Discussing Racism With People Trying Very Hard Not to be Racists

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This piece is by a writer who has chosen, for the sake of anonymity, to be identified under the pen name of: Clara Shay.

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Speech is the extracurricular for the kids who overreacted to the point that even the theatre kids couldn’t deal with them, and for the debate kids whose season has ended and now just want to make bad political jokes instead of bad political arguments. They do this every Saturday in front of parent judges who, depending on their pedigree, treat these rounds as their lunch break, or nap time.

Discussion is the speech event for people who think sitting in a circle and talking is difficult enough to be a competitive event. To be fair, their performances would make you believe it. Each round of discussion is organized into an hour-long Socratic seminar where participants answer questions based on an article or picture released before the tournament. Winning strategies include pretending you don’t know anything and making up your own questions to ask other people instead of answering yourself, or laughing chauvinistically while referencing Aristotle and Plato and Nizechtie in relation to everything because they work with everything and you know because you read them. Others say they “just like to do this fun thing where I jump in to comment on other people’s statements.” They don't appear to know the word “interrupting” or that they didn’t invent the concept or that it isn’t fun. 

With this caliber of rhetoric, most rounds are not memorable. There are, however, exceptions to this: the memorably bad rounds.

One such round’s artifact was a survey evaluating Americans’ desires for diverse stories in the media in light of the changing racial demographics of the U.S.

One of my teammates is Pakistani, so she was identified as the expert on all things Arabic and therefore also the expert on all things the Aladdin live-action remake. This role so captivated them that everyone forgot she said anything else. Her other points weren’t completely ignored, though—they just thanked the white girl sitting next to her for making them. White discussers often get confused like this. 

They were also flummoxed that white people weren’t included in the survey on promoting diverse stories. White discussers really want to have their own diverse stories. One discusser shared the story of his Korean grandmother’s experience of oppression under the Japanese to which the white girl next to him wistfully responded, “I wish my family had shared those kinds of experiences with me.”

Clearly, she felt her family should have been more proactive in their intergenerational trauma so she’d have something to talk about. 

It’s probably good she said something anyway. Otherwise, the other white people might have gotten confused again and thought it was her grandmother who was oppressed by the Japanese.

Some just content themselves with living vicariously. One discusser talked about how, as a white woman, she enjoys seeing diverse media and connecting deeply with the characters. Very deeply. So deeply, she really understands them. 

When someone countered with the idea that being emotional about media doesn’t quite equate to experience and that, 

“You can be sympathetic. But empathetic…”

“Oh, but I’m really empathetic.”

Just not empathetic enough to feel the awkwardness in the room.

Still others attempt to take a historical perspective, as when Trump’s immigration policy came up during the round.

“This reminds me of something.”

…

“Like…what does it remind you of?”

“Maybe a certain someone from Russia. Maybe a certain someone from China.” 

He nods slowly at the circle with a knowing smile that no one shares. It is silent.

After making sure that no more vaguely-alluded-to-autocrats emerge from his drugged haze I make my closing statement as fast as possible. 

Others were hurt no white people were in Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show. Lamar’s show in general seemed to have caused a lot of hurt. One discusser felt that Serena Williams’s Crip walking was an endorsement of gang violence, or in other words “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.”

When my teammate answered that considering William’s sister was murdered by gang violence maybe she understood what she was doing better than he did, his response was to harass her after the round. 

Getting harassed is one of the few times women have the men's attention in discussion. Without threatening their egos, it’s hard to break into the closed circle of brotherhood where handshakes, compliments, and an allowance to speak abound. Of course, it can be difficult to tell if this is denseness, actual sexism, or just Forensic Fraternity Frenzy: a common affliction for young males in speech and debate.

Those afflicted experience, and display, a deep love and obsession for their fellow male debaters and speech kids. At a distance, it can actually be quite heartwarming to see such rare unreserved support and affection. However, if one is not at a distance, and is, in fact, trapped at the back of the bus due to a poor choice of seating, then it is less charming to hear an encyclopedia of slurs.

Between slurs, FFF’s talk about how good they are at speech, how good they will be at speech, or how good other people (men) are at speech.

That last one is extremely important. FFF’s are dogged in their following and will do anything to get closer to their idols. There are fan pages. There are bribes: ten bucks if their coach will book the same hotel as their object of worship’s team on overnight trips. They harass girls with text messages asking for room numbers - the room numbers of their male teammates.

Sitting with FFF’s often feels like the better alternative to sitting in a discussion round, though. It’s like being tied to the train tracks. You can only lock eyes with your teammate to confirm that Yes, this trainwreck is happening and No, there is no escape when lines like “My family loves to hire Mexicans for our landscaping business, because they have experience in the fields and are always the most hardworking!” come out during a moment of “sympathy” in immigration rounds.

And all I can think is: these are supposed to be the best people at discussing sensitive and complex issues. These are the kids who are trying. So if this is our best, what does our worst look like?