PC wins over substance; all girl black debate team wins by NOT debating the given topic"At the Cross Examination Debate Association Championships in March, the final match featured two pairs of African-American debaters. Progress! The debate centered around a resolution asking whether or not the president’s war powers should be restricted. The contest was won by the duo from Towson State University, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, who chose to argue the side of . . . well . . . it’s hard to say. Here’s the Atlantic’s formulation: “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.”
This may sound outré, but Ruffin and Johnson were the traditionalist debate team. Their opponents, Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, were more au courant. Again, here’s the Atlantic:
Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “guy 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. “F— the time!” he yelled. His partner Campbell, who won the top speaker award at the National Debate Tournament two weeks later, had been unfairly targeted by the police at the debate venue just days before, and cited this personal trauma as evidence for his case against the government’s treatment of poor African-Americans.
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/Cross-Examination-Debate-Association-Championships
