On "Urban" Debate

Two weeks into my job as the Program Manager at the Rhode Island Debate League,  I was worried I had made a huge mistake. I was at a conference with staff from the other "urban" debate leagues that are scattered across the country.

I had been sent to this as a crash-course training opportunity, and going in,  I definitely expected to be out of place from a technical perspective. I knew nothing about debate then, but in my interview I talked about how much I valued supporting youth to build the capacity for critical thought. I explained how I watched political debates the way some people watched football games.

And it worked! I got hired, and soon was on a plane to Chicago. I arrived at the conference open minded and looking forward to learning, but what I wasn't expecting was the absolute disconnect of core values and best practices of working with young people. 

I felt like an alien. I was a seasoned youth development professional in a strange world where adults built programs for kids without any sort of framework around social-emotional development. No community building, no Maslow, no intentional opportunities for student leadership, no structured opportunities for reflection.  

I was - quite literally- using a different language. It was shocking.  It felt dangerous to me- wildly irresponsible. I was used to these value differences when comparing the school day to after school. I saw that as part of the cultural and systemic work we do as youth workers, but I was wholly naive that an entire sector of extracurricular programming, specifically devoted to "urban" youth, could exist so entirely divorced from the frameworks I knew and valued. 

When I returned home. I was on the verge of quitting. But I debriefed with my boss, she smiled and said "That's why we hired you." I took that as permission to partner with our youth to entirely reinvent "urban" debate.  

Four years later, we're starting to get there. 

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Okay so debate, in general, is a whole thing. It's this insular, niche world with these specific rules, codes of conduct and expectations which reflect its values, which all revolve around the core concept of "winning." 

• Winning is defined by whiteness and maleness. Among other things, this means being unemotional, impersonal and individualistic. 
• Winning is transactional, and happens in a vacuum. Debaters input "hard work" and they get back winning. If they didn't win, they didn't work hard enough. Outside factors are irrelevant. 
• Because winning is transactional, so are the program structures. Adults decide what will be debated about, and how it will be debated. Adults provide the information and skills that debaters need to win. Debaters receive them. Adults then determine whether or not debaters are winning. 

Obviously, this is a microcosm of American capitalist structures, echoing both the values and expectations of our school systems, as well the larger systems for which schools prepare young people to navigate.  Winning in debate is adjacent to achievement in school, which is adjacent to success in adulthood, aka the accumulation of wealth and power through whiteness and maleness. 

So it follows that in the world of suburban, wealthy schools, debate is notoriously toxic: inaccessible-by-design, racist and misogynist, but it produces winners: lawyers, businessmen, celebrities, policy-makers, leaders.  

20 years ago, the "urban" debate movement, in a burst of neoliberal white saviorism, sought to change all that by bringing debate to "urban" schools.  You may have noticed I'm using "urban" in quotations. That's because it's coded language. What it really means is black, brown, and poor. 

Unfortunately, if not inevitably, the "urban" debate movement tends to simply replicate the toxic dynamics of white suburban debate, but in black and brown communities. The core value of winning is the same, if slightly modified. 

• Winning is defined by proximity to whiteness and maleness. Debaters must adopt qualities of whiteness and maleness to win. 
• Winning is transactional, and happens in a vacuum. Outside factors are relevant only in context of transformation through participation in debate. 
• Because Winning is transactional, so are the program structures. Adults are keepers and saviors who determine the parameters of the debate, and provide the poor black and brown debaters information and skills they need to win. Debaters receive them. Adults then decide whether or not debaters are winning, and have been effectively saved. 

And at that conference in Chicago, this was the culture, the code of conduct, I stepped into. A culture I continue to reject. 

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As Carla Shalaby told her story about Marcus, I was overcome by how much I wanted to bring him into RIUDL's programming. I think we would be a good fit for him. 

Marcus, with his unconsciously political defiance, and strong, clear voice, was born to debate- but perhaps not in the leagues I described above. I suspect he'd face similar challenges there as he did in the well-intentioned yet narrow frameworks that defined Emily's classroom culture.

An important value in my practice is the understanding that no matter what the content of the programming you're providing, no matter who your participants are, relationships are at the core of the work. LOVE is at the core of our work.  When talking about this to other practitioners, I call it professional intimacy. Creating  family. 

Professional intimacy exits everywhere. The desire for authentic relationships, a sense of belonging and closeness with others exists in all professional environments, as it's a basic human need.  In corporate workplaces this need is named and addressed through "team-building" with varying levels of success. Yet in some sectors of youth work, especially in academically-heavy environments such as in the classroom or at a debate tournament, intentionally building a culture of intimacy that reflects the closeness of a family is considered radical.  

In comparing a RIUDL debate tournament to the tournaments of one of our sister leagues, an observer might be struck by some stark differences: 

• In other UDLs, debaters self-select to sit with students from their schools. At RIUDL tournaments, students self-select in mixed groups across schools. 
• RIUDL staff, volunteers and coaches know the names of the vast majority of debaters. In other UDLs, league staff only know the name of highly successful debaters, and coaches only know the names of students from their own schools. 
• RIUDL staff, coaches and debaters openly use terms like "love." We intentionally create spaces and activities that allow youth and adults to develop and express this love. In other UDLs, there is no intentional opportunity or language for this.
• RIUDL students are actively engaged in planning tournaments and supporting tournament operations. In other UDLs, students are the recipients of adult's plans and implementation. 
• Among competition-based awards, RIUDL gives out awards that recognize leadership, citizenship, team work and risk-taking. Other UDLs mostly give out competition-based awards. 

That being said, we NEVER EVER win when it comes to national-level competition. We're always at the bottom. So I guess it's kind of a trade off.  

The last time we attended Nationals, our teams were crushed. Our debaters didn't really care about that because winning isn't very important to them.  However, what really impacted our kids were the cultural differences: How adults came at them from a place of power, and how other students didn't seem as interested in becoming friends. Everyone was wrapped up in either winning or making winners. 

Simple, basic-needs accommodations that RIUDL makes without question, from allowing debaters go to the bathroom during rounds, to letting a student with multiple disabilities be late without penalty, became the source of major tensions between RIUDL staff, our youth and the adults who run Nationals. 

It was honestly kind of traumatizing. 

When reflecting back, one of our debaters commented "I think the best thing about RIUDL is that no one ever goes home feeling rejected. No one is ever made to feel less than. We're a family." 

And that was so f-ing awesome to hear. I'm so glad that's how our youth define our community. Marcus! Come join debate!