The racial coding of performance debate: race, difference, and policy debate

Abstract

It is time for debate to do away with performance debate—not the practices this label describes, but rather the label itself. This article argues that performance debate is racially-coded language that devalues black participation in debate, and that, along with the label’s lack of benefit for coaching or thinking about debate arguments or strategy, warrants its dismissal from everyday use. Not only is it racially-coded and unhelpful, it also disincentivizes black participation which is always rendered as other. Racially-coded rhetorics are a particularly insidious way to express racist ideas under the guise of race-neutral language. As such, one way to express displeasure with or a distaste for black debaters, and to discourage their participation, is to describe their debate as performance debate as opposed to debate. In order to make policy debate, where performance debate has its genesis, more inclusive to minoritarian debaters and more pedagogically sound, debate participants must reject the performance debate label in order to resist re-inscribing the racially-divided history of policy debate.