“Acting Black:” How African-American Policy Debaters Negotiate
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THE HARSH REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE by SHANARA ROSE REID-BRINKLEY (Under the Direction of CHRISTINE HAROLD) ABSTRACT Public discourse about education reform, particularly that which revolves around the black/white achievement gap, requires the use of race, class, and gender imagery that is intelligible to the general public. This project interrogates the use of social stereotypes in the news media and educational contexts and the resistance to such stereotypes by black youths. To investigate the relationship between racial stereotyping, representation, and identity performance, I utilize ideological criticism as the rhetorical method. I have chosen academic debate, at the high school and college level, as a localized example of social stereotyping in educational contexts. Current efforts within the policy debate community to increase diversity and inclusion offers an opportunity to study the rhetorical strategies engaged in by varying social actors in an educational context. I conclude that negative social stereotyping is embedded in reform efforts targeted at black youths, and that these same students develop diverse methods of performance, specifically through the use of black cultural styles, to combat such stereotyping. INDEX WORDS: Race, Representation, Performance, Academic Debate, Resistance, News Media, Rap Music, Acting White THE HARSH REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE by SHANARA ROSE REID-BRINKLEY BA, Emory University, 2001 MA, University of Alabama, 2003 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILIOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2008 © 2008 Shanara Rose Reid-Brinkley All Rights Reserved THE HARSH REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE by SHANARA ROSE REID-BRINKLEY Major Professor: Christine Harold Committee: Celeste Condit Tina Harris Kevin Deluca Ed Panetta Ede Warner Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2008 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been fortunate to have numerous mentors over the course of my educational career whose support has been critical to my intellectual development. Thus, I would like to thank Larry E. Moss, Melissa Wade, Will Baker, Bill Newnam, Everett Wilson, the Omicron Xi Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., the faculty and staff at D. M. Therrell High School, and the Emory University debate team. I also thank, Marsha Houston, Dexter Gordon, Jerry Rozick, and Karma Chavez. I would like to thank Christine Harold for serving as my graduate adviser. Her help was integral to the development of this project. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee, Celeste Condit, Kevin Deluca, Tina Harris, Ede Warner, and Ed Panetta. I thank my graduate school classmates for their thoughtful engagement with my scholarship. A special thanks to the RWG membership, Dylan Wolfe, Kristy Maddux, Davi Johnson, Shannon Holland, and Jarrod Atchison. I would like to especially thank Judy Butler for her comments on earlier drafts of this project. I thank the DAWG writing group, especially Gordon Mitchell, for their comments on portions of this draft. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1 Representation and the Performance of Blackness: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Black “Underachievement”.......................................................................................1 “Acting White,” Representation and Performance: The Rise of Cultural Explanations of Black Underachievement ..........................................................9 Methodology: Power, Ideology, and Domination...................................................18 2 Redeeming Inner-City Youths: Media Representations of the Urban Debate League .................................................................................................................................25 The Urban Debate League Movement ....................................................................26 Race, Representation, and the News Media............................................................30 Scapegoating and Redemption: Framing Race, Class, and Gender in News Coverage of Urban Debate Leagues..................................................................35 Urban Debate Leagues Go Primetime: Scripting Racial Others.............................52 Conclusions.............................................................................................................60 3 The Rhetoric of Contemporary Black Social Protest: The Louisville Project and the Rhetoric of Confrontation.......................................................................................63 The Louisville Project: Rhetoric of a Social Protest Movement.............................73 v Signifying’ on Traditional Policy Debate: The use of African American Rhetorical Practices to Confront Social Normativity .........................................................79 Racial Performativity and Rhetorical Violations of Genre .....................................94 Conclusions...........................................................................................................123 4 Negotiating Contemporary Black Social Protest: The Community Responds ..........127 Goals vs. Methods: The Benevolence of the Rhetorical Establishment................134 Confrontations and Coalitions...............................................................................137 Rhetoric of Victimization......................................................................................143 Personalizing Debate.............................................................................................145 Conclusions...........................................................................................................149 5 Race, Education, and Performance: Some Concluding Thoughts .............................151 6 Conclusion.................................................................................................................162 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................201 vi Chapter One Representation and the Performance of Blackness: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Black “Underachievement” Ladies and gentleman, these people set – they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentleman, in our cities and public schools we have 50% drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison…The lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had on and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today. Bill Cosby “Poundcake” (2003) As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, American education is undergoing decisive changes. As other nations around the world have strengthened the public education offered to their youths, Western nations, including the United States and Great Britain, are experiencing a sharp decline in the effectiveness of their public education systems.1 Significantly, it is the persistent framing of poor and minority populations as most productive of this decline that seems to drive such feelings of discontent. For as we are told over and over again by the news media, political pundits, candidates, politicians, and experts, to be poor and of color in the United States exponentially increases one’s chances of failing within the public education system. Images of young, black and Hispanic youths in failing inner city schools resound through the American social imagination. And, these youths become representative of a “lost generation,” defying all social and institutional attempts at saving them. Bill Cosby’s 2003 “Poundcake” speech, from which I quote at the beginning of this chapter, is one such example of the rhetoric of educational failure that surrounds economically disenfranchised youths of color. 1 Delivered on the anniversary of the 1954 Brown vs. the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Cosby’s speech has had resounding consequences for the contemporary representation of black youths.2 Cosby’s remarks produced a maelstrom within the news media, creating a public frenzy around the issue. Cosby was interviewed, and re-interviewed. Important black public intellectuals like Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson weighed in on the issue. Suffice it to say, everyone had an opinion. As you read the excerpt from Cosby that opens this chapter, it is important to note that he never mentions race, although blackness clearly haunts the address. One envisions the “kind” of people Cosby’s rhetoric represents through the use of rhetorical tropes like “prison” and bad parenting which signify upon images of young, poor Blacks. The audience for Cosby’s remarks is racially mixed, and news accounts of the speech note laughter and applause