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Debate Community Biased?

By rahmazing - Posted on May 2nd, 2006
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I'm heading towards the end of my 2 1/2 year debate career. As I near the end I started to reflect on my debate awards the tournaments I won and the people I met. Specific instances point out in my mind. Could debate really be biased? I met this question while I was in Northwestern University Summer debate program last year. This was when i was considered the lesser of the bunch for not having a laptop and an Ipod. I met a group of people from Louisville and Washington DC who questioned my wins and ultimately my debate skills. They asked me do I think I really won the tournaments and the trophies or was it because not enough minority kids were winning and thats the reason I was "granted" so many trophies. I thought about it. Even though there are many disparities in debate; class, color, speech, culture, debate is not biased. Debate is what you make of it. And even though I was considered to be a slave on a plantation because I was playing the "white man's" game I played it better damn good. In conclusion in anything in life you are going to be faced with obstacles and issues what matters is not that you generalize it as a whole, but make your biased attitudes specific to you. =\

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picklespeach's picture
I know nothing about the
Submitted by picklespeach on Tue, 05/02/2006 - 1:54pm.

I know nothing about the debate community, but am interested. Can you explain briefly how a debate tournament is structured? How is it judged? How is it won? And then follow that up with an explanation on the particular types of disparities you mention, if you please?

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basically its teams from
Submitted by rahmazing on Tue, 05/09/2006 - 11:12am.

basically its teams from different schools that bring material pro and con for a certain subject. the subject being whether or not we should decrease the governments authority to detain without charge or search without probably cause and basically whoever has the most information and can articulate the information wins the round normally at regular tournaments its 3 rounds and then preliminary. Debate rounds are usually judged by college students but sometimes when theres a lack of judges parents can come in and watch. The problem with the way its structured is that if you don't have money or resources to obtain and print information chances are you are going to lose. People bring alot of information to debates usually a tub with about 20,000 sheets of paper. The idea is that people who live in poverty are inclined to lose because they dont have access to the resources the more privileged people have

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