Tournament: Stanford | Round: 4 | Opponent: Cupertino HK | Judge: Jeremy Rosen
The role of the ballot is to vote for the debater who best disrupts anti-blackness. Failure to confront anti-blackness through an educational model prevents productive pedagogy—that's a prerequisite to change
Mazzei 8 (Lisa A., Now—Gonzaga U; Then—Manchester Metropolitan U, Silence speaks: Whiteness Revealed in the Absence of Voice, Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) p. 1125-1136)
Since that initial research I have continued to explore the importance of racially inhabited silence in classes with preservice teachers, particularly as it arises in conversations regarding issues of diversity. This attention serves as a means of both identifying and challenging responses to those who are ‘‘different’’ or ‘‘Other’’ especially as those responses, both silent and muted, serve to expose and solidify circumscribed perceptions. These racially inhabited silences are particularly noticeable in settings where white preservice teachers are challenged to deal with issues of diversity, finding themselves uncomfortable in the context of a discourse of diversity, especially when the conversation engages the social and economic implications of racial diversity and when the critical gaze is shifted from the racial object, i.e., the non-white Other, to the racial subject, i.e., white self (Morrison, 1992). They will talk about difference, and acknowledge that we must incorporate diversity into education classes, but when asked to specifically discuss their perceptions or experiences based on race and ethnicity, it is as if I have asked them to divulge the password of a secret society. In the words of one student, ‘‘Why do we need to talk about it? Isn’t it best if we don’t notice it? Isn’t it an issue because we You keep making it an issue?’’ This discussion then is presented as a continuing engagement with those racially inhabited silences in an attempt to further ascertain their relevance and to formulate pedagogical responses so we can get students to talk about it. So we can adequately prepare teachers to recognize when they are responding to their students based on their own biases, stereotypes, and ignorance in order to help future teachers not just mouth the mantra of a culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994, 2001), but actually mean it and enact it.

We, as debaters, need to all engage in this discourse and starting here is key to annihilating anti-blackness
phạm 16 xoài phạm is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. They are a Vietnamese femme. They are tender and dangerous. They love mangos. They have places to be and people to scare. February 20, 2016 Date Accessed: February 11, 2017
Anti-Blackness exists in every continent. It exists among all of our non-Black communities of color; it exists among the people in our families; and it exists among us, individually, too. Which means it’s our responsibility to continually fight to end anti-Blackness in every way we can. Among non-Black people of color, there is the widespread notion that racial justice means being united against white supremacy. Yet, non-Black people of color rarely address the question of how the abolition of white supremacy can never be realized if rampant anti-Blackness among non-Black people goes unchecked. Time and again, Asian American social justice warriors will readily fight white supremacy but in the same breath reinforce anti-Black tropes or appropriate Black American cultures. To live in the world that Black, Indigenous, and other people of color dream about requires a complete stop, utter end, total destruction of anti-Blackness. And I say this not as someone who has unlearned anti-Blackness but is unlearning, with the knowledge that the end of my oppression is bound up with Black liberation and with the knowledge that Black folks deserve unconditional freedom regardless. There is no quick-and-easy microwaveable version of unlearning anti-Blackness. It is a lifelong, necessary commitment. Here are some things I’ve noticed while unlearning. 1. Non-Black Asians Create Distance from Blackness One of the ways that we Asian Americans attempt to show that we are valuable under the Euro-American gaze is by distancing ourselves from what we perceive to be Blackness – meaning we draw ourselves in stark contrast to the narrow stereotypes that non-Black people have already assigned to Black people. In the context of the beauty industry, this results in non-Black folks finding ways to bleach our skin, color our eyes and hair, and do our makeup in ways that not only reaches towards whiteness but also distances us from Blackness. For Asian Americans, the lighter the skin, the more beautiful you perceived to be. And across the Asian continent, lighter skin is a mark of beauty, while darkness is equated to ugliness. Girls, especially, have their bodies policed to make sure they conform to anti-Black ideas of beauty. As for income, Asian Americans often struggle to attain financial and political wealth in order to move out of poor, Black neighborhoods and prove to white people that we are not “like the Black folks.” As a result, we willfully buy into the “model minority myth,” which is the puke-inducing idea that Asian Americans are the good, hardworking example of what a minority should be. The term was coined by sociologist William Petersen in 1966 to describe the success of Japanese Americans in the face of anti-Japanese sentiment. Despite the fact that he was only describing a single ethnicity out of the many ethnicities in Asia – go read a map to remind yourself of how fucking big Asia is – people then began using the term to refer to Asian Americans as a whole. Yeah, people started using this model minority myth while talking about all immigrants from the entire continent of Asia – that shit was ridiculous to say the least. This myth only holds true if Asian Americans are willing to maintain that Black folks are a “bad minority.” The assigned value of non-Black Asian Americans is entirely dependent on the lack of value they assign to Blackness. But the truth is that in 2015, many communities of Asian Americans have begun to access the privileges that have been traditionally associated with white Americans. The danger is in saying that Asian Americans, as a whole, are a successful minority by capitalist standards, because there are many Southeast Asians, for example, disproportionately living in poverty and with mental illness. There are many undocumented Asians, too, who are not even taken into account in the rare cases that Asian Americans are even included in race-oriented surveys. There are also South and West Asians who are being victimized by the onslaught of Islamophobic hatred. The thing is that this model minority myth did not consider at all that Black Asians exist, and that Black Asians are facing the inconceivable violence of anti-Blackness, too. The colonial imposition of racial categories was not made to uphold the complexities of bodies and identities. Where do Black Asians fit in the context of anti-Blackness and a model minority? 2. Black Asians Exist and They Will Not Be Erased The most dangerous way that non-Black Asians distance ourselves from Blackness is by conceptualizing the Asian American as completely devoid of Blackness. When people hear “Asian,” the majority immediately think of a pale-skinned person with straight, black hair – someone who looks like Lucy Liu. The image that Asians and non-Asians have in their heads about who Asians are is not just woefully monolithic, but also removed from Blackness. When Asian identity – how Asians understand ourselves in relation to the world as racialized people – makes no room for Blackness, it results in the violent erasure of Black Asians from the face of the earth. If Black Asians aren’t known to exist, there is no consideration for the violence they face. There is no consideration to the multiplicities of Blackness that are reduced by non-Black folks. When Black Asians are erased, non-Black Asians have an easier time creating distance between ourselves and Blackness, gaining illusory value at the expense of Black people. One of the functions of white supremacy and anti-Blackness is to simplify the histories, ancestries, and identities of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. This is why many people don’t know about Blackness in Asia and among the diaspora. It’s much more convenient to believe that Blackness has no place in Asian identity in order to more easily participate in the capitalist dynamics of whiteness. As a result, misinformed accusations of cultural appropriation, for example, ensue. South Asians have accused East Africans of appropriation for wearing headpieces, henna, and jewelry that are commonly associated with South Asians. Despite being separated only by the Indian Ocean, the ties that connect South Asians and East Africans are strained by non-Black Asians’ inclination to set the terms and conditions of how they want to use Blackness. All ties to Blackness are erased when non-Black Asians feel the need to monopolize our cultures, but there is no hesitation when non-Black Asians across the world want to appropriate BlackAmerican cultures. What space can Black Asians find in Asian communities when Blackness is unwanted andmistreated yet simultaneously stolen and parodied? How can Black Asians, and Black folks as a whole, feel safe with non-Black Asians when the perpetrator of the Charleston massacre wrote on his website that East Asians “are by nature very racist and could be great allies of the White race?” Dear non-Black Asians, it has long been time to shift our priorities.  3. Getting Our Social Justice Priorities Right When the Black Lives Matter movement was beginning to be derailed by those who were using #AsianLivesMatter, it was clear that these non-Black Asians didn’t realize that Black Asians exist too and that if they actually gave a fuck about Asian people at all, they would support Black Asians and Black Lives Matter. But aside from that self-serving reason, the derailing of Black Lives Matter also hurts non-Black Asians because white supremacy relies on anti-Blackness to survive. A white supremacist world is not sustainable without anti-Blackness fueling it. And because white supremacy, and oppressive systems in general, rely on erasure, non-Black Asians forget that before Europeans started the Atlantic slave trade, there was the Arab slave trade of East Africans. Grappling with our anti-Blackness as Asian Americans has to take place both within and outside of a white supremacist context, because non-Black people committing anti-Blackness predates European anti-Blackness. This is not to say that non-Black Asians are more responsible than Europeans for anti-Blackness; rather, I am pointing out the fact that non-Black Asians certainly did not need white people to instruct them on how to be anti-Black. Claiming that anti-Blackness is a result of white conditioning is shirking responsibility. White supremacist politics of erasure makes us forget that the crux of white supremacy is anti-Blackness. When we forget this, and proceed to be anti-Black, we only support the white supremacist structure that we long to destroy. My call to action for my fellow non-Black Asians is to re-envision our place in racial justice. Rather than simply claiming allyship to Black justice movements we need to understand that Black liberation is crucial to any foreseeable future for racial justice, which means it is our duty to contribute to Black liberation too. White supremacy will never end if non-Black people of color continue, whether consciously or not, to uphold white supremacy by hurting Black folks. It’s time to stop believing that we’ll be safe by accessing some white privileges. We need to be vigilant and understand that the settler state called America, founded on stolen Indigenous territories, will never be here to benefit us. Remember when the government decided that they would be more blatant with their racism and rounded up tens of thousands of Japanese American families to incarcerate them? The United States could do the exact same thing again to South Asian and Arab Americans as Islamophobia grows, and it’ll again be for “national security.” The Southeast Asian refugees who thought they could find safety in America are being deported once again. As we speak, the imperialist American military is wreaking havoc all across Asia, resulting in the deaths of marginalized people like our trans sister Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman killed at 26 by a US Marine. Reaping the benefits of white supremacy may be appealing, but it is ultimately poisonous. Fighting anti-Blackness gets everyone closer to real justice. How We Can Create the World We Deserve Many of the structures that harm Asian Americans, like law enforcement, the prison system, and the military industry, harm Black folks the most, and that includes Black Asians. The efforts of Black Lives Matter, in resisting structures that harm us, will benefit all people of color, whether that’s intended or not. Among Asian communities, Black Lives Matter will benefit both Black Asians and non-Black Asians. But we can’t expect Black folks to do all of the work for non-Black people. We can’t let justice be achieved off the backs of Black people. To ask Black activists and organizers to do all of the work is in itself anti-Black. This is everyone’s battle. Beyond supporting Black Lives Matter because of how the movement helps us, let’s support Black Lives Matter simply because Black Lives Matter and the whole damn world needs to know. We need to reframe our discussions around racial justice and recognize that ending anti-Blackness should be a top priority. Whether we’re committed to Black liberation, the end of anti-Asian oppression, the abolition of white supremacy, or the possibility of a better world at all, we need to prioritize ending anti-Blackness. Now what does that mean? It means centering Black people in our racial justice struggles. It means unconditionally demanding justice for Akai Gurley, who was murdered by Peter Liang of the NYPD. It means centering Black Asians in any and all discussions about Asian identity, since Black Asians would largely be the most victimized of all Asians. And it means redistributing financial, political, and emotional resources to Black folks, especially Black femmes. Ultimately, it can mean the abolition of anti-Black structures like police and prisons, and the decolonization of land owned by anti-Black settler colonial governments. I know that these are some hefty goals, maybe goals that you haven’t dreamed of yet. But I believe that we will win. And sooner than you think.

Sustaining the coherence of the American political framework reproduces discourses of progress that result in the further accumulation of injured and murdered black bodies --- black nihilism is the only metaphysical framework capable of addressing this antagonism and unraveling the political. Your reforms are useless for the black bodies
Warren 15 Calvin K., Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington University, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope,” CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2015 SP
Perverse juxtapositions structure our relation to the Political. This becomes even more apparent and problematic when we consider the position of blacks within this structuring.1 On the one hand, our Declaration of Independence proclaims, “All men are created equal,” and yet black captives were fractioned in this political arithmetic as three-fifths of this “man.” The remainder, the two-fifths, gets lost within the arithmetic shuffle of commerce and mercenary prerogatives. We, of course, hoped that the Reconstruction Amendments would correct this arithmetical error and finally provide an ontological equation, or an existential variable, that would restore fractured and fractioned End Page 215 black being. This did not happen. Black humanity became somewhat of an “imaginary number” in this equation, purely speculative and nice in theory but difficult to actualize or translate into something tangible. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, and extra-legal and legal violence made a mockery of the 14th Amendment, and the convict leasing system turned the 13th Amendment inside out for blacks. Yet, we approach this political perversity with a certain apodictic certainty and incontrovertible hope that things will (and do) get better. The Political, we are told, provides the material or substance of our hope; it is within the Political that we are to find, if we search with vigilance and work tirelessly, the “answer” to the ontological equation—hard work, suffering, and diligence will restore the fractioned three-fifths with its alienated two-fifths and, finally, create One that we can include in our declaration that “All men are created equal.” We are still awaiting this “event.”Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. placed great emphasis on the restoration of black being through suffering and diligence in his sermon “The American Dream” (1965): And I would like to say to you this morning what I’ve tried to say all over this nation, what I believe firmly: that in seeking to make the dream a reality we must use and adopt a proper method. I’m more convinced than ever before that violence is impractical and immoral…we need not hate; we need not use violence. We can stand up against our most violent opponent and say: we will match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you…we will go to in those jails and transform them from dungeons of shame to havens of freedom and human dignity. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after night and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half dead, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. … Threaten our children and bomb our churches, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will ride you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we will win our 3freedom, but we will not only win it for ourselves, we will so appeal to your hearts and conscience that we will win you in the process. And our victory will be double. The American dream, then, is realized through black suffering. It is the humiliated, incarcerated, mutilated, and terrorized black body that serves as the vestibule for the Democracy that is to come. In fact, it almost becomes impossible to think the Political without black suffering. According to this logic, corporeal fracture engenders ontological coherence, in a political arithmetic saturated with violence. Thus, nonviolence is a misnomer, or somewhat of a ruse. Black-sacrifice is necessary to achieve the American dream and its promise of coherence, progress, and equality. We find similar logic in the contemporary moment. Renisha McBride, Jordon Davis, Kody Ingham, Amadou Diallo, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Frederick Jermain Carter, Chavis Carter, Timothy Stansbury, Hadiya Pendleton, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Kendrec McDade, Trayvon Martin, and Mike Brown, among others, constitute a fatal rupture of the Political; these signifiers, stained in blood, refuse the closure that the Political promises. They haunt political discourses of progress, betterment, equality, citizenship, and justice—the metaphysical organization of social existence. We are witnessing a shocking accumulation of injured and mutilated black bodies, particularly young black bodies, which place what seems to be an unanswerable question mark in the political field: if we are truly progressing toward this “society-that-is-to-come (maybe),” why is black suffering increasing at such alarming rates? In response to this inquiry, we are told to keep struggling, keep “hope” alive, and keep the faith. After George Zimmerman was acquitted for murdering Trayvon Martin, President Obama addressed the nation and importuned us to keep fighting for change because “each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes toward race” and, if we work hard enough, we will move closer to “becoming a more perfect union.” Despite Martin’s corpse lingering in the minds of young people and Zimmerman’s smile of relief after the verdict, we are told that things are actually getting better. Supposedly, the generation that murdered Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride is much better than the generation that murdered Emmett Till. Black suffering, here, is instrumentalized to accomplish pedagogical, cathartic, and redemptive objectives and, somehow, the growing number of dead black bodies in the twenty-first century is an indication of our progress toward “perfection.” Is perfection predicated on black death? How many more End Page 217 black bodies must be lynched, mutilated, burned, castrated, raped, dismembered, shot, and disabled before we achieve this “more perfect union”? In many ways, black suffering and death become the premiere vehicles of political perfection and social maturation. This essay argues that the logic of the Political—linear temporality, bio-political futurity, perfection, betterment, and redress—sustains black suffering. Progress and perfection are worked through the pained black body and any recourse to the Political and its discourse of hope will ultimately reproduce the very metaphysical structures of violence that pulverize black being. This piece attempts to rescue black nihilism from discursive and intellectual obliteration; rather than thinking about black nihilism as a set of pathologies in need of treatment, this essay considers black nihilism a necessary philosophical posture capable of unraveling the Political and its devastating logic of political hope. Black nihilism resists emancipatory rhetoric that assumes it is possible to purge the Political of anti-black violence and advances political apostasy as the only “ethical” response to black suffering.

Their arguments about bringing some measure of relief or change constitute cruel optimism --- they rely on a trick of time that retreats to “could be” or “maybe later” --- refusing the blackmail of “doing politics” in a rejection of this trickery
rejecting politics of hope means that we get to see that 1/ it posits itself as the only alternative to antiblackness (i.e. using the state) 2/ shiediling this alternative from historical critique by placing it in an unknown future (i.e. the future is a better place and we should always be optimistic) 3/ delimited the field of action to be legitimiated by the poltical (i.e. only politics that is meaningful is through the state) and 4/ demonizing critique (i.e. every policy team) black political participation is not predicated off a rational action because it sustains a system that does not better itself- a cruel attachment to a means of subjugation between historical reality and fantastatical ideal- in other words it ignores the materiality of history antagonizing against black people and uses that same history to justify the belief in that process i.e. people have died for you to vote so you have to- it is not based on being an active citizen but necessity because of history. you need an alternative or nothing changes. no alternative ensures that hegemony and dominance of political hope maintain itself because there has to be a solution to the problem or action because inaction is worse- all problems have solutions and hope helps us actualize those solutions
Warren 15 Calvin K., Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington University, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope,” CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2015 SP
The politics of hope, then, constitutes what Lauren Berlant would call “cruel optimism” for blacks (Berlant 2011). It bundles certain promises about redress, equality, freedom, justice, and progress into a political object that always lies beyond reach. The objective of the Political is to keep blacks in a relation to this political object—in an unending pursuit of it. This pursuit, however, is detrimental because it strengthens the very anti-black system that would pulverize black being. The pursuit of the object certainly has an “irrational” aspect to it, as Farred details, but it is not mere means without expectation; instead, it is a means that undermines the attainment of the impossible object desired. In other words, the pursuit marks a cruel attachment to the means of subjugation and the continued widening of the gap between historical reality and fantastical ideal. Black nihilism is a “demythifying” practice, in the Nietzschean vein, that uncovers the subjugating strategies of political hope and de-idealizes its fantastical object. Once we denude political hope of its axiological and ethical veneer, we see that it operates through certain strategies: 1) positing itself as the only alternative to the problem of anti-blackness, 2) shielding this alternative from rigorous historical/philosophical critique by placing it in an unknown future, 3) delimiting the field of action to include only activity recognized and legitimated by the Political, and 4) demonizing critiques or different philosophical perspectives. The politics of hope masks a particular cruelty under the auspices of “happiness” and “life.” It terrifies with the dread of “no alternative.” “Life” itself needs the security of the alternative, and, through this logic, life becomes untenable without it. Political hope promises to provide this alternative—a discursive and political organization beyond extant structures of violence and destruction. The construction of the binary “alternative/no-alternative” ensures the hegemony and dominance of political hope within the onto-existential horizon. The terror of the “no alternative”—the ultimate space of decay, suffering, and death—depends on two additional binaries: “problem/solution” and “action/inaction.” According to this politics, all problems have solutions, and hope provides the accessibility and realization of these solutions. The solution establishes itself as the elimination of “the problem”; the solution, in fact, transcends the problem and realizes Hegel’s aufheben in its constant attempt to sublate the dirtiness of the “problem” with the pristine being of the solution. No problem is outside the reach of hope’s solution—every problem is connected to the kernel of its own eradication. The politics of hope must actively refuse the possibility that the “solution” is, in fact, another problem in disguised form; the idea of a “solution” is nothing more than the repetition and disavowal of the problem itself. The solution relies on what we might call the “trick of time” to fortify itself from the deconstruction of its binary. Because the temporality of hope is a time “not-yet-realized,” a future tense unmoored from present-tense justifications and pragmatist evidence, the politics of hope cleverly shields its “solutions” from critiques of impossibility or repetition. Each insistence that these solutions stand up against the lessons of history or the rigors of analysis is met with the rationale that these solutions are not subject to history or analysis because they do not reside within the horizon of the “past” or “present.” Put differently, we can never ascertain the efficacy of the proposed solutions because they escape the temporality of the moment, always retreating to a “not-yet” and “could-be” temporality. This “trick” of time offers a promise of possibility that can only be realized in an indefinite future, and this promise is a bond of uncertainty that can never be redeemed, only imagined. In this sense, the politics of hope is an instance of the psychoanalytic notion of desire: its sole purpose is to reproduce its very condition of possibility, never to satiate or bring fulfillment. This politics secures its hegemony through time by claiming the future as its unassailable property and excluding (and devaluing) any other conception of time that challenges this temporal ordering. The politics of hope, then, depends on the incessant (re)production and proliferation of problems to justify its existence. Solutions cannot really exist within the politics of hope, just the illusion of a different order in a future tense. The “trick” of time and political solution converge on the site of “action.” In critiquing the politics of hope, one encounters the rejoinder of the dangers of inaction. “But we can’t just do nothing! We have to do something.” The field of permissible action is delimited and an unrelenting binary between action/inaction silences critical engagement with political hope. These exclusionary operations rigorously reinforce the binary between action and inaction and discredit certain forms of engagement, critique, and protest. Legitimate action takes place in the political—the political not only claims futurity but also action as its property. To “do something” means that this doing must translate into recognizable political activity; “something” is a stand-in for the word “politics”—one must “do politics” to address any problem. A refusal to “do politics” is equivalent to “doing nothing”—this nothingness is constructed as the antithesis of life, possibility, time, ethics, and morality (a “zero-state” as Julia Kristeva 1982 might call it). Black nihilism rejects this “trick of time” and the lure of emancipatory solutions. To refuse to “do politics” and to reject the fantastical object of politics is the only “hope” for blackness in an anti-black world.

Anti-blackness structures all modern systems and methods of thought. Attempts to create freedom always fail
Warren 15 Calvin Warren is Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington University. “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope” “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope” first appeared in The New Centennial Review Vol. 15, No. 1, (Spring 2015), pp. 215-248. June 2015 Date Accessed: February 9, 2017
For the Black nihilist, anti-blackness is metaphysics. It is the system of thought and organization of existence that structures the relationships between object/subject, human/animal, rational/irrational, and free/enslaved—essentially, the categories that constitute the field of Ontology. Thus, the social rationalization, loss of individuality, economic expansionism, and technocratic domination that both Vattimo and Heidegger analyze actually depend on antiblackness.4 Metaphysics, then, is unthinkable without anti-blackness. Neither Heidegger nor Vattimo explore this aspect of Being’s oblivion—it is the literal destruction of black bodies that provide the psychic, economic, and philosophical resources for modernity to objectify, forget, and ultimately obliterate Being (non-metaphysical Being). We might then consider black captivity in the modern world as the “perfection” of metaphysics, its shameful triumph, because through the violent technology of slavery Being itself was so thoroughly devastated. Personality became property, as Hortense Spillers would describe it, and with this transubstantiation, Being was objectified, infused with exchange value, and rendered malleable within a socio-political order. In short, Being lost its integrity with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; at that moment in history, it finally became possible for an aggressive metaphysics to exercise obscene power—the ability to turn a “human” into a “thing.” The captive is fractured on both the Ontological and ontic levels. This violent transubstantiation leaves little room for the hopeful escape from metaphysics that Heidegger envisions. Can the black-as-object lay claim to Dasein? And if so, how exactly does hermeneutic nihilism restore Being to that which is an object? If we perform a “philosophy of history,” as Vattimo would advice, we understand that metaphysicians, and even those we now consider ‘post-metaphysicians,’ constructed the rational subject against the non-reasoning black, who, according to Hegel, Kant, Hume, and even Nietzsche was situated outside of history, moral law, and consciousness. (Bernasconi 2003; Judy 1991; and Mills 1998) It is not enough, then, to suggest that metaphysics engenders forms of violence as a necessity, as a bi-product; thinking itself is structured by anti-blackness from the very start. Any post-metaphysical project that does not take this into account will inevitably reproduce the very structures of thought that it would dismantle. 26 Hermeneutic nihilism provides a discursive frame to understand the intransigence of metaphysics as the residue of anti-blackness in the contemporary moment. The Black nihilist, however, must part ways with Vattimo concerning the question of emancipation. For Vattimo, hermeneutic nihilism avoids “passive nihilism” Passive nihilism is characterized by strands of fatalism or by melancholic nostalgia for lost foundations. To avoid this situation, Vattimo introduces hermeneutics as an alternative to passive nihilism, and conceives of hermeneutics as the natural result of an accomplished nihilism—namely, after the weakening of metaphysical Being, hermeneutics replaces metaphysics as a self-consuming “foundation.” He attempts to move beyond the metaphysical remnants found in the theories of Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Wittgenstein and think of hermeneutics as competing interpretations that reduce the violence of secure foundations. This of course provides the possibility for a radical democracy and a reconfiguration of Ethics, Law, and the Political. Ultimately, this weakening of metaphysical Being allows the human to project herself in the world, what Vattimo calls “projectionality,” and engage in the unique project that constitutes existence. This is the crux of emancipation for Vattimo. We, ironically, find ourselves back in the province of “progress,” “hope,” “betterment,” all the metaphysical instruments that constrain the very black life that he would emancipate. This, of course, is unavoidable for he can only twist these concepts and reclaim them as part of a post- metaphysical agenda. Vattimo’s hermeneutic nihilism is not very much different than political- theology and democratic liberalism. It is a discourse of hope, a politics of hope, that advances the belief that we can weaken metaphysics and reduce suffering, violence, and pain. When it comes to black suffering, however, we are compelled to hold up the mirror of historicity and inquire about the possibilities of emancipation for the black-as-object. Anti-blackness is the residue that remains, the intransigent substance that makes it impossible to destroy metaphysics completely. The Black nihilist must confront this residue, but with the understanding that the eradication of this residue would truly end the world itself. Black emancipation is world-destructive; it is not an aperture or an opening for future possibilities and political reconfigurations. (Wilderson 2010) The “end of the world” that Vattimo envisions does not take into account that pulverized black bodies sustain the world—its institutions, economic systems, environment, theologies, philosophies, etc. Because anti-blackness infuses itself into every fabric of social existence, it is impossible to emancipate blacks without literally destroying the world. Moreover, this means that 27 black emancipation will not yield a new world or possibilities for reorganization— black emancipation is the nihilistic “solution” that would destroy the field of all possible solutions. In this sense, black emancipation becomes something like death for the world—with all its Heideggerian valences. Black bodies and black suffering, then, pose a problem for emancipatory logic. If literal black bodies sustain modernity and metaphysics—through various forms of captivity, terror, and subjection—then what would emancipation entail for blacks? How do we allow metaphysics to self-consume and weaken when blackness nourishes metaphysics? (We can define the “problem” in W E B. Dubois’s poignant question “what does it mean to be a problem?” in the 20th century as metaphysics itself. Now we must ask: “what does it mean to be the source of metaphysics’ sustenance in the 21st century?”) Either the world would have to eliminate black bodies, which would amount to a self-destructive solution for all, or it would have to wrest blackness from the clutches of metaphysical anti-blackness that sustains the world. Our hope is that black emancipation would be accomplished through the latter, but history does not prove that this is possible—every emancipatory strategy that attempted to rescue blackness from anti-blackness inevitably reconstituted and reconfigured the anti-blackness it tried to eliminate. Anti-blackness is labile. It adapts to change and endlessly refashions itself; this makes emancipation an impossible feat. Because we are still attempting to mine the depths of anti-blackness in the 21st century and still contemplating the contours of this juggernaut, anti-blackness will escape every emancipatory attempt to capture it. We are left, yet again, to place our hope in a future politics that avoids history, historicity, and the immediacy of black suffering. For this reason, the black nihilist rejects the emancipatory impulse within certain aspects of Black critical discourse and cultural/critical theory. In this sense, the modifier “black” in the term “black nihilism” indicates much more than an “identity”; a blackened nihilism pushes hermeneutic nihilism beyond the limits of its metaphysical thinking by foregrounding the function of anti-blackness in structuring thought.

The alternative is to vote negative to adopt black nihilist political apostasy that rejects the anti-black political entirely–NO PARTIAL ATHEISM. This is the only metaphysically coherent response to the constant slaughter of black bodies
Warren 15 Calvin K., Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington University, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope,” CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2015 SP
V. Conclusion Throughout this essay, I have argued that the Politics of hope preserve metaphysical structures that sustain black suffering. This preservation amounts to an exploitation of hope—when the Political colonizes the spiritual principle of hope and puts it in the service of extending the “will to power” of an anti-black organization of existence. The Politics of hope, then, is bound up with metaphysical violence, and this violence masquerades as a “solution” to the problem of anti-blackness. Temporal linearity, perfection, betterment, struggle, work, and utopian futurity are conceptual instruments of the Political that will never obviate black suffering or anti-black violence; these concepts only serve to reproduce the conditions that render existence unbearable for blacks. Political theologians and black optimists avoid the immediacy of black suffering, the horror of anti-black pulverization, and place relief in a “not-yet-but-is (maybe)-to-come-social order” that, itself, can do little more but admonish blacks to survive to keep struggling. Political hope becomes a vicious and abusive cycle of struggle—it mirrors the Lacanian drive, and we encircle an object (black freedom, justice, relief, redress, equality, etc.) that is inaccessible because it doesn’t really exist. The political theologian and black optimist, then, propose a collective Jouissance as an answer to black suffering—finding the joy in struggle, the victory in toil, and the satisfaction in inefficacious action. We continue to “struggle” and “work” as black youth are slaughtered daily, black bodies are incarcerated as forms of capital, black infant mortality rates are soaring, and hunger is disabling the bodies, minds, and spirits of desperate black youth. In short, these conditions are deep metaphysical problems—the sadistic pleasure of metaphysical domination—and “work” and “struggle” avoid the terrifying fact that the world depends on black death to sustain itself. Black nihilism attempts to break this “drive”—to stop it in its tracks, as it were—and to end the cycle of insanity that political hope perpetuates. The question that remains is a question often put to the black nihilist: what is the point? This compulsory geometrical structuring of thought—all knowledge must submit to, and is reducible to, a point—it is an epistemic flicker of certainty, determination, and, to put it bluntly, life. “The point” exists for life; it enlivens, enables, and sustains knowledge. Thought outside of this mandatory point is illegible and useless. To write outside of the “episteme of life” and its grammar will require a position outside of this point, a position somewhere in the infinite horizon of thought (perhaps this is what Heidegger wanted to do with his reconfiguration of thought). Writing in this way is inherently subversive and refuses the geometry of thought. Nevertheless, the End Page 243 nihilist is forced to enunciate his refusal through a “point,” a point that is contradictory and paradoxical all at once. To say that the point of this essay is that “the point” is fraudulent—its promise of clarity and life are inadequate—will not satisfy the hunger of disciplining the nihilist and insisting that one undermine the very ground upon which one stands. Black nihilistic hermeneutics resists “the point” but is subjected to it to have one’s voice heard within the marketplace of ideas. The “point” of this essay is that political hope is pointless. Black suffering is an essential part of the world, and placing hope in the very structure that sustains metaphysical violence, the Political, will never resolve anything. This is why the black nihilist speaks of “exploited hope,” and the black nihilist attempts to wrest hope from the clutches of the Political. Can we think of hope outside the Political? Must “salvation” translate into a political grammar or a political program? The nihilist, then, hopes for the end of political hope and its metaphysical violence. Nihilism is not antithetical to hope; it does not extinguish hope but reconfigures it. Hope is the foundation of the black nihilistic hermeneutic. In “Blackness and Nothingness,” Fred Moten (2013) conceptualizes blackness as a “pathogen” to metaphysics, something that has the ability to unravel, to disable, and to destroy anti-blackness. If we read Vattimo through Moten’s brilliant analysis, we can suggest that blackness is the limit that Heidegger and Nietzsche were really after. It is a “blackened” world that will ultimately end metaphysics, but putting an end to metaphysics will also put an end to the world itself—this is the nihilism that the black nihilist must theorize through. This is a far cry from what we call “anarchy,” however. The black nihilist has as little faith in the metaphysical reorganization of society through anarchy than he does in traditional forms of political existence. The black nihilist offers political apostasy as the spiritual practice of denouncing metaphysical violence, black suffering, and the idol of anti-blackness. The act of renouncing will not change political structures or offer a political program; instead, it is the act of retrieving the spiritual concept of hope from the captivity of the Political. Ultimately, it is impossible to end metaphysics without ending blackness, and the black nihilist will never be able to withdraw from the Political completely without a certain death-drive or being-toward-death. This is the essence of black suffering: the lack of reprieve from metaphysics, the tormenting complicity in the reproduction of violence, and the lack of a coherent grammar to articulate these dilemmas. After contemplating these issues for some time in my office, I decided to take a train home. As I awaited my train in the station, an older black woman asked me about the train schedule and when I would expect the next train headed toward Dupont Circle. When I told her the trains were running slowly, she began to talk about the government shutdown. “They don’t care anything about us, you know,” she said. “We elect these people into office, we vote for them, and they watch black people suffer and have no intentions of doing anything about it.” I shook my head in agreement and listened intently. “I’m going to stop voting, and supporting this process; why should I keep doing this and our people continue to suffer,” she said. I looked at her and said, “I don’t know ma’am; I just don’t understand it myself.” She then laughed and thanked me for listening to her—as if our conversation were somewhat cathartic. “You know, people think you’re crazy when you say things like this,” she said giving me a wink. “Yes they do,” I said. “But I am a free woman,” she emphasized “and I won’t go back.” Shocked, I smiled at her, and she winked at me; at that moment I realized that her wisdom and courage penetrated my mind and demanded answers. I’ve thought about this conversation for some time, and it is for this reason I had to write this essay. To the brave woman at the train station, I must say you are not crazy at all but thinking outside of metaphysical time, space, and violence. Ultimately, we must hope for the end of political hope.

And, the perm fails because it’s impossible to support the political structure without participating in the ruse of false transformation and an exploited hope

And, the role of the judge is to be a critical analyst testing whether the underlying assumptions of the AFF are valid. This is a question of the whether the AFF scholarship is good – not the passage of the plan.

Tournament: XXXXXX | Round: Octas | Opponent: XXXXX | Judge: XXXXX
Hello to you all! If I have not disclosed negative positions yet, I probably have not read it yet. Email me at shreemukilanpari18@mittymonarch.com for contact.