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A poverty of mind and expression

The exchange on obscenity and equal opportunity reveals some deep divisions 
in our culture.  Tom Murphy's posting reflects much of my thinking on the 
issue, and I believe Jim Hanson's observations are on target.   Jim Hanson's 
critique was professionally made, and some in our community should feel 
shame for their responses to his remarks.   I do, however, believe some 
arguments were presented by Mike Korcok and others that are in need of response.

1.  Profanity, freedom, and social justice.  More often than not, those who 
curse and use an abundance of scatological language to express their ideas 
reflect a deep poverty of mind and expression.  No progressive social 
advocate that I have studied (Malcom X. Martin Luther King, Jr., Chief Wilma 
Mankiller, Hanan Ashrari, etc.) lace or laced their public rhetoric with 
scatological referents.  Taylor Branch in his book _Parting the Waters_  (I 
know  it is bad manners to cite books in the age of lexus-nexis) details 
some of the modest successes of the civil rights movement, and in his 
discussion of the movement's discourse, profanity is not mentioned as a 
distinguishing factor.

No serious scholar or teacher of debate wants students to emulate 
toastmasters or use a bland style.  However, how are the causes of social 
justice and education achieved when debaters are taught and encouraged to 
read lexis-nexus factoids at  a 280 words per minute shrill  monotone that 
is laced with the language of excrement and sexual violence?  That is the 
issue.  While we do not want to teach an eloquence that reflects a white 
male norm, we do that when we teach and reinforce the dominant style which I 
have just described.  Roam the halls during rounds at Heart of America and 
at Nationals, and you will hear most debaters speaking the same way, at the 
same tone, and the same words per minute, and many using profanity that 
transforms the debate classroom into a pig sty.  Diversity, indeed.

Adolescent males find that cursing is fun and that it shocks.  Should the 
debate classroom be the place where adolescent males discover their 
masculinity and then bay their discovery to the world.  Perhaps they have 
the right; but there are other rights as well; such as those of the debate 
judge and others who find scatological words disgusting, hurtful and violent.

I wish to be clear: the argument against scatological language is not only 
about aesthetics.  Such language is often a prelude and a precursor to 
physical violence.  Kent Colbert's empirical research provides us with clear 
evidence that debate can teach verbal aggressiveness VA (and cursing is one 
manifestation of verbal aggression).  VA is highly correlated with physical 
violence.  While I applaud Will Baker and others would have us move debate 
beyond the confines of the tournament setting, I shudder to think that we 
may give the disenfranchised and the dispossessed another activity which 
could be used to promote violence.  Sheldon Hackney's notion of a "Drive-bye 
Debates" is relevant here.

2.  Who speaks for Whom?  Randi Vickers resents that profanity in the debate 
classroom has become a feminist issue and asks us not to protect her dainty 
ears.  Randi, your ears not the issue, and you don't speak for my women 
students who tell me that when men use sexually violent curse words that it 
puts them at a competitive disadvantage and that they are hurt, and that 
male, tabula rasa critics will not intervene.  You don't speak for the 
hundreds of women who responded to the Louge, Simmerly, and Stepp survey 
that reveals sexual harassment to be a "serious problem" in our community.  
I am troubled by the tendency that some have to "reason by tokenism."  Yes, 
some women have done well and have broken at some national tournaments, but 
the data collected by Louge et. al., reveals that women and people of color 
rarely succeed or break in our culture, and those that do are rare exceptions. 

A footnote on proof:  Again, I can match my anecdotes with other anecdotes.  
I have, however, offered the results of carefully conducted empirical 
studies to support my generalizations.  As such, I am hopeful that we can 
move beyond solipsism and argument by tokenism in order to discover the 
prevalent patterns in our culture.
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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