[CEDA-L] FW: Stop the hypocrisy NOW! Don't include race!

[Gordon Stables]

-----Original Message-----
From: scottelliott at grandecom.net [mailto:scottelliott at grandecom.net] 
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 11:45 PM
To: stables at usc.edu
Subject: [CEDA-L] Stop the hypocrisy NOW! Don't include race!

Gordon, Please re-post the following to CEDA-L because I am not a member of
this
list-serve:

Ede is calling me out on a listserve that I do not currently subscribe to,
but I
want my position know given that he is using my name on a coaches website.

Point-blank, I CANNOT be the basis of Ede's and Louisville's complaints
about
policy debate for the past five years. Why? Because I have not been an
active
coach of a policy program for the past five years. I have only been recently
coaching. I resent being the only person identified as part of some
conception
of "racism in debate." If you are going to name names Ede, I suggest you
name
people that actually are in control of the activity. But, I don't think you
will because your desire to maintain friendships overwhelms your so-called
revolution. Yeah, that's right, I said it--it ain't a revolution until you
piss
off the people you grew up with. Hanging with you friends at a tournament
that
stands for everything you supposedly oppose while ignoring a tournament that
was just an hour away smacks to me of a form of deletentism, rather than
true
activism.

Ironically, the same week I am being accused of some form of racism by Ede,
I
was too busy judging Ede's teams at Appalachian State's tournament to read;
or
respond. Where was Ede? Was he supporting regional debate tournaments? No,
he
and his "top teams" [elitism]were buying into the NDT-myth and engaging in
the
same NDT
death march that every other wannabe "first round bid" team went through
this
weekend.

All I got to say on this is issue of being insensitive to his complaints is
that
Ede's teams can speak to whether I gave them a fair judgment in the round I
judged and whether or not I spent at least forty or more minutes explaining
to
them how to make their criticism of current debate practices more effective.
We
had a great discussion on why the current state of policy debate sucks and
what
needs to be done to solve the problem. Where were you, Ede, to be involved
in
THAT discussion? Where were YOU when I was wanting to talk about how to
REALLY
break this system down?

So, Ede, I don't know how I have been sucked into being some poster-boy for
racism
in debate--especially when I am simply a small school coach, making a point
to
go to traditonal regional tournaments, and actively recruiting minorities
and
underrepresented groups into his program. If you would have been at the
local
tournament, you would have seen the results--the "put my money where my
mouth
is results"--of my efforts to recruit women and minorities. But, oh, I
forgot,
you were too busy playing poker with dem good ol' boyz at Wake.

If pointing out hypocrisy is a crime, then I guess I am guilty and I will
take
my
lumps. But I think that Ede personally attending Wake, complaining that the
system is racist and unfair, etc., smacks of the ultimate form of hypocrisy.

 Ede, you say "...Elliot, where he repeatedly makes a claim that all
Louisville
does is cry foul on race in debates." Well, based on my personal experience,
I
agree with that statement. I won't back away from that assessment. I found
it
quite ironic that I judged a round in
which there was an
African-American male, one white female, and TWO African-American females
debating, only to have Ede's team make the same EXACT arguments in the round
as
if they were debating two redneck guys from Ku Klux Klan University. Am I
the
only person who see a problem with a team of minority students pointing the
finger at another group of minority students and making the same claims they
would make against two white males from prvileged backgrounds? It was
quite a twilight-zone moment then watching a speaker spread in the 2NC in
order to extend his partner's "speed is bad" kritik. I wonder whether this
is
a true form of revolutionary rhetoric, or just a one trick pony strategy
that
has lost its shine. Is the Louisville project a real revolutionary movement
anymore, or has it been reduced to merely another strategy to win a few
rounds,
on par with a team reading the same Focault or Derrida critique, every
round,
on the affirmative and the negative, for five years straight? Why not cut
some
cards on the topic and then bust out the "racism in debate " kritiks when
they
actually apply?

Ede, if you are going to call me out on such a personal level, why not
publicly call out the Directors of programs that you think are the true
causes
of the issues you raise. It CANNOT BE ME, because I have not been around for
the past five years as a coach. I was not, and have never been a member of
the
CEDA Executive Committee. I was not, and will never be, and member of the
AFA
NDT Board. I damn sure am not on this CEDA TOPIC COmmitte that is geared to
meet
the needs of the top twenty varsity NDT teams--at the exculsion of other
college
students who never had access to high school debate, or have to work in
order to
stay in school! So maybe you should sling some mud their way. Or am I just a
convienent scapegoat because I am not part of your old-school, elitist, NDT
clich?

I would have loved to have talked to you personally, Ede, about the state of
policy debate, but you were too busy
sleeping with the enemy and giving into the same racist system that you so
often criticize. I support your ideas more than most, but I think you
unfairly
single me out
simply because I am willing to engage you an a painfully open discussion of
your
ideas and tactics toward changing college policy debate in America. Why not
call
out those who silently control the system that you claim to want to change.
You
know who they are better than I do. Please share.

Scott Elliott