Anti-Blackness: A Side Effect of Unchecked Freedoms

Over the weekend, the Ball State Debate Team sent four of its top debaters to compete in the USUDC (United States University Debate Championship) British Parliamentary Debate National Tournament hosted by UPenn. After six rounds of competition, the tournament screeched to a halt on its second of three days when Morehouse College, a historically black college, released a statement detailing the anti-blackness, racism, and discrimination their students had faced in rounds and that they were immediately withdrawing from the tournament. After this, colleges (including Ball State) began also withdrawing in solidarity so as not to uphold a tournament that ignored the reports Morehouse had filed. As an Ivy League, UPenn is no stranger to racism, like its counterparts Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to name a few, but that is a unique harm of them hosting a tournament for not only a style of debate that traditionally takes a eurocentric view and features predominantly white male debaters, but also for creating motions of debate that encouraged discriminatory argumentation. The tournament ended up ending early (with no winners) and instead a 6-hour discussion of the harms faced and how to make reparations ensued. 

In light of hearing these stories from debaters and seeing firsthand how other debaters have been insensitive, I began thinking about how anti-black rhetoric (which is separate from pro-white supremacy) is a side effect of the open forum. Within the scope of debate, any argumentation is fair game, no matter how wild. This is beneficial for many debaters who have to debate the "harder" side of many motions; however, in the case of discrimination, it enables rhetoric founded in harmful systems to be perpetuated. Argumentation that claims women are lesser or that black people are less important than white people because they are less in numbers or any number of degrading viewpoints serves only to operate as a means of shock value. The entirely open forum, in this case, is distinctly and uniquely harmful because it creates a space that enables more racist or biased debaters to create argumentation that is actively antithetical to progress. The strength of the argument is put above actual lives and then potentially triggers trauma for these minority groups.

Perpetuated Trauma

One argument people use to lessen the damages of hateful speech is that victims of trauma, particularly racial trauma, are being overly sensitive. What this argumentation ignores is the nuance that exists within trauma and trauma responses. Microaggressions are not "micro", but rather nuanced forms of the larger discussion. Sensitivity acts not as a means to be "upset over anything", but rather is a protection from re-traumatization. Claiming that sensitivity doesn't matter as much because it isn't as impactful only serves to damage discourse. A lot of the black lived experience is traumatic and many have to not only live through traumatic events daily but also are forced to relive it while watching media coverage of anti-blackness and police killings. Trauma responses, therefore, can come from anywhere at any time. A community that has been historically oppressed and marginalized has more shared trauma which takes a greater toll on the community. As white people, we have far less shared trauma because of educational, media, and societal bias and norms that have benefitted us more by design. We come from a privileged life that goes beyond our domination of the workforce. The argumentation that sensitivity could just be "overly" sensitive does come out when white people speak out on their own against something that may not be racist (i.e. someone asking why a clothing brand makes white t-shirts but not black ones. This is a non-issue and typically not racially based) and serve to further trivialize black issues. They believe it can be beneficial because they are using their platforms to speak out, but only draw attention away from black people using their own voices to bring up their trauma.

By enabling an open forum within classrooms, debates, and media, we come to find that anti-blackness is not inherently shunned. Sometimes anti-black rhetoric comes from people who think that they are being inclusive. The people who argue that all lives matter, even in the best case scenario, are arguing that black lives mater, but their lives are not more important than anyone else. While that makes sense, it trivializes the issues the BLM movement protests, that being that black (and other POC) people are unfairly targeted by the police or court system. It's undeniably true, but these "all lives matter" people make the argument that black lives matter inherently claims other lives don't matter, even though they ignore their own hypocrisy and are creating the potential for black trauma to be relived. Constantly diminishing the black experience in order to claim true "equality" perpetuates the idea to many black communities that they are second-rate to white issues. Thus, the cycle of trauma and re-traumatization continues. 

In conclusion, though this blog post has been fairly short, there's an idea within the open forum that saying anything means offensive content does not need to be put in check. Trivializing trauma as something that is an overly sensitive response only serves to create further anti-black discourse and perpetuate the cycle of trauma and re-traumatization. Pain is not objective, but treating specifically black pain as sensitivity makes it so that what matters is what the white people talk about. The onus is on THEM to speak up. THEY have a platform. THEY need to address their biases. What needs to happen is white people need to stop seeing stories about the black experience and posting "I stand with you" or "I understand" because using "I" while someone is sharing their trauma says "I think this is still about me". The selfish rhetoric of anti-blackness is inherently racist because it takes actual harms and traumas from the black community and dilutes the conversation to the interests of whites exclusively.