Posted on 04/18/2014 3:33:09 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students you’d see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In matching navy blazers, they’d recite academic arguments for and against various government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring.
No more.
These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years.
But this transformation has also sparked a difficult, often painful controversy for a community that prides itself on handling volatile topics.
On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities.
In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis. Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!” he yelled...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
If someone wants to know why white “privilege” he would do well to notice how white people act and what white people believe.
White people idolizing whiteness is rare compared with black people idolizing blackness.
Idolize anything and you miss the road of wisdom.
Learning to juggle the Truth and Morals is not a skill I particularly have missed.
As for "...learning how to handle detailed, conflicting information under pressure..."
I took that training course while an infantry Marine in Vietnam and later as a Marine pilot.
This is the primary difference between the Lawyer/Politician mindset and that of the Engineer/Pilot/etc. The Lawyer/Politician sees no problem with the fact that they "can be called upon to argue either side at any time, without warning". Concerning dealing with Truth and Morals, the Debate Society tends to "think of it as a sport" and likes to speak of "The skills on the field of battle are what is judged."
On the actual field of battle, Truth matters and, ultimately, so does Morality. "Intellectual development exercise" may enable you to convince the judge, jury & yourself that you are invincible and bulletproof, at least until an unsophisticated, illiterate enemy soldier puts a round through your head.
In a similar vein, the engineers designing a bridge or the wing spar of an airplane are not allowed to play "sport" with tensile strengths, resistance to corrosion and metal fatigue. A pilot who plays fast and loose with his Weight & Balance calculations, Density Altitude vs. Power Developed vs Runway Length will eventually kill himself and possibly others.
When the games of the Lawyer/Politician cause people & society to "crash & burn", during the early stages of the disaster there seldom are roaring flames or towering columns of black smoke as there are for the pilot or engineer. Those come only in the final stages of the disasters caused by Lawyers & Politicians.
rant off
No one said they did.
If these “community activists/rappers” want to demonstrate that they are the best collegiate debaters in the land, assign them to argue FOR the topic, “States Rights, as enumerated in the US Constitution, required that the South Secede from the Union”. (have a good electrician standing by - a lot of folks will be “blowing fuses”!)
______________
You cannot assign anything to people who wont take direction or play by any rules.
You were right to walk out. You picked the right field for your skills. But it is wrong to cast the skill set of debaters as entirely negative because you had a moment of recognizing that the debate team was not for you. Either set of skills can be used for good or for ill.
Traditional debating teams should refuse to play and instead debate each other and form their own league.
And so they come around to judge and have the last word. You can’t ever step clear of morals.
Such as how having pride in your personal morality is a pitfall.
"Yeah, I got a solution, you're a dick! South Carolina, what's up!"
Having confidence in a God who has promised is no pitfall.
He didn’t promise to redeem the unrepentant who remain arrogant in their sin. And you did not answer the points brought up in Romans 13, or in my earlier post. So... still can’t agree with you.
And it’s instructive that you answered out of your personal confidence rather than out of the scriptures.
Proverbs 3:
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.
7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil.
The scriptures advise personal confidence. You are being sophistical.
You can find anything you want in the scriptures if you cherrypick. My support for capital punishment has been laid out in detail in several posts. Your posts just keep saying, “I’m right, and you are not.”
So, good luck to you on your journey, and keep your head down a bit so you won’t hit it when going through a doorway. Farewell.
Whoops, capital punishment was a different thread. Still, I find your posts negative and argumentative without proof, experience or citation. I spent years in debate organizations, as did others on the thread, yet I am a Christian. You continue to spit on the entire idea. Not everything is black and white. The rest of my above advice applies — keep your head down.
I saw parts of that video over at a different forum and I thought this had to be some kind of April Fool's joke.
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