms to the agreed-upon framework. n280
Speaking about race matters in purely ideological or moral terms creates the impression that a
particular racial policy is rooted in some theory of what is morally just. In this way, opposition to
race preferences is made to appear "above the fray" of politics and less susceptible to public
choice debate. In addition, it enables opponents to claim that race [*1318] preferences merely
reflect the political whims of its proponents, unanchored by principle or a coherent theory of
social justice.
Second, reducing conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows opponents to
elide inquiry into whether the results of a particular preference policy are desirable. Policy
positions masquerading as principled ideological stances create the impression that a racial
policy is not simply a choice among available alternatives, but the embodiment of some higher
moral principle. Thus, the "principle" becomes an end in itself, without reference to outcomes.
Consider the prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional discourse. Colorblindness has
come to be understood as the embodiment of what is morally just, independent of its actual
effect upon the lives of racial minorities. This explains Justice Thomas's belief in the "moral and
constitutional equivalence" between Jim Crow laws and race preferences, and his tragic
assertion that "Government cannot make us equal [but] can only recognize, respect, and protect
us as equal before the law." n281 For Thomas, there is no meaningful difference between laws
designed to entrench racial subordination and those designed to alleviate conditions of
oppression. Critics may point out that colorblindness in practice has the effect of entrenching
existing racial disparities in health, wealth, and society. But in framing the debate in purely
ideological terms, opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of outcomes and make
viability determinations based exclusively on whether racially progressive measures exude
fidelity to the ideological principle of colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by
ideological exchange, which further exacerbates hostilities and deepens the cycle of
resentment. n282
Decide the debate using competing interpretations – you should vote for the team that has
the best vision for debate. Even if they have an educational approach their interpretation
allows hundreds of non-educational approaches.
Topical version of the aff – have the United States federal government provide substantial
funding to search for shipwrecks to uncover narratives that mourn the loss endured during the
Middle Passage.
2NC/1NR — Essentials
Deliberation Skills Explanation/Extension
(Extend our “Deliberation Skills” impact.)
Debating an agreed-upon topic for an entire season is valuable because it trains
students to effectively deliberate. The process of debating the topic is valuable
independent of its content: successive strategic iterations, moments of
evaluation, and reiterations of arguments in the context of a structured
discussion train students to appreciate multiple perspectives and better
conceptualize and communicate informed positions. Switching sides on the
question is important because it establishes a framework for thinking through
problems and solutions from multiple angles. Content-based critiques of the
topic aren’t responsive to our process-based defense of topical debating —
that’s Lundberg.
Even if the content of the affirmative is valuable, the process they endorse is
not. Debating the topic challenges students to articulate and defend positions
grounded in the best evidence for and against the proposition. Knowledge of
the topic increases depth of inquiry and quality of evaluation.
Lundberg 10 — Christian O. Lundberg, Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of
Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, holds a Ph.D. in
Communication Studies from Northwestern University, 2010 (“The Allred Initiative and Debate
Across the Curriculum: Reinventing the Tradition of Debate at North Carolina,” Navigating
Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century, Edited by Allan D. Louden, Published by the
International Debate Education Association, ISBN 9781617700293, p. 299)
Part of the benefit of debate in this regard is that more than simply fostering student
engagement with the curricula by incentivizing mastery of the material and engendering a
cooperative learning environment, debate practices also facilitate the application of course
material to students’ everyday lives (Kennedy 2007, 183; Martens 2005, 4). Debate practice is
uniquely effective in fostering application because it demands that a student have a relatively
comprehensive grasp of a subject area, but, more important, that they articulate a position
relative to the issues in the debate, and evaluate the competing claims that they might make
in relation to the strength of the evidence that supports them (Schuster and Meany 2005).
Thus, debate practices foster not only engagement with an issue but also an evaluation of a
student’s position relative to an issue in the light of the best arguments for and against a
proposition. Debate offers privileged access not only to content mastery, or even opinion
formation, but what is more important is that it bridges the gap between the theoretical
knowledge inculcated in the classroom and the specific personal stands that one might take
both toward a specific resolution and, more broadly, toward the critical argumentative
connections that a given resolution for debate accesses. Debate then has the potential to create
a depth of inquiry and evaluation relative to the classroom curriculum that is unparalleled both
in terms of knowledge of a subject area, and perhaps more significantly, in terms of a set of
owned investments relative to the propositions at hand.
Deliberation skills are the most significant impact because they determine a
student’s ability to effectively communicate the content of their positions.
Prioritizing content over process leaves students less prepared to vigorously
defend their opinions when challenged by well-prepared opponents in nondebate settings.
Ocean Literacy Explanation/Extension
(Extend our “Ocean Literacy” impact.)
Debating about the assigned ocean policy topic trains students to become
scientifically literate and engaged citizens. The oceans are important and at the
heart of 21st century global catastrophic risks like climate change and
ecosystem destruction. Unless the curriculum challenges students to grapple
with ocean policy issues, the next generation will be unprepared and
uninformed to address these complex problems. Only topical debates access
this impact because ocean policy is generally devalued in K-12 education —
that’s Steffen, a scientist and educational specialist at the NOAA.
Ocean literacy among ordinary citizens is vital to shape effective public policy.
Debating the assigned topic is key — it engages learners and builds personal
connections to the oceans.
COSEE 13 — Centers for Ocean Science Education Excellence, National Geographic Society,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and College of Exploration — this pamphlet
resulted from the 2-week On-Line Workshop on Ocean Literacy through Science Standards, a
collaboration between over 100 members of the ocean science and education communities,
2013 (Ocean Literacy: The Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts of Ocean Sciences for
Learners of All Ages, Version 2, March, Available Online at
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/literacy/ocean_literacy.pdf, Accessed 07-02-2014, p. 4)
Using the Ocean as a Teaching Tool
The ocean covers most of our planet, is the source of most life on Earth, regulates our weather
and climate, provides most of our oxygen, and feeds much of the human population. After
decades of pollution, habitat degradation and overfishing, now climate change and ocean
acidification threaten the health of the ocean in unprecedented ways.
Better public understanding of the ocean is an important part of resolving these complex and
critical issues. While the public generally has limited understanding of the ocean (The Ocean
Project, 2009), the more people know, the more they are willing to support policies to keep the
ocean healthy (Steel et al., 2005). Understanding complex systems like the ocean is difficult.
However, the use of models, computer simulations, and first-hand experiences strongly enhance
learning and teaching (Tran, 2009). Engaging learners in experiences focused on the ocean helps
them build personal connections to the ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes that motivate them to
become ocean literate and to act on behalf of the ocean.
They’ll say that their affirmative accesses this impact because it has something
to do with the ocean, but this isn’t good enough. Ocean literacy requires
rigorous training in fundamental concepts — only season-long engagement
with the assigned topic will cut it.
Dove 11 — Alistair Dove, Director of Research and Conservation at Georgia Aquarium in
Atlanta, former Curator of Aquatic Animal Health at the New York Aquarium, serves as an
adjunct faculty member at the University of Georgia, Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine,
Stony Brook University, and Savannah State College, holds a Ph.D. in Zoology and Parasitology
from the University of Queensland (Australia), 2011 (“Promoting Ocean Literacy – a DSN Core
Value,” Deep Sea News—a collaborate science blog about the oceans, December 22nd, Available
Online at http://deepseanews.com/2011/12/promoting-ocean-literacy-a-dsn-core-value/,
Accessed 07-02-2014)
When the DSN crew gathered for our inaugural retreat recently, one of the core values we
agreed on was “promoting ocean literacy”. This value is something that just about everyone in
marine science agrees on (example, example, example), but what does it really mean? Marine
scientists and marine educators have an intuitive sense of what ocean literacy is. It doesn’t
mean that everyone has to have read Moby Dick (although its a bloody good read). Rather,
ocean literacy means the public understands the fundamental concepts of marine science, how
we affect the oceans, and how they affect us. An ocean literate public is one where, when news
or events occur that are relevant to the oceans, they can understand the implications for the
seas, for humanity and for the world as a whole, and are engaged both intellectually and
behaviourally. OK great, so how should we achieve this and, specifically, how can we as
“scientist communicators” at DSN help this process?
* DSN = Deep Sea News, a collaborative science blog about the oceans
Our impact is unique to our interpretation — federal action is needed to
protect oceans.
Blankenship 3 — Karl Blankenship, Editor of the Bay Journal and Executive Director of
Chesapeake Media Service, 2003 (“Commission recommends overhaul of nation’s ocean policy,”
Bay Journal—a publication about the Chesapeake Bay, July 1st, Available Online at
http://www.bayjournal.com/article/commission_recommends_overhaul_of_nations_ocean_pol
icy, Accessed 07-08-2014)
The nation’s oceans face a crisis stemming from pollution, overfishing and rapid coastal
development that requires a more active federal role if ocean and coastal ecosystems are to be
protected and restored, a three-year study has concluded.
The Pew Oceans Commission report recommended that the nation move away from the
“frontier mentality” that had led to excessive exploitation of the oceans and instead make
restoration of healthy marine ecosystems a national priority.
Constructive Constraints Explanation/Extension
(Extend our “Constructive Constraints” impact.)
Learning is most effective when students are given the freedom to innovate
within well-defined and carefully constructed boundaries. Without constraints,
affirmatives will gravitate toward positions that don’t invite a well-prepared
and thoughtful negative response. Constructing boundaries catalyzes
innovation and spurs students’ imaginations, improving the overall quality of
debates — that’s Thomas and Brown, two Ph.D.s specializing in the culture of
21st century learning.
Their “topicality bad” arguments assume that boundaries constrain innovation.
We critique this assumption. “Topicality not framework” is the best way to
encourage creative imagination within the confines of a bounded environment.
Prefer evidence from education and innovation experts.
Thomas and Brown 11 — Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Southern California, founding member of the Critical and
Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association, holds a Ph. D. in
Communication from the University of Minnesota, and John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and
Adviser to the Provost at the University of Southern California, independent cochairman of the
Deloitte Center for the Edge, former Chief Scientist and Director of the Palo Alto Research
Center at Xerox, holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of
Michigan, 2011 (“We Know More Than We Can Say,” A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the
Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform, ISBN 1456458884, p. 79)
Inquiry
Conventional wisdom holds that different people learn in different ways. Something is missing
from that idea, however, so we offer a corollary: Different people, when presented with exactly
the same information in exactly the same way, will learn different things. Most models of
education and learning have almost no tolerance for this kind of thing. As a result, teaching
tends to focus on eliminating the source of the problem: the student’s imagination.
Imagine a situation where two students are learning to play the piano. The lesson for the day is
a Bach prelude. The first student attacks the piano forcefully, banging out each note correctly
but with a violent intensity that is uncharacteristic for the style of the piece. The second student
seems to view the written score as a loose framework; he varies the rhythm, modifies the
melody, and follows his own internal muse. In today’s classroom, the teacher will see two
students “doing it wrong.” In the new culture of learning, the teacher will see a budding rock
star and a jazz musician.
The story of these students illustrates a fundamental principle of the new culture of learning:
Students learn best when they are able to follow their passion and operate within the
constraints of a bounded environment. Both of those elements matter. Without the boundary
set by the assignment of playing the prelude, there would be no medium for growth. But
without the passion, there would be nothing to grow in the medium. Yet the process of
discovering one’s passion can be complicated.
An “anything goes” approach doesn’t work. Clear boundaries are needed
precisely because they are challenging.
Thomas and Brown 11 — Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Southern California, founding member of the Critical and
Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association, holds a Ph. D. in
Communication from the University of Minnesota, and John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and
Adviser to the Provost at the University of Southern California, independent cochairman of the
Deloitte Center for the Edge, former Chief Scientist and Director of the Palo Alto Research
Center at Xerox, holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of
Michigan, 2011 (“We Know More Than We Can Say,” A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the
Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform, ISBN 1456458884, p. 80-81)
Questions and Answers
The new culture of learning is not about unchecked access [end page 80] to information and
unbridled passion, however. Left to their own devices, there is no telling what students will do.
If you give them a resource like the Internet and ask them to follow their passion, they will
probably meander around finding bits and pieces of information that move them from topic to
topic—and produce a very haphazard result.
Instead, the new culture of learning is about the kind of tension that develops when students
with an interest or passion that they want to explore are faced with a set of constraints that
allow them to act only within given boundaries.
Prefer our evidence — psychological studies confirm our thesis.
Gibbert et al. 7 — Michael Gibbert, Assistant Professor of Management at Bocconi University
(Italy), et al., with Martin Hoeglis, Professor of Leadership and Human Resource Management at
WHU—Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany), and Lifsa Valikangas, Professor of
Innovation Management at the Helsinki School of Economics (Finland) and Director of the
Woodside Institute, 2007 (“In Praise of Resource Constraints,” MIT Sloan Management Review,
Spring, Available Online at
https://umdrive.memphis.edu/gdeitz/public/The%20Moneyball%20Hypothesis/Gibbert%20et%
20al.%20-%20SMR%20(2007)%20Praise%20Resource%20Constraints.pdf, Accessed 04-08-2012,
p. 15-16)
Resource constraints can also fuel innovative team performance directly. In the spirit of the
proverb "necessity is the mother of invention," [end page 15] teams may produce better
results because of resource constraints. Cognitive psychology provides experimental support
for the "less is more" hypothesis. For example, scholars in creative cognition find in laboratory
tests that subjects are most innovative when given fewer rather than more resources for
solving a problem.
The reason seems to be that the human mind is most productive when restricted. Limited—or
better focused—by specific rules and constraints, we are more likely to recognize an
unexpected idea. Suppose, for example, that we need to put dinner on the table for unexpected
guests arriving later that day. The main constraints here are the ingredients available and how
much time is left. One way to solve this problem is to think of a familiar recipe and then head off
to the supermarket for the extra ingredients. Alternatively, we may start by looking in the
refrigerator and cupboard to see what is already there, then allowing ourselves to devise
innovative ways of combining subsets of these ingredients. Many cooks attest that the latter
option, while riskier, often leads to more creative and better appreciated dinners. In fact, it is
the option invariably preferred by professional chefs.
The heightened innovativeness of such "constraints-driven" solutions comes from team
members' tendencies, under the circumstances, to look for alternatives beyond "how things
are normally done," write C. Page Moreau and Darren W. Dahl in a 2005 Journal of Consumer
Research article. Would-be innovators facing constraints are more likely to find creative
analogies and combinations that would otherwise be hidden under a glut of resources.
They’ll say that their aff is creative, but this misses the point. Topical
constraints are a better conduit for creativity. Enforcing limits incentivizes
innovation to find ways to express one’s arguments within the confines of the
topic.
Intrator 10—David Intrator, President of Strategic Documentaries, Founder of The Creative
Organization, holds an M.A. in Music from Harvard University, 2010 [“Thinking Inside the Box,”
Training magazine, October 21st, Available Online at
http://www.trainingmag.com/article/thinking-inside-box, Accessed 02-20-2012]
One of the most pernicious myths about creativity, one that seriously inhibits creative thinking
and innovation, is the belief that one needs to “think outside the box.”
As someone who has worked for decades as a professional creative, nothing could be further
from the truth. This a is view shared by the vast majority of creatives, expressed famously by
the modernist designer Charles Eames when he wrote, “Design depends largely upon
constraints.”
The myth of thinking outside the box stems from a fundamental misconception of what
creativity is, and what it’s not.
In the popular imagination, creativity is something weird and wacky. The creative process is
magical, or divinely inspired.
But, in fact, creativity is not about divine inspiration or magic.
It’s about problem-solving, and by definition a problem is a constraint, a limit, a box.
One of the best illustrations of this is the work of photographers. They create by excluding the
great mass what’s before them, choosing a small frame in which to work. Within that tiny frame,
literally a box, they uncover relationships and establish priorities.
What makes creative problem-solving uniquely challenging is that you, as the creator, are the
one defining the problem. You’re the one choosing the frame. And you alone determine what’s
an effective solution.
This can be quite demanding, both intellectually and emotionally.
Intellectually, you are required to establish limits, set priorities, and cull patterns and
relationships from a great deal of material, much of it fragmentary.
More often than not, this is the material you generated during brainstorming sessions. At the
end of these sessions, you’re usually left with a big mess of ideas, half-ideas, vague notions, and
the like.
Now, chances are you’ve had a great time making your mess. You might have gone off-site,
enjoyed a “brainstorming camp,” played a number of warm-up games. You feel artistic and
empowered.
But to be truly creative, you have to clean up your mess, organizing those fragments into
something real, something useful, something that actually works.
That’s the hard part.
It takes a lot of energy, time, and willpower to make sense of the mess you’ve just generated.
It also can be emotionally difficult.
You’ll need to throw out many ideas you originally thought were great, ideas you’ve become
attached to, because they simply don’t fit into the rules you’re creating as you build your box.
Critique of Simple Truth Thesis
Their arguments rely on the Simple Truth Thesis and the No Reasonable
Opposition Thesis. From their perspective, no reasonable person could ever
believe that switching sides about the desirability of U.S. federal government
action is beneficial because the answer is so self-evident and there is no room
for debate. We critique these underlying theses. The answers to Big Questions
like “should the USFG increase its ocean exploration and/or development” are
not simple and self-evident — reasonable people can disagree.
Aikin and Talisse 14 — Scott F. Aikin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt
University, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and Robert B. Talisse,
Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Vanderbilt University, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the City University of New York, 2014 (“The Simple Truth Thesis,” Why We
Argue (And How We Should): A Guide To Political Disagreement, Published by Routledge, ISBN
9780415859059, p. 61-62)
Both camps betray a commitment to the Simple Truth Thesis, the claim that Big Questions
always admit simple, obvious, undeniable, and easily-stated answers. The Simple Truth Thesis
encourages us to hold that a given truth is so simple and so obvious that only the ignorant,
wicked, devious, or benighted could possibly deny it. On a recent occasion, an acquaintance of
ours, in the midst of a political conversation, announced that opposing the flat tax was "stupid,
evil, or both.” With this statement, she affirmed that, in her opinion, there is no room for
reasoned disagreement about the merits of a flat tax. In another recent discussion, a professor
of philosophy asserted that there is not even one intelligent defense of the death penalty. Not
one, he said.
It's an odd phenomenon. Part of what makes Big Questions so important and, well, big, is
precisely the fact that reasonable, sincere, informed, and intelligent persons can disagree over
their answers. That is, the Simple Truth Thesis has the effect of deflating Big Questions. But as it
does so by casting aspersions on one's opposition, it deflates the questions by inflaming those
with whom one disagrees. Consequently, as our popular political commentary accepts the
Simple Truth Thesis, there is a great deal of inflammatory rhetoric and righteous indignation,
but in fact very little public debate over the issues that matter most. Thus the Big Questions
over which we are divided remain unexamined, and our reasons for adopting our different
answers are never brought to bear in public discussion. And, moreover, what passes for public
argument is nothing like argument at all.
This should come as no surprise. It is clear that one of the direct corollaries to the Simple Truth
Thesis is the No Reasonable Opposition Thesis. According to the No Reasonable Opposition
Thesis, argument and debate with those with whom one disagrees is a pointless and futile
endeavor. The reasoning driving No Reasonable Opposition is simple. [end page 61] If in fact the
answer to a given Big Question is a Simple Truth, then there is no opponent of that answer who
is not also woefully ignorant, misinformed, misguided, wicked, or worse. In other words,
argument concerning a Big Question can be worthwhile only when there is more than one
reasonable position regarding the question. And this is precisely what the Simple Truth Thesis
denies.
One could argue that it would be a wonderful world were the Simple Truth Thesis true. Our
political task would be simply to empower those who know the Simple Truths, and rebuke the
fools who do not. But, alas, the Simple Truth Thesis is not true, and consequently the No
Reasonable Opposition Thesis must be dismissed as well. In fact, the Simple Truth Thesis is a
fairytale—soothing and satisfying, but ultimately unfit for a serious mind. We must recognize
that for any Big Question, there are several defensible positions; indeed, as we said above, it is
precisely this feature that makes them big questions rather than small or ordinary ones. Of
course, to say that a position is defensible is not to say that it's true. One can acknowledge that
there are multiple defensible positions in response to a Big Question, and still maintain that
there is only one defensible position that is correct. To oppose the Simple Truth Thesis is not to
embrace relativism, nor is it to give up on the idea that there are true answers to Big Questions.
It is rather to give up on the view that the truth is always simple.
If we win this argument, vote negative. Even if they are right about their
answer to the Big Question of the resolution, refusing to affirm the topic
demonstrated that they were unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of other
answers or perspectives. We must abandon the Simple Truth Thesis and the No
Reasonable Opposition Thesis in order for productive debate to occur. Our
critique “turns” their critique of the resolution.
Aikin and Talisse 14 — Scott F. Aikin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt
University, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and Robert B. Talisse,
Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Vanderbilt University, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the City University of New York, 2014 (“The Simple Truth Thesis,” Why We
Argue (And How We Should): A Guide To Political Disagreement, Published by Routledge, ISBN
9780415859059, p. 64-66)
That's the quick and dirty case against relativism. Now notice that none of these arguments bear
on the view that there are multiple reasonable answers to Big Questions. In affirming that there
are many defensible responses to each Big Question, one claims only that there is a difference
between being wrong and being stupid. It is to acknowledge that even smart people make
mistakes. Take Plato. From the previous chapters, it should be pretty clear that we think Plato
was wrong about a great many things. We already indicated that we think he was wrong about
several matters concerning democracy, but that’s just the beginning of the story. We think that
Plato was wrong about almost everything. But we also think it’s obvious that Plato was a great
philosopher. In fact, we think he was a genius. We admire him, wrestle [end page 64] with his
thought, try to criticize his views, and in general take him very, very seriously. But, on nearly
every philosophical issue, we believe he was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Holding that there is reasonable opposition, in fact, is a condition for thinking that criticism is
possible. Consider that if you think that those who you disagree with are simply stupid,
benighted, or evil, you wouldn’t have any arguments to give to them. Criticism of them and
their views would be impossible. You would need only to state that they are wrong. But notice
that it's only when you take your opponents to be reasonable—people who care about
evidence, can see relevant issues, and are able to understand what's at stake in a debate—that
you can actually criticize them. Criticism depends upon the background thought that the person
you're engaging with has the capacity to reason in good faith. That is not to say that in order to
criticize another person, one must endorse or accept their reasons. It means only that you must
acknowledge that reasoning (perhaps bad reasoning, or reasoning from false premises) is
occurring, and that it's possible to assess and correct it. So to deny the Simple Truth and No
Reasonable Opposition theses is not to capitulate to relativism at all. One can reject these
theses and yet be committed to there being a single right answer to each Big Question; and one
can still hold that those who deny what you believe are dead wrong. One who rejects these
theses can still be committed to arguing earnestly with others, and to vigorously critiquing those
who are wrong. But most importantly, the denial of the Simple Truth and No Reasonable
Opposition theses actually delivers the kind of tolerance that relativism could only promise.
Once you’re committed to seeing your opponents as reasonable, intelligent, and sincere, but
mistaken, you're less likely to use force or violence to correct them. You're more likely to use
arguments to change their minds.
Consequently, even if there is some Big Question whose true answer is p, there can nonetheless
be formidable cases made in support of alternative, mistaken, answers. That's because when it
comes to Big Questions, there are many different considerations that must be examined, and
there will always be reasonable disagreements among intelligent and sincere people about
the relative weight of considerations of different kinds. Again, Big Questions are big because
they require that we take many, many kinds of consideration into account. Indeed, sometimes
the answer to one Big Question depends on how we’ve answered [end page 65] other Big
Questions. Things can get extremely complicated very quickly. Yet we are finite creatures with
limited cognitive resources, and so it is sometimes hard for us to balance our philosophical
checkbooks. Big Questions can dwarf our intelligence. Once we appreciate this, we must
recognize that the No Reasonable Opposition Thesis must be abandoned. Even if we have the
true answer to a Big Question, there will be room for intelligent, informed, and sincere people
to disagree. In such cases, our opponents are mistaken or wrong, but not therefore
unintelligent, wicked, untrustworthy, or ignorant. They deserve our attention, and we need to
consider what they have to say.
They’ll say that our position is Relativism, but this misunderstands our
argument. We don’t think that every answer to the Big Question of the
resolution is right, just that reasonable people can disagree about the answer.
This still leaves plenty of room to advocate on behalf of the answer they believe
is right when they are negative.
Aikin and Talisse 14 — Scott F. Aikin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt
University, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and Robert B. Talisse,
Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Vanderbilt University, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the City University of New York, 2014 (“The Simple Truth Thesis,” Why We
Argue (And How We Should): A Guide To Political Disagreement, Published by Routledge, ISBN
9780415859059, p. 62)
That last point about relativism is crucial. So let us take a moment to develop it further. We just
said that denying the Simple Truth and No Reasonable Opposition theses does not commit one
to relativism. Holding that there can be more than one reasonable answer to a question does
not commit anyone to holding that all those answers are right. Nor does it prohibit anyone
holding one of those reasonable views from criticizing another person holding another of those
reasonable views.
Relativism is about truth, about who is right. It is the view that everyone in a disagreement is
right, or perhaps not wrong. In fact, it is not clear that we even need to appeal to disagreement
in order to state relativism's main contention. It is that every view is correct for the person who
holds it.
2NC/1NR — Responses to Aff Arguments
They Say: “Topicality Bad – General”
1. There is always a topic for debate. The question is whether the topic is
negotiated in advance or announced by the 1AC. Regardless, productive debate
requires that there be room for both teams to present arguments. “Topicality
bad” is not responsive to our argument.
2. It’s better for the topic to be negotiated and announced in advance.
Establishing procedural rules for reason-giving argument is a form of respect,
not coercion. Identity-based positions celebrate disagreement as an end-initself, foreclosing the possibility of persuasion and agreement through dialogue.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Reply to My
Critic(s),” Criticism, Volume 48, Number 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via
Project MUSE, p. 281-282)
My recent book, The Way We Argue Now, has in a sense two theses. In the first place, the book
makes the case for the importance of debate and argument to any vital democratic or
pluralistic intellectual culture. This is in many ways an unexceptional position, but the premise
of the book is that the claims of reasoned argument are often trumped, within the current
intellectual terrain, by appeals to cultural identity and what I gather more broadly under the
rubric of ethos, which includes cultural identity but also forms of ethical piety and charismatic
authority. In promoting argument as a universal practice keyed to a human capacity for
communicative reason, my book is a critique of relativism and identity politics, or the notion
that forms of cultural authenticity or group identity have a certain unquestioned legitimacy,
one that cannot or should not be subjected to the challenges of reason or principle, precisely
because reason and what is often called "false universalism" are, according to this pattern of
thinking, always involved in forms of exclusion, power, or domination. My book insists, by
contrast, that argument is a form of respect, that the ideals of democracy, whether conceived
from a nationalist or an internationalist perspective, rely fundamentally upon procedures of
argumentation and debate in order to legitimate themselves and to keep their central
institutions vital. And the idea that one should be protected from debate, that argument is
somehow injurious to persons if it does not honor their desire to have their basic beliefs and
claims and solidarities accepted without challenge, is strenuously opposed. As is the notion
that any attempt to ask people to agree upon processes of reason-giving argument is somehow
necessarily to impose a coercive norm, one that will disable the free expression and
performance of identities, feelings, or solidarities. Disagreement is, by the terms of my book, a
form of respect, not a form of disrespect. And by disagreement, I don't mean simply to say that
we should expect disagreement rather than agreement, which is a frequently voiced—if
misconceived—criticism of Habermas. Of course we should expect disagreement. My point is
that we should focus on the moment of dissatisfaction in the face of disagreement—the internal
dynamic in argument that imagines argument might be the beginning of [End Page 281] a
process of persuasion and exchange that could end in agreement (or partial agreement). For
those who advocate reconciling ourselves to disagreements rather than arguing them out, by
contrast, there is a complacent—and in some versions, even celebratory—attitude toward fixed
disagreement. Refusing these options, I make the case for dissatisfied disagreement in the final
chapter of the book and argue that people should be willing to justify their positions in dialogue
with one another, especially if they hope to live together in a post-traditional pluralist society.
They Say: “Framework Bad”
1. Our argument is topicality, not framework. The distinction is meaningful. We
don’t seek regulation of style, types of evidence, or the role of the judge.
Reading our argument as “role playing good” or “diverse perspectives bad”
misunderstands the thesis.
2. Topic boundaries are uniquely justified. “Anything goes” prevents
meaningful engagement. Everyone learns more when students are wellprepared to debate a shared topic.
3. Reject “active voice,” not the topic. They can affirm the topic using passive
voice — ocean exploration and/or development should be increased by the
USFG. There is no “role playing” requirement — their “Framework Impact
Turns” don’t apply to topicality-not-framework.
They Say: “We Are Germane To The Topic”
1. Only arguments that affirm the topic count as affirmative, not arguments
“germane” to the topic. This standard is meaningless—negative arguments are
“germane” to the topic, but they shouldn’t count for the affirmative.
2. Legal evidence supports our argument—“germaneness” is meaningless
because it’s too broad.
Abbott et al. 6 — Greg Abbott, Attorney General of Texas, et al., 2006 (Petition for Review of
the Third Court of Appeals at Austin, Texas of The State of Texas, by and through the Texas
Department of Transportation v. Precision Solar Controls, Inc., Available Online at
http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/ebriefs/06/06034803.pdf, Accessed 08-31-2013, p. 1011)
A. The Court of Appeals Skipped the Predicate Question of Whether the Counterclaim Is a
“Matter Properly Defensive,” Fixating Instead on the Additional Requirement That It Also Be
“Germane.”
There has been widespread confusion in the courts of appeals about the proper scope of
counterclaims that might be asserted under Reata. The Reata Court quoted language from
Anderson, Clayton permitting “the defense [to] plead and prove all matters properly defensive.
This includes the right to make any defense by answer or cross-complaint germane to the
matter in controversy.” 62 S.W.2d at 110 (emphasis added), as quoted in Reata, 47 TEX. SUP. CT.
J. at 409. That test begins with the limitation that a matter must be “properly defensive.” Id. It
then goes on to further specify that such a “defensive” matter can be raised through a
procedural device “germane to the matter in controversy.” Id.
The court of appeals promoted the word “germane” to be the centerpiece of this test, without
first satisfying the predicate requirement that the claim be among the “matters properly
defensive.” Slip op. at 10. Worse, because the word “germane” is largely foreign to Texas
jurisprudence, the courts of appeals have been left to rely on general-purpose dictionary
definitions that leave something to be desired as legal tests, [end page 10] since they simply
rephrase the obvious—that the word “germane” has something to do with a concept of
relatedness. Slip op. at 10 (citing City of Dallas v. Redbird Dev’t Corp., 143 S.W.3d 375, 381 (Tex.
App.—Dallas 2004, no pet.) (relying on Webster’s Dictionary and the Random House Unabridged
Dictionary to yield that “the term ‘germane’ means ‘closely akin’ and ‘being at once relevant and
appropriate.’”). It is no surprise that such broad definitions led to an equally broad and
formless legal rule.
3. It is not enough to be “related”—germaneness requires promoting the same
purposes. The aff’s arguments aren’t “germane” to the topic because they don’t
affirm that the U.S. federal government substantially increase its ocean
exploration and/or development.
Mann 33 — George R. Mann, Author of the Nebraska Legislative Manual, 1933 ("Bill Drafting,"
Nebraska Legislative Manual, Available Online at
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/topic/resources/OLLibrary/Legislature/1933/pages/nelj0121.
htm, Accessed 08-31-2013)
Every act must have a title which must designate a single subject, or indicate some particular
plan of legislation as a head under which particular provisions of the act may reasonably be
looked for. The title need not be an epitome of the act, and it need not particularize by
specifying each detail or feature of the act or contain an index thereto or an abstract thereof.
The general subject is all that properly belongs to the title of an act, and the title's exclusive
office is to apprise those who vote upon the act as to what that subject is; the details and means
by which it is proposed to make the law effective in accomplishing its purpose must be looked
for, not in the title, but in the body of the bill. It is essential to a good title that the subject of the
act be expressed in exact terms; it is sufficient if the subject is fairly deducible from the language
employed.
As a general rule, titles should not express ends, objects or purposes to be accomplished, but
rather the means by which ends, objects and purposes are to be attained. The word "subject" is
used to indicate the chief thing about which legislation is enacted. "Subject" as used in the
prohibition against more than one subject in a statute, has no mathematically precise meaning
nor can it be defined exactly. The prohibition against duplicity of subjects is directed, rather,
against the joining into one measure of incongruous and unrelated matters. Whether there is a
logical connection and relation between the matters treated is the test as to the unity of subject
rather than the extent and scope of the act. The word "subject" as used in the constitution
signifies the matter or thing forming the groundwork. It may contain many parts which grow out
of it and are germane to it, and which, if traced back, will [end page 127] lead the mind to it as
the generic head. Any matter or thing which may reasonably be said to be subservient to the
general object or purpose will be germane and may be properly included in the law. The word
"germane" has been frequently employed by the courts in discussing the connection or
relationship of provisions to a subject. Literally "germane" means "akin," "closely allied." It is
only applicable to persons who are united to each other by the common tie of blood or
marriage. When applied to inanimate things it is, of course, used in a metaphorical sense, but
still the idea of a common tie is always present. Thus when properly applied to a legislative
provision, the common tie is found in the tendency of the provision to promote the object and
purpose of the act to which it belongs. Any provision not having this tendency which
introduces new subject matter into the act is clearly obnoxious to the constitutional provisions
in question. It is an error to suppose that two things are, in a legal sense, germane to each other
merely because there is a resemblance between them, or because they have some
characteristic common to them both. It is only the subject and not the matters properly
connected therewith which must be expressed in the title.
They Say: “Resolved: Colon”
1. The resolution divides affirmative and negative ground and establishes each
side’s orientation toward the topic. The affirmative team’s ground is the
affirmative position and the negative team’s ground is the negative position.
Their interpretation doesn’t assume the context of debate — resolved is used
to designate that the issue to be debated is a resolution.
Louisiana no date — Louisiana State Legislature, No Date Cited (“Glossary of Legislative
Terms,” Available Online at http://www.legis.state.la.us/glossary2.htm, Accessed 02-06-2006)
Resolution: A legislative instrument that generally is used for making declarations, stating
policies, and making decisions where some other form is not required. A bill includes the
constitutionally required enacting clause; a resolution uses the term "resolved". Not subject to
a time limit for introduction nor to governor's veto. (Const. Art. III, §17(B) and House Rules 8.11,
13.1, 6.8, and 7.4 and Senate Rules 10.9, 13.5 and 15.1)
2. “Resolved colon” supports a topicality burden that mirrors real world
policymaking.
Parcher 1 — Jeff Parcher, Former Director of Debate at Georgetown University, 2001 ("Re: Jeff
P--Is the resolution a question?," Post to the e-Debate List, February 26, Available Online at
http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/ 0790.html, Accessed 09-10-2005)
> Jeff, I don't think debaters' relation to the resolution is nearly as clear as it you make it out to
be in your recent posts. 1. The resolution > is not a question. It is a statement that has
"resolved" on one side and a normative statement on the other separated by a colon. What > is
the meaning of "resolved?" I know Bill Shanahan has made the argument that "resolved" means
"reserved," in which case the
> resolution doesn't require you to arrive at any certainty about the truth of the normative
statement.
(1) Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To
make a firm decision about. 2. To decide or express by formal vote. 3. To separate something
into constiutent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution to. See Syns
at *Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Frimness of purpose;
resolution. 2. A determination or decision.
(2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question. American Heritage: A course of
action determined or decided on. A formal statemnt of a deciion, as by a legislature.
(3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any other conclusion is utterly inconcievable. Why?
Context. The debate community empowers a topic committee to write a topic for ALTERNATE
side debating. The committee is not a random group of people coming together to "reserve"
themselves about some issue. There is context - they are empowered by a community to do
something. In their deliberations, the topic community attempts to craft a resolution which can
be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like ground and fairness because they
know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be resolved by determining the
policy desireablility of that resolution. That's not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE
them to do. We don't just send the topic committtee somewhere to adopt their own group
resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the prelimanary
wording of a resolution sent to others to be answered or decided upon.
(4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasis the fact that it's policy debate.
Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies. A resolution is either
adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body. Should this statement be adopted
or not.
(5) The very terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my view. One affirms a resolution.
Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or 'no' - which, of course, are answers to a
question.
They Say: “We Are a Discussion of the Topic”
1. It’s not enough to “discuss the topic” — that doesn’t invite us to participate
because it doesn’t provide predictable ground. The resolution divides ground
between the affirmative and negative; the negative’s job is to affirm the topic
and therefore invite the negative to negate.
2. This doesn’t provide a meaningful limit — teams can “discuss the topic” by
arguing that there should be a different topic, that the topic creation process is
bad, that the topic is a metaphor for something else, etc. The neg can’t prepare
to meaningfully participate in these debates.
They Say: “No Topical Version Of The Aff”
1. This is a failure of imagination. (Yes, there is a topical version—<explain>.)
2. (Extend/apply arguments from the “Constructive Constraints” module.)
They Say: “Topicality is Violent/Policing”
1. Topicality divides ground — it doesn’t exclude people. Debaters can express
themselves however they want within their assigned speech time, but only
arguments that support the affirmative orientation toward the topic should
count as reasons to vote affirmative when the judge is choosing the winner.
2. Procedural fairness is most important—it establishes expectations for
preparation and facilitates respectful and productive dialogue between wellprepared opponents. Topicality-not-framework is a reasonable procedural
norm.
Massaro 89 — Toni M. Massaro, Professor of Law at the University of Florida, 1989 (“Legal
Storytelling: Empathy, Legal Storytelling, and the Rule of Law: New Words, Old Wounds?,”
Michigan Law Review (87 Mich. L. Rev. 2099), August, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
B. The Rule-of-Law Model as Villain
Most writers who argue for more empathy in the law concede that law must resort to some
conventions and abstract principles. That is, they do not claim that legal rules are, as rules,
intrinsically sinister. Rather, they argue that we should design our legal categories and
procedures in a way that encourages the decisionmakers to consider individual persons and
concrete situations. Generalities, abstractions, and formalities should not dominate the process.
The law should be flexible enough to take emotion into account, and to respond openly to the
various "stories" of the people it controls. We should, as I have said, move toward "minimalist"
law.
Yet despite their acknowledgment that some ordering and rules are necessary, empathy
proponents tend to approach the rule-of-law model as a villain. Moreover, they are hardly alone
in their deep skepticism about the rule-of-law model. Most modern legal theorists question the
value of procedural regularity when it denies substantive justice. n52 Some even question the
whole notion of justifying a legal [*2111] decision by appealing to a rule of law, versus
justifying the decision by reference to the facts of the case and the judges' own reason and
experience. n53 I do not intend to enter this important jurisprudential debate, except to the
limited extent that the "empathy" writings have suggested that the rule-of-law chills judges'
empathic reactions. In this regard, I have several observations.
My first thought is that the rule-of-law model is only a model. If the term means absolute
separation of legal decision and "politics," then it surely is both unrealistic and undesirable. n54
But our actual statutory and decisional "rules" rarely mandate a particular (unempathetic)
response. Most of our rules are fairly open-ended. "Relevance," "the best interests of the child,"
"undue hardship," "negligence," or "freedom of speech" -- to name only a few legal concepts -hardly admit of precise definition or consistent, predictable application. Rather, they represent a
weaker, but still constraining sense of the rule-of-law model. Most rules are guidelines that
establish spheres of relevant conversation, not mathematical formulas.
Moreover, legal training in a common law system emphasizes the indeterminate nature of rules
and the significance of even subtle variations in facts. Our legal tradition stresses an inductive
method of discovering legal principles. We are taught to distinguish different "stories," to arrive
at "law" through experience with many stories, and to revise that law as future experience
requires. Much of the effort of most first-year law professors is, I believe, devoted to debunking
popular lay myths about "law" as clean-cut answers, and to illuminate law as a dynamic body of
policy determinations constrained by certain guiding principles. n55
As a practical matter, therefore, our rules often are ambiguous and fluid standards that offer
substantial room for varying interpretations. The interpreter, usually a judge, may consult
several sources to aid in decisionmaking. One important source necessarily will be the judge's
own experiences -- including the experiences that seem to determine a person's empathic
capacity. In fact, much ink has been spilled to illuminate that our stated "rules" often do not
dictate or explain our legal results. Some writers even have argued that a rule of law may be, at
times, nothing more than a post hoc rationalization or attempted legitimization [*2112] of
results that may be better explained by extralegal (including, but not necessarily limited to,
emotional) responses to the facts, the litigants, or the litigants' lawyers, n56 all of which may go
unstated. The opportunity for contextual and empathic decisionmaking therefore already is very
much a part of our adjudicatory law, despite our commitment to the rule-of-law ideal.
Even when law is clear and relatively inflexible, however, it is not necessarily "unempathetic."
The assumed antagonism of legality and empathy is belied by our experience in rape cases, to
take one important example. In the past, judges construed the general, open-ended standard of
"relevance" to include evidence about the alleged victim's prior sexual conduct, regardless of
whether the conduct involved the defendant. n57 The solution to this "empathy gap" was
legislative action to make the law more specific -- more formalized. Rape shield statutes were
enacted that controlled judicial discretion and specifically defined relevance to exclude the prior
sexual history of the woman, except in limited, justifiable situations. n58 In this case, one can
make a persuasive argument not only that the rule-of-law model does explain these later
rulings, but also that obedience to that model resulted in a triumph for the human voice of the
rape survivor. Without the rule, some judges likely would have continued to respond to other
inclinations, and admit this testimony about rape survivors. The example thus shows that radical
rule skepticism is inconsistent with at least some evidence of actual judicial behavior. It also
suggests that the principle of legality is potentially most critical for people who are least
understood by the decisionmakers -- in this example, women -- and hence most vulnerable to
unempathetic ad hoc rulings.
A final observation is that the principle of legality reflects a deeply ingrained, perhaps
inescapable, cultural instinct. We value some procedural regularity – “law for law's sake" –
because it lends stasis and structure to our often chaotic lives. Even within our most intimate
relationships, we both establish "rules," and expect the other [*2113] party to follow them.
n59 Breach of these unspoken agreements can destroy the relationship and hurt us deeply,
regardless of the wisdom or "substantive fairness" of a particular rule. Our agreements create
expectations, and their consistent application fulfills the expectations. The modest
predictability that this sort of "formalism" provides actually may encourage human
relationships. n60
3. There’s nothing violent about debating the assigned topic or making
reasoned arguments — topicality isn’t policing.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Reply to My
Critic(s),” Criticism, Volume 48, Number 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via
Project MUSE, p. 285-287)
Let's first examine the claim that my book is "unwittingly" inviting a resurrection of the
"Enlightenment-equals-totalitarianism position." How, one wonders, could a book promoting
argument and debate, and promoting reason-giving practices as a kind of common ground that
should prevail over assertions of cultural authenticity, somehow come to be seen as a
dangerous resurgence of bad Enlightenment? Robbins tells us why: I want "argument on my
own terms"—that [End Page 285] is, I want to impose reason on people, which is a form of
power and oppression. But what can this possibly mean? Arguments stand or fall based on
whether they are successful and persuasive, even an argument in favor of argument. It simply is
not the case that an argument in favor of the importance of reasoned debate to liberal
democracy is tantamount to oppressive power. To assume so is to assume, in the manner of
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, that reason is itself violent, inherently, and that it will
always mask power and enforce exclusions. But to assume this is to assume the very view of
Enlightenment reason that Robbins claims we are "thankfully" well rid of. (I leave to the side the
idea that any individual can proclaim that a debate is over, thankfully or not.) But perhaps
Robbins will say, "I am not imagining that your argument is directly oppressive, but that what
you argue for would be, if it were enforced." Yet my book doesn't imagine or suggest it is
enforceable; I simply argue in favor of, I promote, an ethos of argument within a liberal
democratic and proceduralist framework. As much as Robbins would like to think so, neither I
nor the books I write can be cast as an arm of the police.
Robbins wants to imagine a far more direct line of influence from criticism to political reality,
however, and this is why it can be such a bad thing to suggest norms of argument. Watch as the
gloves come off:
Faced with the prospect of submitting to her version of argument—roughly, Habermas's
version—and of being thus authorized to disagree only about other, smaller things,
some may feel that there will have been an end to argument, or an end to the
arguments they find most interesting. With current events in mind, I would be surprised
if there were no recourse to the metaphor of a regular army facing a guerilla
insurrection, hinting that Anderson wants to force her opponents to dress in uniform,
reside in well-demarcated camps and capitals that can be bombed, fight by the rules of
states (whether the states themselves abide by these rules or not), and so on—in short,
that she wants to get the battle onto a terrain where her side will be assured of having
the upper hand.
Let's leave to the side the fact that this is a disowned hypothetical criticism. (As in, "Well, okay,
yes, those are my gloves, but those are somebody else's hands they will have come off of.")
Because far more interesting, actually, is the sudden elevation of stakes. It is a symptom of the
sorry state of affairs in our profession that it plays out repeatedly this tragicomic tendency to
give a grandiose political meaning to every object it analyzes or confronts. We have evidence of
how desperate the situation is when we see it in a critic as thoughtful as Bruce Robbins, where it
emerges as the need to allegorize a point about an argument in such a way that it gets cast as
the equivalent of war atrocities. It is especially ironic in light of the fact that to the extent that I
do give examples of the importance of liberal democratic proceduralism, I invoke the disregard
of the protocols of international adjudication in the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq; I also
speak [End Page 286] about concerns with voting transparency. It is hard for me to see how my
argument about proceduralism can be associated with the policies of the Bush administration
when that administration has exhibited a flagrant disregard of democratic procedure and the
rule of law. I happen to think that a renewed focus on proceduralism is a timely venture, which
is why I spend so much time discussing it in my final chapter. But I hasten to add that I am not
interested in imagining that proceduralism is the sole political response to the needs of cultural
criticism in our time: my goal in the book is to argue for a liberal democratic culture of
argument, and to suggest ways in which argument is not served by trumping appeals to identity
and charismatic authority. I fully admit that my examples are less political events than academic
debates; for those uninterested in the shape of intellectual arguments, and eager for more
direct and sustained discussion of contemporary politics, the approach will disappoint.
Moreover, there will always be a tendency for a proceduralist to under-specify substance, and
that is partly a principled decision, since the point is that agreements, compromises, and policies
get worked out through the communicative and political process. My book is mainly
concentrated on evaluating forms of arguments and appeals to ethos, both those that count as
a form of trump card or distortion, and those that flesh out an understanding of argument as a
universalist practice. There is an intermittent appeal to larger concerns in the political
democratic culture, and that is because I see connections between the ideal of argument and
the ideal of deliberative democracy. But there is clearly, and indeed necessarily, significant room
for further elaboration here.
They Say: “Topicality Excludes Our Perspective”
1. This is non-falsifiable and self-serving — they could affirm the topic from
their perspective, but they’ve made the strategic decision not to do so.
2. The process of debating the assigned topic cultivates an ethos of argument
that promotes respect. Identity-as-argument forecloses reasoned
disagreement.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Beyond
Sincerity and Authenticity: The Ethos of Proceduralism,” The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the
Cultures of Theory, Published by Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691114033, p. 186-187)
Let me conclude by trying to summarize what I take to be the value of affirming argument as
ethos, rather than privileging ethos in any of its other various guises—authentic ethical life,
charismatic critique, or accommodating tact. While I understand the motivation behind
McCarthy's critique of Habermas, his sense that we may need to expect disagreement more
than aim for agreement, I think the Habermasian principle of “an intersubjective praxis of
argumentation” more closely achieves the ideals of universalization and respect that undergird
the democratic project. Simply accepting the views of others because they are asserted to be
fundamentally linked to their nonnegotiable conceptions of the good or to their given cultural
identity—accepting a merely overlapping consensus, or insisting on accommodation of ways and
customs that may seem to jar with liberal democratic practice—seems to me precisely to fail in
according the forms of respect that the model seems to claim for itself.28
I am not arguing that identity issues should be excluded from consideration, but simply that
they should not be permitted to stand inviolable or uncontestable. Argument with those from
whom we differ is a form [end page 186] of respect and it implies an aspiration to universalism.
Committed to the possibility of agreement as well as the conditions of pluralism, it does not
attempt to tame or stabilize disagreement: it is capable of reasoned disagreement, but it is
perhaps more fundamentally characterized by a dissatisfied recognition of disagreement. To
take a current example, the debate over the banning of the hajib (Muslim headscarf) and other
religious symbols in schools in France has created a certain dialogical demand whose benefits
outweigh, it seems to me, a situation in which clarification and articulation of self-reflective
pluralism are simply avoided in the name of passive toleration. This is not to imply that this
particular issue cannot be resolved in favor of toleration. What the French debate importantly
demands is that citizens of a pluralist state go beyond peremptory appeals to cultural identity
and clarify their understanding of what it means to live together under conditions of pluralism
with the collective responsibility of providing education consonant with the secular principles of
the state. This demand extends not only to Muslims and Jews, but also to the historically
dominant Catholic population, whose own partial universalism is revealed in the attempt to
include only “large crosses” in the ban. In this situation, there is a need to negotiate between
differing forms of affiliation, as well as between political principle and cultural identity. The
process of argument is what enables the very act of pluralist self-clarification to occur, and the
society in question must cultivate an ethos of argument if it is to meet the ongoing challenges
of its political (re)constitution.
When argument can itself be recognized as an ethos, disagreement remains live, not merely the
nonnegotiable emanation of a pregiven cultural identity or holistic ethos. To put this in yet
another way, tolerance and respect are not utterly coterminous, as the accommodationist
position would have us believe. Indeed, if we collapse these terms, we are left in a situation
where the tradition of sincerity—conceived of in its broadest terms as allied with critique and
the promotion of political integrity—remains impotent in the face of peremptory appeals to
authenticity. Proceduralism is itself a dialectical overcoming of the sincerity/authenticity
problematic, but, unlike in Trilling, its polemical relation to received opinion is not in the service
of nature, fate, or the unconscious, but rather in the service of an aspiration toward
universalism.
3. To be meaningful and effective, other modes of expression must be
translated into policy-relevant arguments.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Beyond
Sincerity and Authenticity: The Ethos of Proceduralism,” The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the
Cultures of Theory, Published by Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691114033, p. 184-185)
By way of closing, I want to address objections that have been raised against the privileging of
argument and debate as an ethicopolitical ideal. It has been claimed that such an ideal is too
narrow in its conception of how political commitments find expression, and unable to
comprehend nonrational forms of solidarity or aesthetic political practices (theatrical display,
performativity, ironic critique). I argued in chapter 1 for a democratic model of politics that
could acknowledge a wide range of forms of expression as possessing theoretical and political
significance: in this sense I have no quarrel with those critics of Habermas who seek to
emphasize affective or aesthetic modes. And I have suggested elsewhere in this volume, most
particularly in the essay on pragmatism, that liberalism should remain open to a plurality of
characterological and expressive modes, rather than seek to elevate a specific temperament or
persona.
I would argue, however, that the accommodation of plural modes of expression still requires
procedural elaboration if it is to have any political meaning or effectiveness, as McCarthy's
own critique makes clear. In order to affect institutionalized deliberative procedures,
nonrational forms of political expression require some form of translation into terms that can
impact decision making and policy. While dramatic displays of protest that rely on theatrical
tactics and visceral power cannot entirely [end page 184] be explained in rational terms, and
can be recognized to have a force on their own terms, in order to affect policy they have to be
translated into claims recognizable within existing political institutions. We do not remain
inarticulate about the visceral if it effectively affects our political views and our social
interactions.
They Say: “No Personal Connection to the Topic”
1. That’s a benefit of topicality — it allows students of all backgrounds to
engage in research about a prescribed topic. No particular identity or
experience is required to participate.
2. The process of debating creates a connection—learning about ocean policy
provides students with the content knowledge needed to critically evaluate
U.S. policies and formulate their own opinions.
3. Maintaining critical distance is vital to effective democratic debate — the
demand for a “personal connection” shuts down dialogue.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006
(“Introduction,” The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory, Published by
Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691114033, p. 1-2)
At the same time, however, the book engages in an internal critique of certain tendencies within
the field of theory. These essays repeatedly draw attention to the underdeveloped and often
incoherent evaluative stance of contemporary theory, its inability to clearly avow the norms and
values underlying its own critical programs. In particular, I contest the prevalent skepticism
about the possibility or desirability of achieving reflective distance on one's social or cultural
positioning. As a result of poststructuralism's insistence on the forms of finitude—linguistic,
psychological, and cultural—that limit individual agency, and multiculturalism's insistence on the
primacy of ascribed group identity and its accompanying perspectives, the concept of critical
distance has been seriously discredited, even as it necessarily informs many of the very
accounts that announce its [end page 1] bankruptcy. The alliance between the poststructuralist
critique of reason and the form of sociological reductionism that governs the politics of identity
threatens to undermine the vitality of both academic and political debate insofar as it becomes
impossible to explore shared forms of rationality. Given these conditions, in fact, this book
might well have been called “The Way We Fail to Argue Now.”2
To counter the tendencies of both poststructuralism and identity politics, I advance a renewed
assessment of the work of philosopher Jürgen Habermas, whose interrelated theories of
communicative action, discourse ethics, and democratic proceduralism have provoked
continued and often dismissive critique from theorists in the fields of literary studies, cultural
studies, and political theory. The book is in no way an uncritical embrace of Habermas's theory,
however. Rather, it offers a renewed assessment of the notions of critical distance and
procedural democracy in light of the arguments that have been waged against them. In part I do
this by giving airtime to those debates in which Habermas and like-minded critics have engaged
poststructuralism. But I also try to give Habermas a new hearing by showing the ways in which
his theories promote an understanding of reflective distance as an achieved and lived practice,
one with an intimate bearing on questions of ethos and character. Typically dismissed as
impersonal, abstract, and arid, rational discourse of the kind associated with the neo-Kantianism
of Habermas and his followers is often employed as a contrast to valorized ideals of embodied
identities, feelings and passions, ethics and politics—in short, all the values that are seen to
imbue theoretical practice with existential meaningfulness and moral force. This very
opposition, which has effectively structured many influential academic debates, involves a
serious misreading and reduction of the rationalist tradition, which at its most compelling seeks
precisely to understand communicative reason and the aspiration to critical distance as an
embedded practice, as an ongoing achievement rather than a fantasmatic imposition. This
aspiration, moreover, also characterizes collective forms of liberal politics, including the
practices and procedures that constitute the democratic tradition and are so vital to its ongoing
health and stability.
They Say: “Topicality/Your Argument Hurts Us”
1. Arguments aren’t harmful in-and-of themselves. The burden of rejoinder is
necessary for debate to occur.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Reply to My
Critic(s),” Criticism, Volume 48, Number 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via
Project MUSE, p. 289)
Probyn's piece is a mixture of affective fallacy, argument by authority, and bald ad hominem.
There's a pattern here: precisely the tendency to personalize argument and to foreground what
Wendy Brown has called "states of injury." Probyn says, for example, that she "felt ostracized by
the book's content and style." Ostracized? Argument here is seen as directly harming persons,
and this is precisely the state of affairs to which I object. Argument is not injurious to persons.
Policies are injurious to persons and institutionalized practices can alienate and exclude. But
argument itself is not directly harmful; once one says it is, one is very close to a logic of
censorship. The most productive thing to do in an open academic culture (and in societies that
aspire to freedom and democracy) when you encounter a book or an argument that you
disagree with is to produce a response or a book that states your disagreement. But to assert
that the book itself directly harms you is tantamount to saying that you do not believe in
argument or in the free exchange of ideas, that your claim to injury somehow damns your
opponent's ideas.
2. Their argument can’t be negated. This proves our argument — they refuse to
invite us to the argumentative table.
Subotnik 98 — Daniel Subotnik, Professor of Law at the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center at
Touro College, holds a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, 1998 (“What's Wrong With
Critical Race Theory?: Reopening The Case For Middle Class Values,” Cornell Journal of Law and
Public Policy (7 Cornell J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 681), Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions
via Lexis-Nexis)
B. And the Consequences
Having traced a major strand in the development of CRT, we turn now to the strands' effect on
the relationships of CRATs with each other and with outsiders. As the foregoing material
suggests, the central CRT message is not simply that minorities are being treated unfairly, or
even that individuals out there are in pain—assertions for which there are data to serve as grist
for the academic mill—but that the minority scholar himself or herself hurts and hurts badly.
An important problem that concerns the very definition of the scholarly enterprise now comes
into focus. What can an academic trained to [*694] question and to doubt n72 possibly say to
Patricia Williams when effectively she announces, "I hurt bad"? n73 "No, you don't hurt"? "You
shouldn't hurt"? "Other people hurt too"? Or, most dangerously - and perhaps most tellingly "What do you expect when you keep shooting yourself in the foot?" If the majority were
perceived as having the well-being of minority groups in mind, these responses might be
acceptable, even welcomed. And they might lead to real conversation. But, writes Williams, the
failure by those "cushioned within the invisible privileges of race and power... to incorporate a
sense of precarious connection as a part of our lives is... ultimately obliterating." n74
"Precarious." "Obliterating." These words will clearly invite responses only from fools and
sociopaths; they will, by effectively precluding objection, disconcert and disunite others. "I
hurt," in academic discourse, has three broad though interrelated effects. First, it demands
priority from the reader's conscience. It is for this reason that law review editors, waiving usual
standards, have privileged a long trail of undisciplined - even silly n75 - destructive and, above
all, self-destructive arti [*695] cles. n76 Second, by emphasizing the emotional bond between
those who hurt in a similar way, "I hurt" discourages fellow sufferers from abstracting
themselves from their pain in order to gain perspective on their condition. n77
[*696] Last, as we have seen, it precludes the possibility of open and structured conversation
with others. n78
[*697] It is because of this conversation-stopping effect of what they insensitively call "firstperson agony stories" that Farber and Sherry deplore their use. "The norms of academic civility
hamper readers from challenging the accuracy of the researcher's account; it would be rather
difficult, for example, to criticize a law review article by questioning the author's emotional
stability or veracity." n79 Perhaps, a better practice would be to put the scholar's experience on
the table, along with other relevant material, but to subject that experience to the same level
of scrutiny.
If through the foregoing rhetorical strategies CRATs succeeded in limiting academic debate, why
do they not have greater influence on public policy? Discouraging white legal scholars from
entering the national conversation about race, n80 I suggest, has generated a kind of cynicism in
white audiences which, in turn, has had precisely the reverse effect of that ostensibly desired
by CRATs. It drives the American public to the right and ensures that anything CRT offers is
reflexively rejected.
In the absence of scholarly work by white males in the area of race, of course, it is difficult to be
sure what reasons they would give for not having rallied behind CRT. Two things, however, are
certain. First, the kinds of issues raised by Williams are too important in their implications
[*698] for American life to be confined to communities of color. If the lives of minorities are
heavily constrained, if not fully defined, by the thoughts and actions of the majority elements in
society, it would seem to be of great importance that white thinkers and doers participate in
open discourse to bring about change. Second, given the lack of engagement of CRT by the
community of legal scholars as a whole, the discourse that should be taking place at the highest
scholarly levels has, by default, been displaced to faculty offices and, more generally, the streets
and the airwaves.
* CRT = Critical Race Theory
* CRAT = CRT’s Advocates
They Say: “Neg Still Has Ground/Should Be Prepared”
1. The neg doesn’t have predictable ground when the aff doesn’t affirm the
topic. Ground is inevitable, but the affirmative hurt the quality of in-round
dialogue.
Galloway 7 — Ryan Galloway, Assistant Professor and Director of Debate at Samford
University, 2007 (“Dinner and Conversation at the Argumentative Table: Re-Conceptualizing
Debate As An Argumentative Dialogue,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, Volume 28,
September, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Premier, p. 12)
In addition, even when the negative strategy is not entirely excluded, any strategy that
diminishes argumentative depth and quality diminishes the quality of in-round dialogue. An
affirmative speech act that flagrantly violates debate fairness norms and claims that the benefits
of the affirmative act supersede the need for such guidelines has the potential of excluding a
meaningful negative response, and undermines the pedagogical benefits of the in-round
dialogue. The “germ of a response” (Bakhtin, 1990) is stunted.
2. Even if we could prepare a different strategy, this requirement is too
burdensome. Prep time isn’t unlimited — dedicating time to untopical affs
trades off either with preparation for topical affs or with other important parts
of our lives. Topicality is our preparation — it is a researched strategy that
clashes with the aff. Vote neg to preserve meaningful limits.
Harris 13 — Scott Harris, Associate Specialist and Debate Coach at the University of Kansas,
holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Northwestern University, 2013 (“This Ballot,” Ballot from
the Final Round of the 2013 National Debate Tournament, Posted on the Global Debate blog,
April 6th, Available Online at http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/scott-harris-writeslong-ballot-for-ndt.html, Accessed 08-31-2013)
I understand that there has been some criticism of Northwestern’s strategy in this debate
round. This criticism is premised on the idea that they ran framework instead of engaging
Emporia’s argument about home and the Wiz. I think this criticism is unfair. Northwestern’s
framework argument did engage Emporia’s argument. Emporia said that you should vote for the
team that performatively and methodologically made debate a home. Northwestern’s argument
directly clashed with that contention. My problem in this debate was with aspects of the
execution of the argument rather than with the strategy itself. It has always made me angry in
debates when people have treated topicality as if it were a less important argument than other
arguments in debate. Topicality is a real argument. It is a researched strategy. It is an argument
that challenges many affirmatives. The fact that other arguments could be run in a debate or are
run in a debate does not make topicality somehow a less important argument. In reality, for
many of you that go on to law school you will spend much of your life running topicality
arguments because you will find that words in the law matter. The rest of us will experience the
ways that word choices matter in contracts, in leases, in writing laws and in many aspects of our
lives. Kansas ran an affirmative a few years ago about how the location of a comma in a law led
a couple of districts to misinterpret the law into allowing individuals to be incarcerated in jail for
two days without having any formal charges filed against them. For those individuals the
location of the comma in the law had major consequences. Debates about words are not
insignificant. Debates about what kinds of arguments we should or should not be making in
debates are not insignificant either. The limits debate is an argument that has real pragmatic
consequences. I found myself earlier this year judging Harvard’s eco-pedagogy aff and thought
to myself—I could stay up tonight and put a strategy together on eco-pedagogy, but then I
thought to myself—why should I have to? Yes, I could put together a strategy against any
random argument somebody makes employing an energy metaphor but the reality is there are
only so many nights to stay up all night researching. I would like to actually spend time playing
catch with my children occasionally or maybe even read a book or go to a movie or spend some
time with my wife. A world where there are an infinite number of affirmatives is a world where
the demand to have a specific strategy and not run framework is a world that says this
community doesn’t care whether its participants have a life or do well in school or spend time
with their families. I know there is a new call abounding for interpreting this NDT as a mandate
for broader more diverse topics. The reality is that will create more work to prepare for the
teams that choose to debate the topic but will have little to no effect on the teams that refuse
to debate the topic. Broader topics that do not require positive government action or are
bidirectional will not make teams that won’t debate the topic choose to debate the topic. I think
that is a con job. I am not opposed to broader topics necessarily. I tend to like the way high
school topics are written more than the way college topics are written. I just think people who
take the meaning of the outcome of this NDT as proof that we need to make it so people get to
talk about anything they want to talk about without having to debate against topicality or
framework arguments are interested in constructing a world that might make debate an
unending nightmare and not a very good home in which to live. Limits, to me, are a real impact
because I feel their impact in my everyday existence.
3. Every debate that’s not about the topic is a lost opportunity to repeat the
iterative process — that’s Lundberg.
They Say: “Switch-Side Debate Bad – General”
1. “Switch sides” refers to format, not content. Affirmative and negative are
orientations toward the topic, not prescribed identities. The topic requires
debaters to sometimes affirm and sometimes negate the resolution in order to
make the best decision about ocean policy, not to “switch sides” on every
argument.
2. Playing devil’s advocate combats dogmatism and leads to better convictions.
Galloway 7 — Ryan Galloway, Assistant Professor and Director of Debate at Samford
University, 2007 (“Dinner and Conversation at the Argumentative Table: Re-Conceptualizing
Debate As An Argumentative Dialogue,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, Volume 28,
September, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Premier, p. 8-9)
Willingness to argue against what one believes helps the advocate understand the strengths and
weaknesses of their own position. It opens the potential for a new synthesis of material that is
superior to the first (Dybvig & Iverson, 2000). Serving as a devil’s advocate encourages an
appreciation for middle ground and nuance (Dell, 1958). Failure to see both sides can lead to
high levels of ego involvement and dogmatism (Hicks & Greene, 2000). [end page 8] Survey data
confirms these conclusions. Star Muir found that debaters become more tolerant after learning
to debate both sides of an issue (Muir, 1993).
Such tolerance is predictable since debate is firmly grounded in respect for the other through
the creation of a fair dialogue. Ironically, opponents of a debate as dialogue risk falling prey to
dogmatism and the requisite failure to respect potential middle grounds. Perceiving the world
through the lens of contingency and probability can be beneficial to real-world activism when its
goal is creating consensus out of competing interests. The anti-oppression messages of critical
teams would benefit from a thorough investigation of such claims, and not merely an untested
axiological assumption.
3. This encourages debaters to better appreciate one another’s arguments.
Galloway 7 — Ryan Galloway, Assistant Professor and Director of Debate at Samford
University, 2007 (“Dinner and Conversation at the Argumentative Table: Re-Conceptualizing
Debate As An Argumentative Dialogue,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, Volume 28,
September, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Premier, p. 12)
Conversely, in a dialogical exchange, debaters come to realize the positions other than their own
have value, and that reasonable minds can disagree on controversial issues. This respect
encourages debaters to modify and adapt their own positions on critical issues without the
threat of being labeled a hypocrite. The conceptualization of debate as a dialogue allows
challenges to take place from a wide variety of perspectives. By offering a stable referent the
affirmative must uphold, the negative can choose to engage the affirmative on the widest
possible array of “counter- words,” enhancing the pedagogical process produced by debate.
4. Their interpretation causes confirmation bias. Challenging assumptions by
playing Devil’s Advocate is vital to prevent policy disasters.
Dame and Gedmin 13 — John Dame, Chief Executive Officer of Dame Management
Strategies, and Jeffrey Gedmin, Chief Executive Officer of the Legatum Institute, 2013 (“Three
Tips For Overcoming Your Blind Spots,” Harvard Business Review blog, October 2nd, Available
Online at http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/three-tips-for-overcoming-your-blind-spots/, Accessed
10-10-2013)
To fight confirmation bias, have a devil’s advocate.
Confirmation bias refers to our tendency, when receiving new information, to process it in a way
that it fits our pre-existing narrative about a situation or problem. Simply put, if you’re already
inclined to believe that the French are rude, you will find the examples on your trip to Paris to
validate your thesis. Disconfirming evidence – the friendly waiter, the helpful bellman – gets
pushed aside. They’re just “the exception.” Warren Buffett says, “What the human being is best
at doing, is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” He
knows he is prone to it himself.
Attorneys, debaters, and politicians engage in a kind of confirmation bias when, in order to
make a case, they select certain data while deliberately neglecting or deemphasizing other
data. But confirmation bias can cause disaster in business and policy when it leads a decisionmaker to jump to conclusions, fall prey to misguided analogies, or simply exclude information
that inconveniently disturbs a desired plan of action.
What to do? The only remedy is to make sure you have a full and accurate picture available
when making important decisions. When you have a theory about someone or something, test
it. When you smell a contradiction – a thorny issue, an inconsistency or problem – go after it.
Like the orchestral conductor, isolate it, drill deeper. When someone says – or you yourself
intuit – “that’s just an exception,” be sure it’s just that. Thoroughly examine the claim.
Dealing with confirmation bias is about reining in your impulses and challenging your own
assumptions. It’s difficult to stick to it day in and out. That’s why it’s important to have in your
circle of advisers a brainy, tough-as-nails devil’s advocate who – perhaps annoyingly, but
valuably – checks you constantly.
They Say: “Switch-Sides Debate Bad – Hicks & Greene”
1. Switch-side debating prepares students to challenge dominant ideologies,
not mindlessly accept them.
English et al. 7 — Eric English, Graduate Student in the Department of Communication at the
University of Pittsburgh, et al., part of the Schenley Park Debate Authors Working Group
(DAWG)—a consortium of public argument scholars at University of Pittsburgh that includes
Gordon R. Mitchell—Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh,
Stephen Llano, Catherine E. Morrison, John Rief, and Carly Woods—Graduate Students in the
Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh, 2007 (“Debate as a Weapon of
Mass Destruction,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Number 2, June,
Available Online at http://www.pitt.edu/~gordonm/JPubs/EnglishDAWG.pdf, Accessed 01-192010, p. 223-225)
Second, while the pedagogical benefits of switch-side debating for participants are
compelling,10 some worry that the technique may perversely and unwittingly serve the ends of
an aggressively militaristic foreign policy. In the context of the 1954 controversy, Ronald Walter
Greene and Darrin Hicks suggest that the articulation of the debate community as a zone of
dissent against McCarthyist tendencies developed into a larger and somewhat uncritical
affirmation of switch-side debate as a [end page 223] "technology" of liberal participatory
democracy. This technology is part and parcel of the post-McCarthy ethical citizen, prepared to
discuss issues from multiple viewpoints. The problem for Greene and Hicks is that this notion of
citizenship becomes tied to a normative conception of American democracy that justifies
imperialism. They write, "The production and management of this field of governance allows
liberalism to trade in cultural technologies in the global cosmopolitan marketplace at the same
time as it creates a field of intervention to transform and change the world one subject (regime)
at a time."11 Here, Greene and Hicks argue that this new conception of liberal governance,
which epitomizes the ethical citizen as an individual trained in the switch-side technique, serves
as a normative tool for judging other polities and justifying forcible regime change. One need
look only to the Bush administration’s framing of war as an instrument of democracy promotion
to grasp how the switch-side technique can be appropriated as a justification for violence.
It is our position, however, that rather than acting as a cultural technology expanding American
exceptionalism, switch-side debating originates from a civic attitude that serves as a bulwark
against fundamentalism of all stripes. Several prominent voices reshaping the national dialogue
on homeland security have come from the academic debate community and draw on its
animating spirit of critical inquiry. For example, Georgetown University law professor Neal
Katyal served as lead plaintiff’s counsel in Hamdan, which challenged post-9/11 enemy combat
definitions.12 The foundation for Katyal’s winning argument in Hamdan was laid some four
years before, when he collaborated with former intercollegiate debate champion Laurence Tribe
on an influential Yale Law Journal addressing a similar topic.13
Tribe won the National Debate Tournament in 1961 while competing as an undergraduate
debater for Harvard University. Thirty years later, Katyal represented Dartmouth College at the
same tournament and finished third. The imprint of this debate training is evident in Tribe and
Katyal’s contemporary public interventions, which are characterized by meticulous research,
sound argumentation, and a staunch commitment to democratic principles. Katyal’s reflection
on his early days of debating at Loyola High School in Chicago’s North Shore provides a vivid
illustration. "I came in as a shy freshman with dreams of going to medical school. Then Loyola’s
debate team opened my eyes to a different world: one of argumentation and policy." As Katyal
recounts, "the most important preparation for my career came from my experiences as a
member of Loyola’s debate team."14
The success of former debaters like Katyal, Tribe, and others in challenging the dominant
dialogue on homeland security points to the efficacy of academic debate as a training ground
for future advocates of progressive change. Moreover, a robust understanding of the switchside technique and the classical liberalism which underpins it would help prevent
misappropriation of the technique to bolster suspect homeland security policies. For buried
within an inner-city debater’s files is a secret threat to absolutism: the refusal to be classified as
"with us or against us," the embracing of intellectual experimentation in an age of orthodoxy,
and reflexivity in the face of fundamentalism. But by now, the irony of our story should be [end
page 224] apparent—the more effectively academic debating practice can be focused toward
these ends, the greater the proclivity of McCarthy’s ideological heirs to brand the activity as a
"weapon of mass destruction."
2. Hicks and Greene are wrong — they overgeneralize and lack an alternative.
Switch-side debating facilitates informed deliberation.
Stannard 6 — Matt Stannard, Director of Forensics and Associate Lecturer in the Department
of Communication and Journalism at the University of Wyoming, 2006 (“Deliberation, Debate,
and Democracy in the Academy and Beyond,” The Underview, Spring 2006 Faculty Senate
Speaker Series Speech, April 18, Available Online at
http://theunderview.blogspot.com/2006/04/deliberation-democracy-and-debate.html,
Accessed 06-26-2007)
If it is indeed true that debate inevitably produces other-oriented deliberative discourse at the
expense of students' confidence in their first-order convictions, this would indeed be a trade-off
worth criticizing. In all fairness, Hicks and Greene do not overclaim their critique, and they take
care to acknowledge the important ethical and cognitive virtues of deliberative debating. When
represented as anything other than a political-ethical concern, however, Hicks and Greene's
critique has several problems: First, as J.P. Lacy once pointed out, it seems a tremendous causal
(or even rhetorical) stretch to go from "debating both sides of an issue creates civic
responsibility essential to liberal democracy" to "this civic responsibility upholds the worst forms
of American exceptionalism."
Second, Hicks and Greene do not make any comparison of the potentially bad power of debate
to any alternative. Their implied alternative, however, is a form of forensic speech that
privileges personal conviction. The idea that students should be able to preserve their personal
convictions at all costs seems far more immediately tyrannical, far more immediately
damaging to either liberal or participatory democracy, than the ritualized requirements that
students occasionally take the opposite side of what they believe.
Third, as I have suggested and will continue to suggest, while a debate project requiring
participants to understand and often "speak for" opposing points of view may carry a great deal
of liberal baggage, it is at its core a project more ethically deliberative than institutionally
liberal. Where Hicks and Greene see debate producing "the liberal citizen-subject," I see debate
at least having the potential to produce "the deliberative human being." The fact that some
academic debaters are recruited by the CSIS and the CIA does not undermine this thesis. Absent
healthy debate programs, these think-tanks and government agencies would still recruit what
they saw as the best and brightest students. And absent a debate community that rewards antiinstitutional political rhetoric as much as liberal rhetoric, those students would have little-to-no
chance of being exposed to truly oppositional ideas.
They Say: “Unethical To Defend The Topic”
1. This is an affirmative burden: the resolution requires the affirmative to
defend that the U.S. federal government increase its ocean exploration and/or
development. “The USFG is evil — and so is every policy the USFG enacts” is a
negative argument, not a response to topicality.
2. Debate is not role-playing — arguing that the federal government should
increase ocean exploration and/or development doesn’t make a debater
complicit with the USFG’s wrongdoing. You don’t become the USFG by arguing
about it.
Harris 13 — Scott Harris, Associate Specialist and Debate Coach at the University of Kansas,
holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Northwestern University, 2013 (“This Ballot,” Ballot from
the Final Round of the 2013 National Debate Tournament, Posted on the Global Debate blog,
April 6th, Available Online at http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/scott-harris-writeslong-ballot-for-ndt.html, Accessed 08-31-2013)
While this ballot has meandered off on a tangent I’ll take this opportunity to comment on an
unrelated argument in the debate. Emporia argued that oppressed people should not be forced
to role play being the oppressor. This idea that debate is about role playing being a part of the
government puzzles me greatly. While I have been in debate for 40 years now never once have I
role played being part of the government. When I debated and when I have judged debates I
have never pretended to be anyone but Scott Harris. Pretending to be Scott Harris is burden
enough for me. Scott Harris has formed many opinions about what the government and other
institutions should or should not do without ever role playing being part of those institutions. I
would form opinions about things the government does if I had never debated. I cannot imagine
a world in which people don’t form opinions about the things their government does. I don’t
know where this vision of debate comes from. I have no idea at all why it would be oppressive
for someone to form an opinion about whether or not they think the government should or
should not do something. I do not role play being the owner of the Chiefs when I argue with my
friends about who they should take with the first pick in this year’s NFL draft. I do not role play
coaching the basketball team or being a player if I argue with friends about coaching decisions
or player decisions made during the NCAA tournament. If I argue with someone about whether
or not the government should use torture or drone strikes I can do that and form opinions
without ever role playing that I am part of the government. Sometimes the things that debaters
argue is happening in debates puzzle me because they seem to be based on a vision of debate
that is foreign to what I think happens in a debate round.
3. Debate is about the development of convictions, not the stating of
convictions—debate is a process for learning how to argue and decide ethical
positions.
4. Working within the state is good — it is not unethical.
Smith 10 — Andrea Smith, Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural
Studies at the University of California-Riverside, Faculty Member at the North American Institute
for Indigenous Theological Studies, Co-Founder of INCITE!—a national activist organization of
radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and
our communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing, holds a Ph.D.
in History of Consciousness from the University of California-Santa Cruz, interviewed by
Sharmeen Khan, David Hugill, and Tyler McCreary, 2010 (“Building Unlikely Alliances: An
Interview with Andrea Smith,” Upping The Anti—a Canadian radical journal, Number 10,
Available Online at http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/10-building-unlikely-alliances-aninterview-with-andrea-smith/, Accessed 05-02-2014)
You’ve said that you saw the Obama election as a moment for social movements to build
themselves. What are your thoughts about electoral politics and the role of the state in terms of
the question of power?
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 openminded 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.
You challenge the US Social Forum motto – “another world is possible, another US is necessary”
by raising the question that, if another world is possible, then why is another US necessary?
What happens when we organize around a state-centered framework?
Well, our political imaginary gets captured by the state. I think that the world we want to live in
is something we can’t imagine now. We just assume that the US must be necessary, but does
anybody really feel liberated here? It’s almost common sense. Do we really think the United
States demonstrates the best way to organize the universe? Why is that the limit of our
imagination? I am not necessarily saying we can never do electoral politics or be strategic in
certain ways. The problem is when that strategy becomes the long-term vision itself. So, for
example, Obama’s campaign becomes the goal rather than a means to another goal. To me, that
is what that question is really asking. Can we free up our imaginations about what we really
want?
5. In-depth knowledge about the USFG is empowering. This answers “historical
determinism” and proves that government is responsive to citizen intervention.
Zelden 8 — Charles L. Zelden, Professor of History at Nova Southeastern University, holds a
Ph.D. in History from Rice University, 2008 (“Foreword,” The Legislative Branch of Federal
Government: People, Process, and Politics, Written by Gary P. Gershman, Published by ABC-CLIO,
ISBN 1851097120, p. vii-ix)
Most of us know something about the federal government. At the very least, we can name its
three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—and discuss the differences between them.
At an early age, we are taught in school about the president of the United States and his official
roles and responsibilities; we learn about Congress and the courts and their place in our
government. In civics classes, we often get a skeletal picture of how the nation’s government
works; we are told that Congress writes the laws, the president executes them, and the
Supreme Court acts as the interpreter of the U.S. Constitution. News reports, blogs, and
editorials we read as adults add to this knowledge. Many of us can go further and explain some
of the basic interactions among the branches. We know that the laws Congress passes are
subject to the president’s veto power and the Supreme Court’s powers of judicial review; we
understand that the president names the members of his Cabinet and nominates justices to the
Supreme Court, but that the Senate has to confirm these nominations; and we can discuss how
the Supreme Court, as the “caretaker” of the Constitution, can declare laws unconstitutional,
but that it is up to the legislative and executive branches to enforce these rulings. We bandy
around such terms as checks and balances and separation of powers. We talk about majority
votes and filibusters in the Senate.
For most of us, however, this is about as far as our knowledge goes. According to newspaper
accounts spanning decades, most Americans have trouble naming members of the Supreme
Court, or key figures in the congressional leadership, or the members of the president’s Cabinet.
Still fewer of us can explain in detail how a bill becomes a law, or the president’s authority in
foreign affairs, or how the Supreme Court decides a case. If we ask about the historical
development of these institutions and officials and their powers, the numbers of those who
understand how our federal government works drops even further.
It is not surprising that most of us do not know a lot about the workings of our government.
Government is a large and complex enterprise. It includes thousands of people working on
subjects ranging from tax reform to national security, from voting rights to defining and
enforcing environmental standards. Much of the work of government, although technically open
to the public, is done out of sight and hence out of mind. We may know about those parts of the
government that affect us directly—the Social Security Administration for the elderly, the
Defense Department for those with family members in the military, or the Supreme Court when
the news is filled with such controversial topics as abortion or the right to die or prayer in
schools—but our understandings are generally limited to only those parts that directly affect us.
Although this state [end page vii] of affairs is understandable, it is also dangerous. Our form of
government is a democratic republic. This means that, although elected or appointed officials
carry out the duties of government, “We the People of the United States” are the ultimate
authority, and not just because we choose those who run the government (or those who
appoint the men and women who run the day-to-day business of government). In the end, it is
our choices that shape (or, at least, should shape) the scope and function of the federal
government. As Abraham Lincoln gracefully puts it, ours is a government “of the people, by the
people, for the people.”
Yet what sort of choices can we make if we do not understand the structures, workings, and
powers of the federal government? Choices made in ignorance are dangerous choices. When a
president goes on TV and claims a power not granted by the Constitution, we need to know that
this claim is something new. It might be that what the president is asking for is a reasonable and
necessary extension of the powers already held by the executive branch—but it might, on the
other hand, be a radical expansion of his powers based on nothing more than his say-so. If we
do not understand what is normal, how can we judge whether abnormal and exceptional
proposals are necessary or proper? The same is true when pundits and politicians rant on about
the dangers of “activist judges.” How can we know what an “activist judge” is if we do not even
understand a “normal” judge’s job? What one person calls dangerous activism could be
courageous defense of constitutional rights in other people’s eyes—or what one person praises
as a creative reading of the Constitution, another person might denounce as an irresponsible
and unwise judicial experiment.
This is the point: without knowledge of the way things are supposed to be, how can we judge
when the powers of government are being underused, misused, or even abused? The need for
this knowledge is the root from which the three volumes of the About Federal Government
series have grown. Our goal is to present the federal government as a living, working system
made up of real people doing jobs of real importance—not just in the abstract, but for all of us
in our daily lives. Knowledge is power, and this is as true today as when Lord Francis Bacon
wrote it about four hundred years ago. Understanding how our government works, and how
each of its institutions works, and how they interact with one another and with “We the People”
is not just something we might need to pass a civics test or a citizenship exam—it is a source of
power for us as citizens. Knowing how a bill becomes a law and the many ways that a good idea
can be derailed by the process of lawmaking is a source of power—for some day, there may be a
bill that you want to see enacted into law, or that you want to prevent being made a law.
Knowing the stress points at which a bill is most vulnerable to defeat can give you the
opportunity to put pressure where it would do the most good. We can find similar examples for
the other two branches as well.
One way of showing the living and evolving nature of the federal government is to place it into
its historical context. Our government did not just come into being fully formed. The
government we have today is the result of over two hundred years of [end page viii] growth
and change, of choices made and laws passed. Much of what we hold to be gospel today, when
it comes to the goals and methods and powers of the national government, resulted from our
experiences—good and bad—in the past. How can one understand today’s civil rights laws, for
example, without first understanding the impact of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction on
the structure of our government? Forgetting the past leaves us powerless to deal with the
present and the future. A second way to bring our government to life is to focus on the
interactions among the three branches of the federal government, as well as between these
three branches and the states. Most of the controversy shaping our governing structures grew
out of conflicts among the various branches of the federal government, or between the federal
government and the states. When Congress fights with the president over budgets or the
Supreme Court overturns a popular law passed by Congress and signed by the president, or
when a state defies a mandate issued by the U.S. Supreme Court and the president must put
that state’s National Guard under his authority to enforce the Court’s decision, those crises
clarify the actual working structures of our government. Like flexing a muscle to make it strong,
these interactions define the actual impact of our government—not only today, but in the
future as well. Finally, we can understand the living nature of the federal government by
examining the people who make up that government. Government is not an abstract idea: it is
people doing their jobs as best they can. If government can be said to have a personality, it is
the direct reflection of the collective personalities of those who work in our government. Hence,
when we talk about Congress, we are talking about the people who are elected to the House of
Representatives and the Senate and whose values, views, beliefs, and prejudices shape the
output of the national legislature. The About Federal Government series integrates all three of
these approaches as it sets out the workings and structures of our national government. Written
by historians with a keen understanding of the workings of government past and present, these
volumes stress the ways in which each of the branches helps form part of a whole system—and
the ways that each branch is unique as an institution. Finally, we have given special stress to
bringing the people and the history of these branches to life, in the process making clear just
how open to our own intervention our government really is. This is our government, and the
more we understand how it works, the more real our “ownership” of it will be.
6. Voicing an argument doesn’t make a person unethical. They oversimplify
complex relations between stance and identity. Proceduralism is the best way
to facilitate reasoned compromise.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Beyond
Sincerity and Authenticity: The Ethos of Proceduralism,” The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the
Cultures of Theory, Published by Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691114033, p. 161-163)
In this essay, I interpret the political theory known as “proceduralism” as an alternative to the
paradigms of thought that dominate within poststructuralism. Proceduralism is a normative
model for the justification of specific political practices and institutions: in the case of the forms
of democracy favored by Rawls and Habermas, the aim is to elaborate those processes, rules,
and procedures that will determine legitimate or justifiable outcomes. Historically associated
with liberalism and legal formalism, proceduralism contrasts itself with moral and political
theories that make appeal to substantive guiding concepts such as human nature or a pregiven
notion of the good. In Habermas's case, ongoing intersubjective argument conducted within
conditions of fairness and reciprocity, and animated by a moral point of view committed to the
enlargement of perspective that argument itself promotes and demands, is the privileged
procedural component of liberal and internationalist democratic institutions. Only those
outcomes that have been accepted by all those concerned—whether by consensus or reasoned
compromise—can be considered legitimate from a moral point of view.
In its Habermasian version, I will argue, proceduralism harbors a challenging conception of
ethos, one that effectively displaces the antinomy between reason and ethos that I examined
in the previous essay. The very idea of a proceduralist ethos will, I realize, be viewed by some
readers as counterintuitive, insofar as proceduralism is often seen as fundamentally impersonal
in its emphasis on processes, rules, and institutional practices that exceed the level of individual
actors. But I will excavate proceduralism's own interest in ethos at both the individual and
collective levels, and in order to set the stage for my analysis, I will revisit Lionel Trilling's
genealogy of the modern concepts of sincerity and authenticity, arguing that proceduralism
constitutes an extension of the sincerity paradigm, while poststructuralism remains the inheritor
of the authenticity paradigm. The essays in the final section of this volume have identified ways
in which a certain exiling of the categories of character and ethos has impoverished the
theoretical resources of contemporary literary and cultural studies. My central presupposition
has been that sociological [end page 161] conceptions of identity—ascriptions of race, class,
sexuality, ethnicity, nationality—have so dominated the understanding of subjective experience
that we do not tend to reflect sufficiently on the complex relations among ascribed identity,
cultivated ethos, and practice. Even in much work influenced by poststructuralism, where
identity is of course a complex affair, there is no coherent analysis of the relation between
implied ideals of intellectual or ethical or political virtue, and the insistence that identities are
fundamentally multiple and unstable because shot through with various group identifications.
Ethical rhetoric certainly appears when theorists discuss the desirable or undesirable
consequences of various stances toward identity and social relations. But the conceptual gulf
between stance and identity typically remains unacknowledged—the former implies capacities
for reflective distance, self-cultivation, and situated judgment, while the latter remains either
extrinsic or imposed (even when unstable or precarious). The idea that intellectual and political
practices carry ethical significance precisely insofar as they become a part of one's character or
contribute toward the formation of a developed ethos seems foreign to the view of identity as
imposed, subverted, unstable, or even performed (precisely because the notion of
performance is fundamentally elaborated in relation to conditions of imposition and
opportunities for subversion). In the end, the current frameworks for understanding selfhood
and practice tend to imagine action as a negation or negotiation of identity, rather than
something that might develop a character or foster an ethos.
Habermas's proceduralism departs from prevailing paradigms of identity—and their consequent
theoretical impasses—by addressing two questions whose fates are deeply intertwined. First,
his proceduralism interestingly reframes the poststructuralist attempt to trouble, subvert, or
denaturalize identity, both at the level of individual practice and in relation to the collective
dimensions of identity. It very much subordinates group identity to the moral framework of a
universalist procedure that can subtend diverse forms of self-understanding: in this sense it
mounts a critique of identity politics and discloses certain limits or problems in recent attempts
to promote pluralist accommodation of disparate cultural practices and self-understandings. But
in doing so, I will argue, it in no way fails to conceptualize an ethos that meets the demands of
a pluralistic democracy. Indeed, its ability to mediate among the individual, intersubjective, and
collective levels of practice constitute, I will suggest, one of the strongest claims of this tradition
upon our attention.
The second achievement of Habermasian proceduralism that I isolate lies in its manner of
addressing a core problem that has emerged within those pockets of theory, analyzed in
previous chapters, in which ethos emerges as conceptually significant, but remains oppositional
or mystified [end page 162] insofar as it is invoked as that which exceeds, escapes, or resists
either rational argument or abstract universalism. Proceduralism departs dramatically from this
theoretical predisposition by suggesting that argument informed by universalistic principles
might itself become an ethos. In doing so, it pushes beyond not only the impasses of identity
paradigms (in either their affirmative or deconstructive guise), but also certain entrenched
excesses of the critique of enlightenment. The account that I will offer will refuse the prevalent
tendency to offer ethos—whether understood as individual style or group culture—as the
corrective to reason.
7. Vigorously defending positions you don’t believe in debates is the highest
ethical obligation in a democracy. Their refusal to affirm the topic when
assigned to defend the affirmative is unethical.
Day 66 — Douglas G. Day, Assistant Professor and Director of Forensics at the University of
Wisconsin, 1966 (“The Ethics of Democratic Debate,” Central States Speech Journal, Volume 17,
February, p. 5-7)
The ethics of debate are inherent in debate as the technology of decision-making in a
democratic society. These ethics may be ascertained by examining the nature of debate as a
decision-making process and the function debate fulfills in democratic society.
Democracy as a political philosophy does not specify what the good life is, rather it provides a
methodological framework within which each individual may seek to fulfill his own conception
of the good life. The two primary functions of democratic government are to provide means for
establishing public policies when such policies become necessary and to provide means for the
adjudication of disputes when private interests come into conflict with each other or with public
policies.2 In both functions debate is the essential procedural feature of the decision-making
process. When the people or their representatives in legislature or committee choose a policy,
the choice is presumed to be the outcome of debate. In the adjudication of disputes, law
guarantees that the decision be determined by debate. Without debate the ballot box and the
jury's verdict become empty social gestures.
The acceptance of debate as the democratic technology of decision-making rests upon two
assumptions. First, that political and moral truths are different from scientific truths. Second,
that public consensus on political and moral truth is possible. I call these two statements
"assumptions" because debate as a method must accept them as true, even though they may be
open to question. The first assumption, that political and moral truth is different from scientific
truth, is reasonably clear. Moral statements which are answers to questions such as "What
ought I do?" or 'What should I do?" are not factual statements. They are not empirical
descriptions of the way things are, but rather attitudes toward the way things are. This does not,
of course, mean that empirical data may not be relevant to moral decisions; it does mean that
we cannot turn to the empirical sciences to discover the nature of the good life. The second
assumption necessary to the acceptance of debate is that consensus on political and moral
statements is possible, in spite of the inability to verify such statements empirically. In other
words, when we seek agreement, we assume agreement is possible. In practice, of course, we
do not expect unanimous agreement. But our willingness to be bound by, i.e., to accept as true,
a decision with which we disagree stems from the fact that agreement is assumed possible and
is sought. As Sabine observes: "It is the belief that consensus is possible which creates the will to
make the apparatus work, and it is the belief that a consensus has been sought that takes from
its execution the sense of being merely coercive."3 The problem for democracy is to make
decision by debate work as effectively as possible.
Decision is meaningful only if there are alternatives from which to choose; it is intelligent only if
the alternatives are understood. Thus, the prime requisite which must be met if debate is to
provide sound decisions is that it be thorough and complete, that all arguments and
information relevant to decision be known and understood.
Democratic government provides the opportunity for debate through the guarantee of freedom
of speech. The important civil value in freedom of speech, however, is not in the elimination of
restraints on speech but in the unique opportunity that this elimination of restraints provides.
Lippman calls this the "creative principle" of freedom of speech. He observes that "the essence
of freedom of opinion is not in more toleration as such, but in the debate which toleration
provides: it is not in the venting of opinion, but in the confrontation of opinion."5 Too often
regard for freedom of speech is only in its negative sense and the positive obligation is
forgotten. The prohibition against restraint of speech is meaningless if nothing is said. Free
speech is "people talking, not merely people who are not prevented from doing so."6
Free speech is the necessary prerequisite of full debate. It guarantees that full debate can take
place; it does not guarantee that full debate will take place. Herein lies the highest ethic of
democratic debate. A commitment to debate as the method of democratic decision-making
demands an overriding ethical responsibility to promote the full confrontation of opposing
opinions, arguments, and information relevant to decision. Without the confrontation of
opposing ideas debate does not exist, and to the extent that that confrontation is incomplete so
is debate incomplete.
What are the practical obligations entailed in acceptance of this ethic? The preservation of
freedom of speech is obviously necessary. But more important is the obligation to see that
opinions and arguments are fully and persuasively presented. Encouragement and incentive
must be provided those who hold minority viewpoints to express them. Forums must be
provided those whose views are so unpopular that they are denied ready access to the usual
channels of public expression. And finally, all must recognize and accept personal responsibility
to present, when necessary, as forcefully as possible, opinions and arguments with which they
may personally disagree.
To present persuasively the arguments for a position with which one disagrees is, perhaps, the
greatest need and the highest ethical act in democratic debate. It is the greatest need because
most minority views, if expressed at all, are not expressed forcefully and persuasively. Bryce, in
his perceptive analysis of America and Americans, saw two dangers to democratic government:
the danger of not ascertaining accurately the will of the majority and the danger that minorities
might not effectively express themselves.7 In regard to the second danger, which he considered
the greater of the two, he suggested:
The duty, therefore, of a patriotic statesman in a country where public opinion rules,
would seem to be rather to resist and correct than to encourage the dominant
sentiment. He will not be content with trying to form and mould and lead it, but he will
confront it, lecture it, remind it that it is fallible, rouse it out of its self-complacency.8
To present persuasively arguments for a position with which one disagrees is the highest ethical
act in debate because it sets aside personal interests for the benefit of the common good.
Essentially, for the person who accepts decision by debate, the ethics of the decision-making
process are superior to the ethics of personal conviction on particular subjects for debate.
Democracy is a commitment to means, not ends. Democratic society accepts certain ends, i.e.,
decisions, because they have been arrived at by democratic means. We recognize the moral
priority of decision by debate when we agree to be bound by that decision regardless of
personal conviction. Such an agreement is morally acceptable because the decision-making
process guarantees our moral integrity by guaranteeing the opportunity to debate for a
reversal of the decision.
8. Procedural fairness outweighs personal conviction.
Day 66 — Douglas G. Day, Assistant Professor and Director of Forensics at the University of
Wisconsin, 1966 (“The Ethics of Democratic Debate,” Central States Speech Journal, Volume 17,
February, p. 7)
Thus, personal conviction can have moral significance in social decision-making only so long as
the integrity of debate is maintained. And the integrity of debate is maintained only when
there is a full and forceful confrontation of arguments and evidence relevant to decision. When
an argument is not presented or is not presented as persuasively as possible, then debate fails.
As debate fails decisions become less "wise." As decisions become less wise the process of
decision-making is questioned. And finally, if and when debate is set aside for the alternative
method of decision-making by authority, the personal convictions of individuals within society
lose their moral significance as determinants of social choice.
9. No impact — if they believe the resolution is unethical, they should be
confident defending it because when all arguments are made, the truth will win
out. The only reason they would fear presenting affirmative arguments is if
they didn’t believe in their personal convictions.
Day 66 — Douglas G. Day, Assistant Professor and Director of Forensics at the University of
Wisconsin, 1966 (“The Ethics of Democratic Debate,” Central States Speech Journal, Volume 17,
February, p. 7-8)
This may seem to represent a paradoxical ethical dichotomy to those who believe that sincerity
of expression is the highest ethical test of public address. No paradox obtains, however, for
those who are committed to debate. Belief that the wisest decisions are achieved by a full
confrontation of arguments and information dictates a primary obligation to see that debate
takes place. And if personal conviction on a particular subject has a preponderance of truth in its
favor it will prevail over other views even when all views are fully presented. If we believe that
our personal conviction can prevail only if not confronted by other opinions, then we must
either reject the belief that debate is the best method of arriving at truth in social matters or
admit that our personal conviction is not in the general interests of society. When we give
personal conviction an ethical priority over the decision-making process our emphasis can too
easily focus on ends rather than means. And personal conviction, as noted above, derives its
moral significance only in a specified context of means. Perhaps this is what Murphy had in mind
when he wrote, "Although personal integrity and honest belief are important parts of a man's
character, it is not the sincerity of the man but the honesty of his expression which has to be
measured in rhetoric.”9
They Say: “Our Experience/Perspective Outweighs”
1. Tolerance of difference requires recognition of disagreement, not
abandonment of rules. Radical accommodation collapses argument into
identity and renders democratic debate impossible.
Anderson 6 — Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and
Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and
Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Beyond
Sincerity and Authenticity: The Ethos of Proceduralism,” The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the
Cultures of Theory, Published by Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691114033, p. 182-184)
The question of how dialogue under conditions of pluralism might ideally be conceived has led
to alternate theories that define themselves against Habermasian proceduralism, which is seen
as ethnocentrically invested in rationality and consensus. It is important, in my view, to
acknowledge how fundamental to these alternate views remains the attempt to define ethos
against argument, which amounts to refusing the idea of argument as ethos. As in the case of
the Foucault/Habermas “debate,” and in certain articulations of the new cosmopolitanism,
ethos in these alternate models is elevated above argument, most visibly as a critique of reason
and abstract universalism, but also, I shall argue, as a model of difference that poses problems
for democratic politics and particularly for the fate of debate within it. In the Rawlsian model of
overlapping consensus (where people with fundamentally different conceptions of the good
agree on political principles but for different reasons) and in models of accommodation that
have been proffered in objection to what are seen as the deficiencies of the consensus models,
there is an expectation of fundamental, nonnegotiable disagreement among parties who
nonetheless have an investment in cohabiting within a pluralistic democratic state.
One of the more thoughtful critiques of Habermasian proceduralism along accommodationist
lines is that of Thomas McCarthy, who argues that Habermas's emphases on rational acceptance
and a cooperative search for truth intended to gain the assent of a universal audience are not
themselves the proper informing ideals of a discourse proceduralism enacted under the
“conditions of posttraditional pluralism and individualism.”23 McCarthy argues that Habermas
wants to prevent any skepticism about [end page 182] the possibility of ethicopolitical
consensus from undercutting the orientation to reasoned agreement on which he bases his
conception of legitimacy. For McCarthy, by contrast, participants need to recognize the
possibility of reasoned disagreements and then use this recognition to devise democratic
procedures that will enable and enhance coexistence. McCarthy therefore suggests that
Habermas's organizing presuppositions, which favor procedures meant to promote consensus
and negotiated compromise, might be foreclosing the possibility of devising a different order of
proceduralism that would aim to promote not agreement but rather mutual accommodation.
He concludes, tantalizingly: “it would be an important and interesting task to explore the logic of
the ethical-political dialogue that could produce such mutual accommodation and to elaborate
its differences from the logics both of truth-oriented discourse and of strategic, self-interested
bargaining” (151).
In his reply to McCarthy's critique, Habermas refuses the concept of mutual accommodation
that McCarthy introduces. He entirely cedes the point that we must expect disagreement—an
ideal of argument presupposes this—and that this awareness should form part of reflective
participation in democratic debate. He then maps out three positions on dialogue under
conditions of pluralism, rejecting the first two and endorsing the third. The first position holds
that it is impossible to escape clashing horizons; when they encounter one another, the only
possibility for overcoming their differences is the assimilation of one to the other. The second
position, which is Rawls's, envisions an overlapping consensus (parties accept a consensus result
for different reasons).24 And the third position promotes the progressive expansion of horizons:
beyond the limit of their respective self-interpretations and world views, the different parties
refer to a presumptively shared moral point of view that, under the symmetrical conditions of
discourse and mutual learning, requires an ever broader decentering of perspectives. What
Habermas insists upon is the necessity that people accept regulating procedures elaborated
with the goal of coexistence for the same reasons. As he concludes, “We can agree to the
mutual toleration of forms of life and worldviews that represent existential challenges for each
other only if we have a basis of shared beliefs for 'agreeing to disagree.'”25
In the case of McCarthy, whose position is closer to Rawls's, the elaboration of those virtues that
would best express a goal of accommodation—[end page 183] tolerance, respect—are elevated
above any principle of shared reasons. This creates a situation in which ethos, in the sense of
an avowed form of ethical life, is somehow allowed to cushion the participants against
argumentative challenges, a condition that Habermas is persistently concerned to disallow. In
its most pronounced form, such an approach risks collapsing argument into identity: here the
ineluctable fact of difference—whether radically conceived or more traditionally pluralist—
becomes the overriding reason for reasoned disagreement. But of course the position that
McCarthy advances need not be taken so far: read another way, there is a potential similarity
between McCarthy's position and the new cosmopolitanism, insofar as both locate a virtue in
refusing the insistence on explicit justification and rational agreement that we find in Habermas.
The logic of accommodation implies a willingness not to argue out every last detail, but rather to
exercise the tact that consists in recognizing that we may differ. Nonetheless, it is important to
recognize that accommodation here operates as an attitude informing democratic practices
that otherwise still need to be based on procedures for ensuring open debate and equitable
forms of representation. These procedures can be refined and debated themselves, but never
suspended completely. Ethos in this view does not replace or eclipse procedure, just as
cosmopolitanism has the potential to refine universalism through tact and phronesis, without
disavowing its fundamental universalistic principles.
2. Don’t attach special authority to insider accounts. Excluding the perspectives
of individuals without a particular experience or identity impoverishes debate.
Bridges 1 — David Bridges, Director of the Centre for Applied Research in Education and
Professorial Fellow at the University of East Anglia, Chair of the Von Hügel Institute at St
Edmund's College Cambridge, holds a Ph.D. from the University of London, 2001 (“The Ethics of
Outsider Research,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 35, Issue 3, August, Available
Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Premier, p. 372-374)
II Only Insiders Can Properly Represent The Experience of a Community
First, it is argued that only those who have shared in, and have been part of, a particular
experience can understand or can properly understand (and perhaps ‘properly’ is particularly
heavily loaded here) what it is like. You need to be a woman to understand what it is like to live
as a woman; to be disabled to understand what it is like to live as a disabled [end page 372]
person etc. Thus Charlton writes of ‘the innate inability of able-bodied people, regardless of
fancy credentials and awards, to understand the disability experience’ (Charlton, 1998, p. 128).
Charlton’s choice of language here is indicative of the rhetorical character which these
arguments tend to assume. This arises perhaps from the strength of feeling from which they
issue, but it warns of a need for caution in their treatment and acceptance. Even if able-bodied
people have this ‘inability’ it is difficult to see in what sense it is ‘innate’. Are all credentials
‘fancy’ or might some (e.g. those reflecting a sustained, humble and patient attempt to grapple
with the issues) be pertinent to that ability? And does Charlton really wish to maintain that
there is a single experience which is the experience of disability, whatever solidarity disabled
people might feel for each other?
The understanding that any of us have of our own conditions or experience is unique and
special, though recent work on personal narratives also shows that it is itself multi-layered and
inconstant, i.e. that we have and can provide many different understandings even of our own
lives (see, for example, Tierney, 1993). Nevertheless, our own understanding has a special
status: it provides among other things a data source for others’ interpretations of our actions; it
stands in a unique relationship to our own experiencing; and no one else can have quite the
same understanding. It is also plausible that people who share certain kinds of experience in
common stand in a special position in terms of understanding those shared aspects of
experience. However, once this argument is applied to such broad categories as ‘women’ or
‘blacks’, it has to deal with some very heterogeneous groups; the different social, personal and
situational characteristics that constitute their individuality may well outweigh the shared
characteristics; and there may indeed be greater barriers to mutual understanding than there
are gateways.
These arguments, however, all risk a descent into solipsism: if our individual understanding is so
particular, how can we have communication with or any understanding of anyone else? But,
granted Wittgenstein’s persuasive argument against a private language (Wittgenstein, l963,
perhaps more straightforwardly presented in Rhees, 1970), we cannot in these circumstances
even describe or have any real understanding of our own condition in such an isolated world.
Rather it is in talking to each other, in participating in a shared language, that we construct the
conceptual apparatus that allows us to understand our own situation in relation to others—
and this is a construction which involves understanding differences as well as similarities.
Besides, we have good reason to treat with some scepticism accounts provided by individuals of
their own experience and by extension accounts provided by members of a particular category
or community of people. We know that such accounts can be riddled with special pleading,
selective memory, careless error, self-centredness, myopia, prejudice and a good deal more. A
lesbian scholar illustrates some of the pressures that can bear, for example, on an insider
researcher in her own community: [end page 373]
As an insider, the lesbian has an important sensitivity to offer, yet she is also more
vulnerable than the non-lesbian researcher, both to the pressure from the heterosexual
world—that her studies conform to previous works and describe lesbian reality in terms
of its relationship with the outside—and to pressure from the inside, from Within the
lesbian community itself-that her studies mirror not the reality of that community but
its self-protective ideology. (Kreiger, 1982, p. 108)
In other words, while individuals from within a community have access to a particular kind of
understanding of their experience, this does not automatically attach special authority (though
it might attach special interest) to their own representations of that experience. Moreover,
while we might acknowledge the limitations of the understanding which someone from outside
a community (or someone other than the individual who is the focus of the research) can
develop, this does not entail that they cannot develop and present an understanding or that
such understanding is worthless. Individuals can indeed find benefit in the understandings that
others offer of their experience in, for example, a counselling relationship, or when a researcher
adopts a supportive role with teachers engaged in reflection on or research into their own
practice. Many have echoed the plea of the Scottish poet, Robert Burns (in ‘To a louse’):
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!3
—even if they might have been horrified with what such power revealed to them. Russell
argued that it was the function of philosophy (and why not research too?) ‘to suggest many
possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom… It keeps
alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect’ (Russell, 1912, p.
91). ‘Making the familiar strange’, as Stenhouse called it, often requires the assistance of
someone unfamiliar with our own world who can look at our taken-for-granted experience
through, precisely, the eye of a stranger. Sparkes (1994) writes very much in these terms in
describing his own research, as a white, heterosexual middle-aged male, into the life history of a
lesbian PE teacher. He describes his own struggle with the question ‘is it possible for
heterosexual people to undertake research into homosexual populations’?’ but he concludes
that being a ‘phenomenological stranger’ who asks ‘dumb questions’ may be a useful and
illuminating experience for the research subject in that they may have to return to first
principles in reviewing their story. This could, of course be an elaborate piece of selfjustification, but it is interesting that someone like Max Biddulph, who writes from a
gay/bisexual standpoint, can quote this conclusion with apparent approval (Biddulph, 1996).
3. If they win that it is impossible for outsiders to understand their experience,
it is also impossible for them to communicate their argument effectively. Don’t
exclude outsider scholarship.
Bridges 1 — David Bridges, Director of the Centre for Applied Research in Education and
Professorial Fellow at the University of East Anglia, Chair of the Von Hügel Institute at St
Edmund's College Cambridge, holds a Ph.D. from the University of London, 2001 (“The Ethics of
Outsider Research,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 35, Issue 3, August, Available
Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Premier, p. 374-375)
People from outside a community clearly can have an understanding of the experience of those
who are inside that community. It is almost [end page 374] certainly a different understanding
from that of the insiders. Whether it is of any value will depend among other things on the
extent to which they have immersed themselves in the world of the other and portrayed it in its
richness and complexity; on the empathy and imagination that they have brought to their
enquiry and writing; on whether their stories are honest, responsible and critical (Barone, 1992).
Nevertheless, this value will also depend on qualities derived from the researchers’ externality:
their capacity to relate one set of experiences to others (perhaps from their own community);
their outsider perspective on the structures which surround and help to define the experience
of the community; on the reactions and responses to that community of individuals and groups
external to it. 4
Finally, it must surely follow that if we hold that a researcher, who (to take the favourable case)
seeks honestly, sensitively and with humility to understand and to represent the experience of a
community to which he or she does not belong, is incapable of such understanding and
representation, then how can he or she understand either that same experience as mediated
through the research of someone from that community? The argument which excludes the
outsider from understanding a community through the effort of their own research, a fortiori
excludes the outsider from that understanding through the secondary source in the form of the
effort of an insider researcher or indeed any other means. Again, the point can only be
maintained by insisting that a particular (and itself ill-defined) understanding is the only kind of
understanding which is worth having.
The epistemological argument (that outsiders cannot understand the experience of a
community to which they do not belong) becomes an ethical argument when this is taken to
entail the further proposition that they ought not therefore attempt to research that
community. I hope to have shown that this argument is based on a false premise. Even if the
premise were sound, however, it would not necessarily follow that researchers should be
prevented or excluded from attempting to understand this experience, unless it could be shown
that in so doing they would cause some harm. This is indeed part of the argument emerging
from disempowered communities and it is to this that I shall now turn.
They Say: “Black/Urban Youth Are Disinterested In USFG
Policies”
1. Urban youth aren't disinterested in policy. On balance, that's false and
essentializing. Embracing frameworks that oppose policy will be a setback at
the student and community level. We can win within their framework.
Noguera and Cannella 6 — Pedro Noguera, Professor in the Steinhardt School of Education
and Director of the Metro Center for Research on Urban Schools and Globalization at New York
University, holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California-Berkeley, and Chiara M.
Cannella, Doctoral Student in the Department of Language, Reading, and Culture at the
University of Arizona, 2006 (“Conclusion: Youth Agency, Resistance, and Civic Activism: The
Public Commitment to Social Justice,” Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community
Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America’s Youth, Edited by
Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota, Published by Routledge, ISBN
0415952506, p. 342)
Principle 3: Invest in the Capacity of Youth Leaders
Involving youth in the processes of policy creation, implementation, and evaluation requires
youth to have experience in critical thinking, research, social analysis, and problem solving.
Urban youth have demonstrated both the capacity and the inclination for these roles when they
are supported by effective educational and youth development strategies (Duncan-Andrade,
chapter 9, this volume; HoSang, chapter 1, this volume; Kwon, chapter 12, this volume; LewisCharp, Yu, & Soukamneuth, chapter 2, this volume; Strobel, Osberg, & McLaughlin, chapter 11,
this volume). But urban youth, especially recent immigrants and linguistic minorities, tend to
have fewer opportunities to learn and acquire experience to become active as leaders in their
communities (Sherrod, chapter 16, this volume). Without deliberate training and education,
youth are likely to lack the skills and thinking required for effective civic participation. Poor
urban neighborhoods in particular tend to offer fewer opportunities for adolescents to become
involved in community organizations, to exercise leadership in their schools, and to participate
in multigenerational organizing efforts.
Effective youth programs build a scaffold for the development of the skills necessary for young
people to become activists and leaders in their community. They also impart the skills, both
analytical and academic, that young people need to be able to critique conditions and policies
that adversely affect their lives (Kirshner, chapter 3, this volume; Morrell, chapter 7, this
volume; O’Donoghue, chapter 13, this volume). This scaffolding may include adult or youth
leaders modeling certain behaviors, such as how to speak in public, collect signatures for a
petition, organize a rally or write a press release. They also provide the young people they work
with the opportunity to reflect and process the work and activities they engage in order to
insure that they can learn from their experiences. Groups like the Children’s Defense Fund and
the Center for Third World Organizing also place young people with community-based
organizations where they can learn the nuts and bolts of organizing and leadership directly from
veterans. Such training activities are crucial if young people are to develop the skills needed to
become leaders in their communities.
2. We critique their totalizing representations of politically alienated urban
youth. Even if some young people are cynical about policy discourse, the aff has
made a sweeping generalization that ignores complexity and particularity. Vote
neg to reject this essentialism.
Kirshner et al. 3 — Ben Kirshner, Doctoral Student in the Program in Child and Adolescent
Development at the School of Education at Stanford University, et al., with Karen Strobel, PostDoctoral Fellow at the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities at Stanford
University, holds a Ph.D. in Psychological Studies in Education from the School of Education at
Stanford University, and María Fernández, Liaison to Redwood City community partners
addressing community youth development, civic engagement, and school-family-community
partnerships for the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities at Stanford
University, 2003 (“Critical Civic Engagement Among Urban Youth,” Perspectives on Urban
Education, Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring, Available Online at
https://www.urbanedjournal.org/archive/volume-2-issue-1-spring-2003/critical-civicengagement-among-urban-youth, Accessed 07-16-2014)
While these analyses of the structural and institutional challenges to urban youth's civic
participation provide a necessary starting point, it is also important to pay attention to young
people's own interpretations of social context. How do young people make sense of their social
and political environment and its implications for their future? Flanagan and Gallay (1995) write:
Rarely are [young people] asked to look outward, toward the community where they
live, and reflect on the justice of economic arrangements or of the political influence
they observe…we know little about the processes through which children come to
understand, challenge, or justify the political arrangements or economic practices of
their society (p. 35).
Often, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES) and geographically defined neighborhoods are
variables included in studies as indicators of the social context in which adolescents are
developing their civic identities. In this paper, we argue that knowledge of adolescents' "social
address"—while necessary—does not provide sufficient understanding of youth experiences in
that context; this is not because we think that the structural analyses are wrong, but because we
believe youth's sense-making about social and political realities is a core aspect of their
development. Understanding how young people think about their neighborhoods, schools, and
communities is critical to supporting their capacity to help build, shape or challenge the
institutions in those settings.
Secondly, knowledge of youth's social awareness is important because it can give us a more
complex picture of what it means to be an "engaged citizen." Terms such as "cynical," or
"alienated" that are used to categorize broad demographic groups misrepresent the
complexity of youth's attitudes towards their communities. Young people are often cynical and
hopeful, or both critical and engaged. Rosaldo (1997), for example, points out in his discussion
of "Latino cultural citizenship" that citizenship involves a discussion and struggle over the
meaning and scope of membership in the community in which one lives, which involves feelings
of both alienation and belonging. Sanchez-Jankowski (2002) makes a related point: because of
historical experiences of oppression and exclusion, some ethnic groups are more attuned to
systemic injustices, leading to distinct forms of civic involvement. For youth growing up in
neighborhoods and schools with insufficient resources, meaningful democratic participation
often involves a critical analysis of structural forces and power (Ginwright & James, 2002). This
complex process can be described as a critical form of civic engagement, in which youth's civic
participation is motivated by their own experience of pressing social problems. A research
approach that puts urban youth's meaning-making about social context at the center can help to
shed light on this complexity.
One promising arena for a better understanding of critical civic engagement lies in the emerging
phenomena of youth participation in social change. Amidst concerns about the political
disengagement of young people, researchers have begun to document the growing prevalence
of "youth action" (Forum for Youth Investment, 2001). For example, youth groups have
organized politically to achieve school reform goals, performed action research to expose
environmental polluters, and conducted program evaluation to improve city services for youth
(for a discussion see Forum for Youth Investment, 2001; Sherman, 2002). Programs like these
seek to empower youth who have been traditionally marginalized from political participation.
The way that youth are socially positioned in the groups contrasts sharply with the typical public
school, which rarely engages youth in decision-making or privileges their voices in policy
discourse (Gee, 2001; Mitra, 2002). Youth are expected to think critically, develop a sense of
themselves as agents of change, and learn how to act competently in the public arena.
Although practitioners have begun to promote this emerging field, there is little research
describing developmental processes in these settings or their significance for youth's
development as citizens (Rajani, 2001).
3. Their sweeping generalizations lack scholarly support. Studies confirm the
benefits of training opportunities that enable marginalized youth to engage in
public policy activism.
Lewis-Charp et al. 6 — Heather Lewis-Charp, Senior Associate and Social Scientist at Social
Policy Research Associates, holds an M.A. in Education Research from the University of
California-Santa Cruz, et al., with Hanh Cao Yu, Vice President and Senior Social Scientist at
Social Policy Research Associates, holds a Ph.D. in Education Administration and Policy Analysis
from Stanford University, and Sengsouvanh Soukamneuth, Social Scientist at Social Policy
Research Associates, holds an M.A. in Education Policy from the University of California-Los
Angeles, 2006 (“Civic Activist Approaches for Engaging Youth in Social Justice,” Beyond
Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice
and Policy for America’s Youth, Edited by Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio
Cammarota, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952506, p. 22)
Despite the emerging interest in youth action and political engagement, few empirical studies
exist in this area—particularly studies of youth in low-income urban communities. Most
research has focused on the benefits of traditional forms of political engagement and/or
community service (see Walker, 2002; Youniss & Yates, 1997; Youniss & Yates, 1999). Few
empirical studies have explicitly explored the relationship between youth development and
youth activism. Emerging scholarly works on the development of an activist orientation and
sociopolitical capacity, however, have begun to lay the groundwork for a study in this area.
Watts, Williams, and Jagers (2003), for example, explore concepts relevant to sociopolitical
development among African American youth. Building on concepts from community psychology,
such as oppression, liberation, critical consciousness, and culture, Watts et al. claim that
sociopolitical development is a key process by which individuals acquire the knowledge,
analytical skills, and emotional faculties necessary for participation in democratic processes
and social change efforts.
The study of civic activism we conducted and discuss in this chapter is one step toward
addressing this void in the research literature, as we focus explicitly on the engagement of
marginalized youth in social justice efforts. The study focuses on the work of civic activism
groups because of their applied strategy for engaging youth as actors and “experts” on issues of
public policy and community concern. By supporting political skills and knowledge, civic
activism efforts support young people’s capacity to engage directly with power brokers,
decision makers, and institutions in their communities. Such efforts have the potential to
transform the capacity of families and communities to provide for young people (Forum for
Youth Investment, 2001). It is through the politicized analysis of the inequitable contexts and
policies that shape young people’s day-to-day lives (schools, healthcare, public services, etc.)
that civic activism groups seek to promote the conditions for healthy youth development.
4. Our critique of essentialism turns their critique of topicality. Sweeping
generalizations about urban youth are used to pathologize and stigmatize
already marginalized populations.
Noguera and Cannella 6 — Pedro Noguera, Professor in the Steinhardt School of Education
and Director of the Metro Center for Research on Urban Schools and Globalization at New York
University, holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California-Berkeley, and Chiara M.
Cannella, Doctoral Student in the Department of Language, Reading, and Culture at the
University of Arizona, 2006 (“Conclusion: Youth Agency, Resistance, and Civic Activism: The
Public Commitment to Social Justice,” Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community
Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America’s Youth, Edited by
Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota, Published by Routledge, ISBN
0415952506, p. 343-345)
Principle 5: Counter the Prevalence—and Impact—of Misconceptions and Distortions About
Youth
One aspect of accountability in public policy that is essential for advancing the interests of lowincome youth is a willingness to contradict the misrepresentations and distortions that have
been used to rationalize targeting youth for punitive measures (HoSang, chapter 1, this volume)
With the tendency of the media to sensationalize reporting on crime and other social issues,
young people, especially poor youth of color, have often been subject to negative
characterizations and debilitating prejudice. There are numerous examples of youth being [end
page 343] portrayed as lazy and unmotivated to excel academically, as prone to violence and
gang activity, as morally depraved and pathological (Giroux, 1996; Mahiri, 1997). Such images
dominate popular media and shape political understandings of how young people should be
addressed through policy. As Mike Males (1998; chapter 17, this volume) demonstrates,
commonsense knowledge about the rates and severity of youth crimes are woefully inaccurate.
Yet such misconceptions serve as the justification for punitive and coercive policies (Gin- wright
& Cammarota, 2003; HoSang, chapter 1, this volume).
For example, the willingness of several states to adopt high-stakes exams as a basis for
determining high school graduation without ensuring that all students have access to quality
education (i.e., competent teachers, schools that are adequately funded, etc.) is yet another
example of the way in which public policy scapegoat young people. The No Child Left Behind Act
(U.S. Department of Education, 2001) has resulted in a system of educational accountability in
which the only people who are really accountable for failure are those who lack political power
and influence—mainly students (Orfield, 2004), but also their underpaid and deprofessionalized
teachers. The fact that there is so little concern expressed over the casualties of these policies—
poor students, students who don’t speak fluent or academic English, students with learning
disabilities, and students who are consigned to the worst schools, all of whom are
overrepresented among those who fail—is perhaps the clearest indication that for many policy
makers, some students are expendable.
Youth researchers in this volume repeatedly demonstrate how many problems commonly
identified as characteristic of individual youth are in fact the result of institutionalized racism,
economic disadvantage, and ethnic, linguistic, and class discrimination (HoSang, chapter 1;
Lewis-Charp, Yu, & Soukamneuth, chapter 2; Strobel, Osberg, & McLaughlin, chapter 11; Torre &
Fine, chapter 15). Their work complements a tremendous body of research on the degree to
which hard work ensures academic achievement for only some of our nation’s students (see, for
example, Anyon, 1994).
This does not mean that young people should not be held responsible for poor decisions when
they make them. The other side of recognizing the potential of young people to engage in
actions that can change their circumstances is to also acknowledge that they can take
responsibility for their own behavior. Anything less would be patronizing and would reflect an
unwillingness to see youth as individuals capable of participating in change. On one hand, this
means we should not make excuses for young people who prey upon others, who peddle drugs
in their communities, who behave irresponsibly and hurt others or themselves. On the other
hand, it means that we cannot be content to accept commonsense knowledge, but are
responsible for our understanding of the context of economic, educational, and cultural
disenfranchisement many youth face. It is also important that we not engage in broad,
sweeping generalizations about the nature of these problems such that we that end up
disparaging all minority or low-income youth, and create [end page 344] unjust and
counterproductive policies. By accepting pathological characterizations of youth, especially
nonwhite youth, that is precisely what we have done. Policy makers must take the first step of
demanding and disseminating accurate representations of all of America’s youth.
5. This is especially true in the context of debate. When sweeping
generalizations are accepted, students aren’t taken seriously when they do
actively participate in policy discourse.
Noguera and Cannella 6 — Pedro Noguera, Professor in the Steinhardt School of Education
and Director of the Metro Center for Research on Urban Schools and Globalization at New York
University, holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California-Berkeley, and Chiara M.
Cannella, Doctoral Student in the Department of Language, Reading, and Culture at the
University of Arizona, 2006 (“Conclusion: Youth Agency, Resistance, and Civic Activism: The
Public Commitment to Social Justice,” Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community
Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America’s Youth, Edited by
Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota, Published by Routledge, ISBN
0415952506, p. 333-334)
Each of the chapters in this book shows in different ways that despite a relative lack of power
and despite the ways in which young people are often marginalized and maligned, youth—even
those who are poor and disadvantaged—have the potential to take action upon the forces that
oppress, constrain, and limit their lives. The authors remind us that this is possible even for
young people deemed to be “at risk,” who have low skills, who have been written off as
unemployable and uneducable. Despite the odds against them, under the right circumstances
they have the ability to critique the situations that restrict their lives, to articulate that critique
in verbal, written, and artistic form, and to move beyond critique by taking action to assert and
affirm their interests as individuals and as members of families and communities. This volume
documents the ways that youth are redefining what constitutes civic engagement, as they
create and assume powerful roles as individuals and as members of families and communities.
Given that young people in urban areas are too often unfairly characterized as undisciplined and
unmotivated—or even worse, as delinquent, menacing and insolent—this may come as a
revelation to many readers. [end page 333]
To the extent that we are able to see beyond the stereotypes and distortions that are
perpetrated through the one-dimensional portraits of urban youth frequently found in the
media, then perhaps such a revelation may also elicit a different set of perspectives on how to
relate and respond to youth when they act. Rather than responding to young people’s attempts
to be heard and taken seriously with fear, contempt, or condescension, more adults, particularly
those with power and authority, may find it possible to see in youth agency the kernels of our
future democracy. And this is not the type of democracy that is limited to voting on designated
dates, but the kind of democratic practice that encourages social awareness, debate and active
participation in civic life.
They Say: “Conditionality Bad”/“ Topicality is a Reverse Voting
Issue”
1. Conditional Perspective-Taking Good — presenting multiple initial positions
in debates about racism is valuable. Openly exploring opposing positions helps
us determine which arguments are most persuasive. Education theory confirms
the value of antilogic and dialectic as heuristics in discussions about race.
Inoue 5 — Asao B. Inoue, Ph.D. Candidate in English at Washington State University, currently
is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department at Fresno State
University, 2005 (“The Epistemology of Racism and Community-Based Assessment Practice,”
Washington State University Ph.D. Dissertation, May, Available Online at
http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Spring2005/a_inoue_012205.pdf, Accessed 0713-2014, p. 158-159)
Sophistic antilogic and a slightly altered version of dialectic, as heuristics, can be quite beneficial
to the writing classroom. Originally, these methods were meant for education, and for the
sophists, a way to invent arguments, not in an Aristotelian sense (i.e. to discover the available
means of persuasion), but in an explorative sense. It’s this second sense I hold up as more
profitable contemporary classrooms. As a set of heuristics, sophistic pedagogy, particularly
antilogic and dialectic method, asks students to play with ideas and language in order to come
closest to acceptable truth for a given context, purpose, audience, and their currently
understood ethical limits. The practice of antilogic when married to a dialectical forum (as a
community of rhetors who vie for understanding) can also provide for ways in which students
can see past the god-trick in their own dispositions and the common sense. However, for it to
work as a critical pedagogy, the epistemology of racism should be incorporated in order for
students to see dispositions as a part of habitus and common sense in discourse as rhetorical
and social structures that structure their very ways of seeing and believing. Additionally, it can
move away from discussions of relativism that many students will resist, discussions that seem
purely opinion-based that antilogic might seem to encourage. Instead dialectic and antilogic can
help students position themselves at other locations in a network of ideas and subjectivies,
and thus see how consent and SR are structured into our lives, daily activities, and discourse,
even when good intentions suggest otherwise. To openly explore opposing positions pushes us
to reconsider our own vantage points in the network, and thus they can work to help students
better use the epistemology of racism as a framework to see structurally. Antilogic and
dialectic also highlight a crucial aspect of the writing class: that it’s not only about grammar,
linguistic precision, correctness, or rules to learn, it’s also about learning to be citizens, about
the limits and horizons to our knowledge and ways of coming to that knowledge, about revising
our initial perspectives [end page 158] and allowing for potential adjustments to them later on,
and about finding a critical space in which to make good decisions that work for the present and
future. In short, as I’ll discuss in chapter 4, the writing class is about assessing our positions and
ideas, as well as those of others, in critical ways that look for structuring structures and address
power relationships.
* SR = Structural Racism
We’ll explicitly clarify our terminology. Factually, “antilogic” means “taking
either side in an argument.”
Inoue 5 — Asao B. Inoue, Ph.D. Candidate in English at Washington State University, currently
is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department at Fresno State
University, 2005 (“The Epistemology of Racism and Community-Based Assessment Practice,”
Washington State University Ph.D. Dissertation, May, Available Online at
http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Spring2005/a_inoue_012205.pdf, Accessed 0713-2014, p. 143-144)
Protagoras had one of the earliest most coherent sophistic philosophies of nomos over physis,
or structured power relationships over inherent power relationships. This affected the debate
over the teachability of arête (discussed later in this chapter). The nomos-physis controversy
and Protagoras’ position in it is seen in his man-measure doctrine,83 but it can also be seen in
his philosophies on the teaching of rhetoric. Gutherie explains Protagorean teachings, saying
they were practical and based “largely on the art of persuasive speaking, training his pupils to
argue both sides of a case.” This practice of “taking either side in an argument . . . was founded
on theories of knowledge and being which constituted an extreme reaction from the Eleatic
antithesis of knowledge and opinion [episteme and doxa], the one true the other false”
(Gutherie 267). The practice of antilogic (“taking either side in an argument”) was a heuristic
that Protagoras perfected and taught his pupils because it helped them find success in various
contexts and with a variety of audiences. Rhetorical success, thus, wasn’t about finding truth
but finding successful and persuasive arguments. While Protagoras advocates a protreptic
function for rhetoric,84 he’s less certain that one could know any kind of absolute truth or
justice (for the polis), instead he’s more confident in the articulation of persuasive doxa
(opinion), supported by observable nomos; thus, antilogic emphasizes the best that language
can offer us in the way of socially sanctioned knowledge. It’s an agnostic view towards truth, but
not a hopeless one, or one that leads to inaction. It is, in a way, a reaction to the need many
politicians and statesmen had in Athens at the time. One could haggle philosophically with
others indefinitely about what’s true or right, but for a state to run effectively and efficiently,
decisions need to be made quickly [end page 143] and actions taken from them. In a nomoscentered world, the appeals that justified “the right” decisions needed more backing since
rhetoric is more about power relationships and not the articulation of absolute and divine
“truth,” which could not be questioned. In short, a sophist like Protagoras would be dangerous
to the Greek state and the power relationships it nurtured.
This is especially important in this competitive format because students are
risk-averse. Without a fallback option, negatives won’t be willing to introduce
new arguments. This discourages innovative research.
2. Preemptive Forgiveness Good — their interpretation prevents serious and
honest conversations about race because it punishes students for making
mistakes and evolving their positions. It’s okay to change one’s mind because of
interactions during the debate.
Farr 14 — Arnold Farr, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, holds a
Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Kentucky, 2014 (“Racialized Consciousness and
Learned Ignorance: Trying to Help White People Understand,” Exploring Race in Predominantly
White Classrooms: Scholars of Color Reflect, Edited by George Yancy and Maria del Guadalupe
Davidson, Published by Routledge, ISBN 9780415836692, p. 106-107)
The Disarming Power of Preemptive Forgiveness
The phenomenon of racialized consciousness combined with epistemologies of ignorance,7 and
atomistic individualism, makes it very difficult to explain, discuss, and teach about race in
predominantly White institutions. In the above section, I have tried to explain this difficulty by
examining some of the social mechanisms (e.g., habitus and racialized consciousness) as
constitutive sources of learned ignorance and resistance. Much more could be said about these
mechanisms, but that would take us beyond the conspectus of this chapter. My purpose in
discussing them at all here is to reveal the social and psychological disposition of the White
student who is the recipient of the disclosure by the Black professor of ongoing racism in the
United States. Understanding the social and psychological mechanisms that shape White,
racialized consciousness and learned ignorance is important for developing strategies for
teaching White students about race.
My first teaching strategy I call "preemptive forgiveness." Preemptive forgiveness is not the
traditional Christian form of forgiveness, as in turning the other cheek or pardoning someone
after they've harmed you in some way. This traditional form of forgiveness has been overused,
and I would suggest that oppressed people be less inclined to forgive. The purpose of
preemptive forgiveness is to open a space for free and honest conversations about racism and
other forms of oppression. In spite of Bill Clinton’s call, in the 1990s, to have a conversation
about race, our society has not yet learned to talk about race, due to White America’s obsession
with comfort. How many times have we been in conversation with well-intentioned, liberal
White people who become angry or claim to be uncomfortable when things get a bit too deep
vis-à-vis race. These people are fine with talking about race as long as we do not go deep
enough to challenge their own identity and privilege. Hence, even when we talk about race, the
conversation ends up being truncated and very superficial. There is a fear of offending someone
or of saying the wrong thing.
When conversations about race begin to move beyond the superficial level, people often back
out. Conversations about race and racism are so difficult for White people because of the
pervasiveness of White denial; the reduction of [end page 106] racism to conscious, intentional,
individual forms of hatred and discrimination, and our failure to think structurally. The result is
that our students are completely unprepared to discuss or listen to discussions about race. Even
well-intentioned students who might be open to a discussion about race often freeze up
because they are afraid that they may say the wrong thing.
Preemptive forgiveness opens the space for a candid conversation about race. Before we enter
the conversation, we recognize that, due to decades of denial, we have been ill equipped for
candid conversations about race. Due to our lack of preparedness, it is a given that some people
hold false assumptions about race and racism. It is also a given that we will make mistakes and
perhaps offend someone (unintentionally) during the conversation. Preemptive forgiveness is
the act of forgiving one another in advance for the inevitable mistakes that will occur during
the conversation. I forgive my students, they forgive one another, and they forgive me. With
forgiveness in place, we are now free to enter a conversation about race that goes well beyond
the typical superficial level.
Preemptive forgiveness has a disarming effect with regard to students and faculty who might
get defensive because they feel that they are being blamed for a form of oppression that they
may not be consciously committed to. With preemptive forgiveness, all participants are put on
an even playing field due to the recognition that we have all been ill prepared by our society for
a serious and honest conversation about race.
This contextualizes to debate — it is a dialogic space where ideas about race
and racism can be exchanged and tested. Their interpretation forecloses
opportunities for learning and growth.
Glass 14 — Kathy Glass, Associate Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Studies
at McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University, holds a Ph.D. in
English from the University of California-San Diego, 2014 (“Race-ing the Curriculum: Reflections
on a Pedagogy of Social Change,” Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms: Scholars of
Color Reflect, Edited by George Yancy and Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, Published by
Routledge, ISBN 9780415836692, p. 59)
Pedagogical Response and Concluding Thoughts
Given the sensitive nature of the issues discussed and the slipperiness of language, the meaning
of which cannot be guaranteed, I establish my classroom as a space of respectful listening and
learning. While the catchphrase "safe space" could be invoked to describe my classroom, I
prefer to use what I call a "dialogic space" to make clear to students that they are free to ask
questions and to exchange ideas with me and their peers. They might not always feel
emotionally comfortable or "safe" during these encounters, as honest participation requires
some degree of vulnerability.
Designating the classroom as a non-punitive space where any one of us might in fact misspeak
while grappling with such sensitive issues as race, racism, and other systems of oppression helps
to create a more relaxed environment. In such a context, misunderstanding and even
disagreement can create opportunities for learning and growth.