Tayari's Blog: Debate Is A Metaphor
Posted by TayariJones on November 29, 2006 01:53 PM
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Guest Bloggers
by Joe Miller, Guest Blooger
I want to complain for a minute.
I'm not happy with the response to my first book, 
Cross-X: A Turbulent, Triumphant Season with an Inner-City Debate Squad.
I know that sounds crazy, because the book has gotten good reviews and a lot of media attention. It's selling well.
But still. I'm not happy. I'm pissed, to be perfectly blunt, because a few dozen people have decided they don't like the book. They've chosen to ignore it. To pretend it doesn't exist.
So during what should be the time of my life, when I'm traveling around giving readings in cozy little independent book stores and appearing on NPR, I'm actually miserable because I'm carrying out this ongoing argument in my head with a small group of people who just don't get it.
My book is, as the title suggests, about a debate squad from an all-black high school that routinely beats the pants off of debaters from all-white high schools. That's the story. But on a deeper level, it's about power and education, and the ways in which our nation remains divided and unequal.
In the end, debate becomes a metaphor. It signifies injustice in the corridors of power.
In other words, in the same way that our country is slanted against so many of her citizens, so too is this seemingly innocent game of high school debate. In the same way the three branches of our government have been corrupted to benefit the elite and the privileged, so too have high school forensics, where, with rare exception, the same dozen private and top-notch suburban public schools triumph at tournament after tournament.
My book goes deep into this truth, drawing it out through a 480-page narrative that carefully considers all sides before rendering a verdict. And while the reviews and news features about the book suggest that I got my point across to the average American, the cold response from those few dozen movers and shakers in the debate world suggest that I failed where it really mattered.
I failed to persuade the people who shape the debate community to change their community so that it looks less like the unjust status quo and more like the promise and possibility that democracy ostensibly offers.
These are people with a small circle of influence that is, nonetheless, very powerful. They are training our next generation of leaders. Studies show that debaters go on to careers in politics, policy making and law more often than in any other field. If they pick up their tools of trade in a system of injustice, then what kind of a world will they make?
That's why I'm upset, good reviews be damned. Because this small, almost invisible network of highly influential people seem determined to press on with business as usual.
But then again, would the metaphor have still been true if they'd responded any other way?
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There are 3 comments on "Debate Is A Metaphor". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.
Comment #1, by Lester Spence ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
I remember when I first read about the kansas city debaters. It was an article in their version of the metropolitan bi-weekly that every city has (baltimore's is the City Paper, detroit's is the Metro Weekly, stl's is the Riverfront Times). i assume you either wrote that piece (about the growth of one of the debaters, and how he used tactics developed in hip-hop to conquer the debate world only to come face to face with racism) or were around.
so when i saw that a book came out of it i was glad, because this is the type of story that needs to be told.
what i would be most concerned, given what appears to be your own racial background is that your narrative isn't somehow hijacked to fit into the general "white teacher goes into black jungle finds some coloreds aren't animals" narrative. the small network you refer to? they don't even come close to what should be your biggest concern, given the good press you've received.
November 29, 2006 02:30 PM
Comment #2, by PWordsmith
Don't you think a certain amount of fear is a part of maintaining the status quo.
Debate, after all, is about competition.
Winning.
If you open the doors...it will get even harder to win, don't you think.
No way they want that.
November 29, 2006 03:12 PM
Comment #3, by joe-miller
Lester, you're definitely right about the larger concern. In fact, when I went into the project I was headed toward writing exactly the kind of story you mention. Fortunately the kids got to me first and the story became more about their liberation of me.
For the most part the press has caught on to the story and the message. The best was a story in the Denver Post that was on point. But there's been some shopping around of the story to Hollywood types, and that makes me both excited and nervous. I want exposure, of course, but I fear something like Dangerous Minds, which took a pretty good book and turned it into stereotypical crap.
And PWordsmith, I think you're dead on. That's all the more reason way debate is such a great metaphor for political power. The struggle is just as tough.
November 29, 2006 09:18 PM