Rethinking Kritikal Thinking in Debate

It was a regular high school debate tournament, which started off well on Friday for my teammates and me, followed by an early start and a relatively strong performance on Saturday. After debate tournaments, I muse with self- pride while reflecting on my speeches and feedback, with the intent to make adjustments in the future. However, this tournament was different. As the bus pulled away from the debate venue, rare emotions were pulsing through my body; I had a sense of disappointment and exasperation.

For context, I have been a high school Policy Debater for the past three years. I enjoy competing in this format because of the friendships I’ve developed, the thrill of speaking at 300 words per minute, or the joy of responding to an opponent’s arguments convincingly. In this specific debating style, participants use an argument style called a kritik. Kritiks challenge the underlying assumptions and frameworks of the debate space and try to argue through a socioeconomic or racial lens how harmful systems need to be acknowledged and stopped.

This brings me to the incident which motivated me to express my thoughts. My team was in a bubble round, meaning that if we won, we would advance to quarter-finals. We ended up losing the round, but the judge’s Reason for Decision (RFD) was disappointing, considering the current day's undercurrents related to race in America.

This round was against a type of kritikal argumentation run on the affirmative side called anti-blackness. This argument makes the case that strengthening intellectual property rights (this year’s policy debate topic), harms traditional black communities, and proposes mechanisms to stop such damage. We ran a traditional and common strategy on the negative, which showed why the affirmative removes our ability to respond, as they are not focused on the topic. Other arguments by us were focussed on the fact that the affirmative’s method to solve this would get co-opted and used by the academic sphere, which will then cause further harm instead of solving the issue. We have run similar arguments against anti-blackness affirmatives, with black judges, and have won.

Many kritikal arguments are based on identity and ending some sort of perceived systematic injustice. Examples include Afropessimism, storytelling from different traditional cultures, model minority, or settler colonialism. I think a reason why people feel more comfortable in bringing diverse perspectives and argumentation is due to the progressive nature of the debate space (and arguably American society as a whole). DEI, affirmative action, and the rise of critical and diverse understandings of the current system in the U.S. over the past decade have definitely found their way into the debate space. This new focus in America on identity, specifically “identity politics,” has grown extremely popular since the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Such identity-based movements were used to fight against his administration. All this in a way promoted a racial and societal reckoning within America, giving way to a brand of politics focused on cancel culture, identities, and “ending racism.”

However, I want to come back to the space especially on the last two points regarding identities and “ending racism.” I appreciate it when judges approach kritikal arguments with open minds, ready to learn alongside the debaters while being fair to these nuanced perspectives. I understand that as a debater going against kritikal arguments, there is a moral tightrope that needs to be walked: being respectful of differing ideas while trying to negate them but also arguing the substance behind these arguments. Oftentimes, we touch on fraught contemporary and historical topics. It is the judge’s role to keep an open mind, to not let emotive biases get in the way of their decision, and to ensure that debaters can take away material impacts from this round with regards to education.

Our opponents had conceded two topicality shells, and we thoroughly warranted and argued why we should win the debate. We had a strong concluding speech for a winning position for most judges. We however lost the round, but not due to the technicalities or quality of our speech compared to our opponents. In his RFD, the judge was speaking about his own experiences and opinions. He compared how his hometown had a median salary of $30,000, while the median salary in Basking Ridge, NJ (the location of the tournament) was around $215,000. He then went on to state how the school I represent was a premier institution in New York City, yet had a “2% black population.” The striking blow was when the judge accused my team of using borderline racist rhetoric. He said calling the Black Panther Party not revolutionary and running the academy kritik promoted harmful anti-black implications, despite it being a common argument.

This was judge intervention and breaks the core tenet of judging: “you enter the room and put your own personal opinions as far to the side as one personally can.” While personal experiences play a part in judging, they should not be a full part of the RFD as it did in this case, especially with morally, historically, and racially charged arguments such as those presented in that room. It seems that there were double standards for us going against an anti-blackness team, contributing to what I felt was an unfair environment. If we are to be judged not based on our skin color but based on our argumentation, I believe that these biases should not be brought into the policy debate forum. There is no justification for using race as a reason for voting us down, especially given that the debate topic is not focused on race. The history of harm against black people in America is, undoubtedly, long and sad, but basing the decision on that history and not on what happened in the round does not promote a healthy debate or discussion, which is the key aim of the debate space.

The debate space needs to address these issues at the root. We need to be respectful of personal experiences, differing opinions, and the competitive nature of the debate space. We need to ensure that by accusing others of

“racism”, we aren’t being racist as well. Kritikal argumentation is a net positive for debate, but if teams are wrongly empowered purely based on race, we need to zoom out and ensure that these arguments are bringing out the best

of us, not the worst of us. We need to encourage success among all competitors, no matter their race, and show these teams that if you debate better than your opponent there should be no excuse for judge intervention. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." In the debate space, we need to ensure that we argue for positive change, we judge for change and equality, and we carry ourselves with respect for all.