Tournament: Damus | Round: 2 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake WiBe | Judge: Sarah Crucilla
Capers 07 (I. Bennett Capers, Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches Evidence, Criminal Procedure, and Criminal Law, "Crime, Legitimacy, and Testilying," 2007, Brooklyn Law School, pr. 847-849 http://ilj.law.indiana.edu/articles/83/83'3'Capers.pdf) KVA
The point is not only that the use of excessive force and police shootings contribute to the perception of illegitimate over-enforcement, but that the use of excessive force simultaneously points to the corollary of under-enforcement when it comes to police offenders. The common perception is that the State is unlikely to bring indictments against officers. For example, the State did not bring an indictment against the officer who shot and killed Stansbury; his discipline from the police department was a mere thirty-day suspension and the surrender of his firearm.64 Even when the government does bring indictments, such indictments rarely result in convictions. The initial acquittal of the officers charged in the Rodney King beating is the rule, not the exception. Even when the officers were retried on federal charges, only two of the four were convicted, and at sentencing the court granted their motions for sentencing departures, a decision the Supreme Court affirmed in part in Koon v. United States. 65 The officers in the Diallo shooting were acquitted of all charges.66 Despite overwhelming evidence of complicity by other officers, only two officers were convicted of charges related to the sodomy of Louima. This suggests—and certainly contributes to the perception—that officers themselves operate in a zone of underenforcement. In addition, the use of excessive force and police shootings point to a doctrinal responsiveness problem. 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which ostensibly provides a cause of action against state actors for civil rights deprivations, has repeatedly proven inadequate to address problems of police brutality.67 In Rizzo v. Goode, 68 the Supreme Court held that future acts of police brutality, regardless of past pervasiveness, were too speculative to warrant injunctive relief, a holding the Court essentially reaffirmed in City of Los Angeles v. Lyons. 69 Municipalities themselves are normally immune from civil liability—absent evidence of deliberate indifference to the risk of brutality.70 In Malley v. Briggs, 71 the Court held that officers are entitled to qualified immunity so long as their actions are objectively reasonable. Under Graham v. Connor, 72 the amount of force officers are in fact entitled to use is construed "from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene,"73 and as Cynthia Lee has observed, this is almost by definition a problematic standard.74 And officers themselves, often judgment proof, are in any event usually indemnified by local authorities.75 Thus, when there are costs, they tend to be borne by the taxpayers, not by the offenders. Criminal actions fare no better, in part due to the doctrinal hurdles the Supreme Court erected in Screws v. United States. 76 In Screws, which involved charges against a Georgia sheriff in connection with the beating death of a handcuffed black defendant, the Court read 18 U.S.C. § 242, which prohibits violence under color of law, as requiring proof that the defendant had "a specific intent to deprive a person of a federal right made definite by decision or other rule of law."77 Thus, in terms of courts, there is a responsiveness problem. All of this contributes to the perception of illegitimate and undemocratic policing.
The police were never clean to begin with. Tainted by yellow peril us Asians were to never be clean even before the fabricated evidence and the beatings. Y’all blame Asians for bad eyes, but let’s take a look and reflect the way white people can only visualize all Asians as the same, and how we all fall under the same Chinese name. Asian oppression has been fueled by the rhetorical flare of being the oriental animal, and the material beatings justified by not the law, but the racial discrimination that bleeds of supremacist exceptionalism.
Yen 00 (Rhoda Yen, writer for the Asian Law Journal, "Racial Stereotyping of Asian and Asian Americans and Its Effect on Criminal Justice: A Reflection on the Wayne Lo Case", January 2000, Asian Law Journal, Vol. 7 No. 1 pg. 18-19, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060andcontext=aalj) KVA
The yellow peril stereotype influences the way in which law enforcement officers handle crimes committed by Asian Americans both before and after arrest. In cities where Asian gangs are widely feared, police rely on "facebooks" (compilations of photographs of suspects) to arrest Asian Americans. However, some Asian facebooks include photographs of Asian Americans who have no criminal records. 98 Law enforcement officers who rely on the facebook practice likely view Asians as fungible: every young Asian male who fits the physical profile is a potential Chinatown gangster. Such stereotyping is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that white Americans commonly make errors in identifying Asian faces. 99 Not surprisingly, several incidents in California illustrate the disastrous consequences of relying on the facebook practice. During the summer of 1992, police rounded up eight Asian teenagers in Laguna Park, California, to be photographed after an earlier, unrelated incident involving another group of Asians in the park. 00 In January 1993, police officers raided a Japanese American family in Fountain Valley, California, after misidentifying the son, Mark Kanshige, as an attempted murder suspect from a photo dossier.10' The officers forced the entire family outdoors and handcuffed the family members, while they ransacked the house in search of evidence that did not exist. Mark spent six months in jail and was subsequently found innocent by a jury. Also, police officers in Garden Grove, California, illegally detained and photographed three Southeast Asian teenagers, two of whom were honor students, in July 1993.102 The officers accused the girls of being gang members, although police could not offer any reason for the suspicion other than the fact that the girls were wearing baggy pants and appeared to be loitering by a pay phone. In addition, police officers who view Asians as morally inferior may apply tactics of harassment or brutality to dominate Asian suspects. A New York court recently convicted N.Y.P.D. Officer Rolando Baquando of attempted assault of Korean storeowner, Son Tae Kim. Baquadano became enraged when Kim resisted the officer's accusation that Kim had given counterfeit bills to customers. Baquadano charged Kim and his brother with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, and then proceeded to beat the two men. During the beating, which left Kim and his brother hospitalized, Baquadano called Kim and his brother "f-ing Orientals" and ",animals."'0 3 The yellow peril image increases suspicion against Asian Americans and affects law enforcement initiatives even before the arrest stage. During the summer of 1997, White House security guards denied entry to several Asian Americans with pre-approved security clearances. 0 4 Although the visitors were U.S. citizens and one was a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, a security guard insisted that their surnames appeared "foreign, you know, Asian, Chinese."' 0' On one occasion, a Secret Service guard changed a visitor's citizenship status from "United States" to "foreign" based solely upon the person's surname.
Our impacts are a-priori, risk assessment is not neutral but is epistemologically biased towards privileged white male elites who discount the severity of everyday violence in destroying marginalized populations. No longer will another war justify Japanese internment, and no longer will our voices by silenced.
Verchick 96 ~Robert, Assistant Professor, University of Missouri — Kansas City School of Law. J.D., Harvard Law School, 1989, "IN A GREENER VOICE: FEMINIST THEORY AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE" 19 Harv. Women's L.J. 23~
Because risk assessment is based on statistical measures of risk, policymakers view it as an accurate and objective tool in establishing environmental standards. n275 The scientific process used to assess risk purports to focus single-mindedly on only one feature of a potential injury: the objective probability of its occurrence. n276 Risk assessors, who consider most value judgments irrelevant in determining statistical risk, seek to banish them at every stage. n277 As a result, the language of risk assessment — and of related environmental safety standards — often carry an air of irrebuttable precision and certainty. The EPA, for example, defines the standard acceptable level of risk under Superfund as "10-6" — that is, the probability that one person in a million would develop cancer due to exposure to site contamination. n278 ~*76~ Feminism challenges this model of scientific risk assessment on at least three levels. First, feminism questions the assumption that scientific inquiry is value-neutral, that is, free of societal bias or prejudice. n279 Indeed, as many have pointed out, one's perspective unavoidably influences the practice of science. n280 Western science may be infused with its own ideology, perpetuating, in the view of the ecofeminists, cycles of discrimination, domination, and exploitation. n281 Second, even if scientific inquiry by itself were value-neutral, environmental regulation based on such inquiry would still contain subjective elements. Environmental regulation, like any other product of democracy, inevitably reflects elements of subjectivity, compromise, and self-interest. The technocratic language of regulation serves only to "mask, not eliminate, political and social considerations." n282 We have already seen how the subjective decision to prefer white men as subjects for epidemiological study can skew risk assessments against the interests of women and people of color. The focus of many assessments on the risk of cancer deaths, but not, say, the risks of birth defects or miscarriages, is yet another example of how a policymaker's subjective decision of what to look for can influence what is ultimately seen. n283 Once risk data are collected and placed in a statistical form, the ultimate translation of that information into rules and standards of conduct once again reflects value judgments. A safety threshold of one in a million or a preference for "best conventional technology" does not spring from the periodic table, but rather evolves from the application ~*77~ of human experience and judgment to scientific information. Whose experience? Whose judgment? Which information? These are the questions that feminism prompts, and they will be discussed shortly. Finally, feminists would argue that questions involving the risk of death and disease should not even aspire to value neutrality. Such decisions — which affect not only today's generations, but those of the future — should be made with all related political and moral considerations plainly on the table. n284 In addition, policymakers should look to all perspectives, especially those of society's most vulnerable members, to develop as complete a picture of the moral issues as possible. Debates about scientific risk assessment and public values often appear as a tug of war between the "technicians," who would apply only value-neutral criteria to set regulatory standards, and the "public," who demand that psychological perceptions and contextual factors also be considered. n285 Environmental justice advocates, strongly concerned with the practical experiences of threatened communities, argue convincingly for the latter position. n286 A feminist critique of the issue, however, suggests that the debate is much richer and more complicated than a bipolar view allows. For feminists, the notion of value neutrality simply does not exist. The debate between technicians and the public, according to feminists, is not merely a contest between science and feelings, but a broader discussion about the sets of methods, values, and attitudes to which each group subscribes. Furthermore, feminists might argue, the parties to this discussion divide into more than two categories. Because one's world view is premised on many things, including personal experience, one might expect that subgroups within either category might differ in significant ways from other subgroups. Therefore, feminists would anticipate a broad spectrum of views concerning scientific risk assessment and public values. Intuitively, this makes sense. Certainly scientists disagree among themselves about the hazards of nuclear waste, ozone depletion, and global warming. n287 Many critics have argued that scientists, despite their allegiance ~*78~ to rational method, are nonetheless influenced by personal and political views. n288 Similarly, members of the public are a widely divergent group. One would not be surprised to see politicians, land developers, and blue-collar workers disagreeing about environmental standards for essentially non-scientific reasons. Politicians and bureaucrats are two sets of the non-scientific community that affect environmental standards in fundamental ways. Their adherence to vocal, though not always broadly representative, constituencies may lead them to disfavor less advantaged socioeconomic groups when addressing environmental concerns. n289 In order to understand a diversity of risk perception and to see how attitudes and social status affect the risk assessment process, we must return to the feminist inquiry that explores the relationship between attitudes and identity. 1. The Diversity of Risk Perception A recent national survey, conducted by James Flynn, Paul Slovic, and C.K. Mertz, measured the risk perceptions of a group of 1512 people that included numbers of men, women, whites, and non-whites proportional to their ratios in society. n290 Respondents answered questions about the health risks of twenty-five environmental, technological, and "life-style" hazards, including such hazards as ozone depletion, chemical waste, and cigarette smoking. n291 The researchers asked them to rate each hazard as posing "almost no health risk," a "slight health risk," a "moderate health risk," or a "high health risk." The researchers then analyzed ~*79~ the responses to determine whether the randomly selected groups of white men, white women, non-white men, and non-white women differed in any way. The researchers found that perceptions of risk generally differed on the lines of gender and race. Women, for instance, perceived greater risk from most hazards than did men. n292 Furthermore, non-whites as a group perceived greater risk from most hazards than did whites. n293 Yet the most striking results appeared when the researchers considered differences in gender and race together. They found that "white males tended to differ from everyone else in their attitudes and perceptions — on average, they perceived risks as much smaller and much more acceptable than did other people." n294 Indeed, without exception, the pool of white men perceived each of the twenty-five hazards as less risky than did non-white men, white women, or non-white women. n295 Wary that other factors associated with gender or race could be influencing their findings, the researchers later conducted several multiple regression analyses to correct for differences in income, education, political orientation, the presence of children in the home, and age, among others. Yet even after all corrections, "gender, race, and 'white male' ~status~ remained highly significant predictors" of perceptions of risk. n296 2. Explaining the Diversity From a feminist perspective, these findings are important because they suggest that risk assessors, politicians, and bureaucrats — the large majority of whom are white men n297 — may be acting on attitudes about security and risk that women and people of color do not widely share. If this is so, white men, as the "measurers of all things," have crafted a system of environmental protection that is biased toward their subjective understandings of the world. n298 ~*80~ Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz speculate that white men's perceptions of risk may differ from those of others because in many ways women and people of color are "more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of ~society's~ technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control." n299 Although Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz are careful to acknowledge that they have not yet tested this hypothesis empirically, their explanation appears consistent with the life experiences of less empowered groups and comports with previous understandings about the roles of control and risk perception. n300 Women and people of color, for instance, are more vulnerable to environmental threat in several ways. Such groups are sometimes more biologically vulnerable than are white men. n301 People of color are more likely to live near hazardous waste sites, to breathe dirty air in urban communities, and to be otherwise exposed to environmental harm. n302 Women, because of their traditional role as primary caretakers, are more likely to be aware of the vulnerabilities of their children. n303 It makes sense that such vulnerabilities would give rise to increased fear about risk. It is also very likely that women and people of color believe they benefit less from the technical institutions that create toxic byproducts. n304 Further, people may be more likely to discount risk if they feel somehow compensated for the activity. n305 For this reason, Americans worry relatively little about driving automobiles, an activity with enormous advantages in our large country but one that claims tens of thousands of lives per year. The researchers' final hypothesis — that differences in perception can be explained by the lack of "power and control" exercised by women and people of color — suggests the importance that such factors as voluntariness and control over risk play in shaping perceptions. ~*81~ Risk perception research frequently emphasizes the significance of voluntariness in evaluating risk. Thus, a person may view water-skiing as less risky than breathing polluted air because the former is accepted voluntarily. n306 Voluntary risks are viewed as more acceptable in part because they are products of autonomous choice. n307 A risk accepted voluntarily is also one from which a person is more likely to derive an individual benefit and one over which a person is more likely to retain some kind of control. n308 Some studies have found that people prefer voluntary risks to involuntary risks by a factor of 1000 to 1. n309 Although environmental risks are generally viewed as involuntary risks to a certain degree, choice plays a role in assuming risks. White men are still more likely to exercise some degree of choice in assuming environmental risks than other groups. Communities of color face greater difficulty in avoiding the placement of hazardous facilities in their neighborhoods and are more likely to live in areas with polluted air and lead contamination. n310 Families of color wishing to buy their way out of such polluted neighborhoods often find their mobility limited by housing discrimination, redlining by banks, and residential segregation. n311 The workplace similarly presents workers exposed to toxic hazards (a disproportionate number of whom are minorities) n312 with impossible choices between health and work, or between sterilization and demotion. n313 Just as marginalized groups have less choice in determining the degree of risk they will assume, they may feel less control over the risks they face. "Whether or not the risk is assumed voluntarily, people have greater ~*82~ fear of activities with risks that appear to be outside their individual control." n314 For this reason, people often fear flying in an airplane more than driving a car, even though flying is statistically safer. n315 If white men are more complacent about public risks, it is perhaps because they are more likely to have their hands on the steering wheel when such risks are imposed. White men still control the major political and business institutions in this country. n316 They also dominate the sciences n317 and make up the vast majority of management staff at environmental agencies. n318 Women and people of color see this disparity and often lament their back-seat role in shaping environmental policy. n319 Thus, many people of color in the environmental justice movement believe that environmental laws work to their disadvantage by design. n320 ~*83~ The toxic rivers of Mississippi's "Cancer Alley," n321 the extensive poisoning of rural Indian land, n322 and the mismanaged cleanup of the weapons manufacturing site in Hanford, Washington n323 only promote the feeling that environmental policy in the United States sacrifices the weak for the benefit of the strong. In addition, the catastrophic potential that groups other than white men associate with a risk may explain the perception gap between those groups and white males. Studies of risk perception show that, in general, individuals harbor particularly great fears of catastrophe. n324 For this reason, earthquakes, terrorist bombings, and other disasters in which high concentrations of people are killed or injured prove particularly disturbing to the lay public. Local environmental threats involving toxic dumps, aging smelters, or poisoned wells also produce high concentrations of localized harm that can appear catastrophic to those involved. n325 Some commentators contend that the catastrophic potential of a risk should influence risk assessment in only minimal ways. n326 Considering public fear of catastrophes, they argue, will irrationally lead policymakers to battle more dramatic but statistically less threatening hazards, while accepting more harmful but more mundane hazards. n327 ~*84~ At least two reasons explain why the catastrophic potential of environmental hazards must be given weight in risk assessment. First, concentrated and localized environmental hazards do not simply harm individuals, they erode family ties and community relationships. An onslaught of miscarriages or birth defects in a neighborhood, for instance, will create community-wide stress that will debilitate the neighborhood in emotional, sociological, and economic ways. n328 To ignore this communal harm is to underestimate severely the true risk involved. n329 Second, because concentrated and localized environmental hazards tend to be unevenly distributed on the basis of race and income level, any resulting mass injury to a threatened population takes on profound moral character. For this reason, Native Americans often characterize the military's poisoning of Indian land as genocide. n330 ~*85~ 3. Understanding Through Diversity Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz challenge the traditional, static view of statistical risk with a richer, more vibrant image involving relationships of power, status, and trust. n331 "In short, 'riskiness' means more to people than 'expected number of fatalities.'" n332 These findings affirm the feminist claim that public policy must consider both logic and local experience in addressing a problem. n333 Current attempts to "re-educate" fearful communities with only risk assessments and scientific seminars are, therefore, destined to fail. n334 By the same token, even dual approaches that combine science and experience will fall short if the appeal to experience does not track local priorities and values. Cynthia Hamilton illustrates these points in her inspiring account of how a South Central Los Angeles community group, consisting mainly of working-class women, battled a proposed solid waste incinerator. n335 At one point, the state sent out consultants and environmental experts to put the community's fears into perspective. The consultants first appealed to the community's practical, experience-based side, by explaining how the new incinerator would bring needed employment to the area and by offering $ 2 million in community development. n336 But the community group found the promise of "real development" unrealistic and the cash gift insulting. n337 When experts then turned to quantifying the risks "scientifically" their attempts backfired again. Hamilton reports that "expert assurance that health risks associated with dioxin exposure were less than those associated with 'eating peanut butter' unleashed a flurry of dissent. All of the women, young and old, working-class and professional, had made peanut butter sandwiches for years." n338 The sandwich analogy, even assuming its statistical validity, could not convince the women because it did not consider other valid risk factors (voluntariness, dread, and so on) and because it did not appear plausible in the group members' experience. In the end, Hamilton explains that the superficial explanations and sarcastic responses of the male "experts" left the women even more united and convinced that "working-class women's ~*86~ concerns cannot be dismissed." n339 Thus even the "science" of risk assessment, if it is to serve effectively, must include the voices of those typically excluded from its practice.
Thus I advocate for the termination of the police. The U.S. has possessed me and the marginalized communities it tries to eradicate. The resolution I uphold is one that destroys the police and thus destroys their immunity. Welcome to the real Lincoln Douglas resolution, one that reaches the heart of the problem, the mobilization of the micropolitical against the macropolitical.
Giroux 15 - (Henry ~A high-school social studies teacher, positions @ Boston University, Miami University, and Penn State University. Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. He has published more than 50 books and more than 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies literature"The curse of totalitarianism and the challenge of critical pedagogy"~ http://philosophersforchange.org/2015/10/13/the-curse-of-totalitarianism-and-the-challenge-of-critical-pedagogy/)
The forces of free-market fundamentalism are on the march ushering in a terrifying horizon of what Hannah Arendt once called "dark times." Across the globe, the tension between democratic values and market fundamentalism has reached a breaking point.~1~ The social contract is under assault, neo-Nazism is on the rise, right-wing populism is propelling extremist political candidates and social movements into the forefront of political life, anti-immigrant sentiment is now wrapped in the poisonous logic of nationalism and exceptionalism, racism has become a mark of celebrated audacity and a politics of disposability comes dangerously close to its endgame of extermination for those considered excess. Under such circumstances, it becomes frightfully clear that the conditions for totalitarianism and state violence are still with us smothering critical thought, social responsibility, the ethical imagination and politics itself. As Bill Dixon observes: ~T~he totalitarian form is still with us because the all too protean origins of totalitarianism are still with us: loneliness as the normal register of social life, the frenzied lawfulness of ideological certitude, mass poverty and mass homelessness, the routine use of terror as a political instrument, and the ever growing speeds and scales of media, economics, and warfare.~2~ In the United States, the extreme right in both political parties no longer needs the comfort of a counterfeit ideology in which appeals are made to the common good, human decency and democratic values. On the contrary, power is now concentrated in the hands of relatively few people and corporations while power is global and free from the limited politics of the democratic state. In fact, the state for all intents and purposes has become the corporate state. Dominant power is now all too visible and the policies, practices and wrecking ball it has imposed on society appear to be largely unchecked. Any compromising notion of ideology has been replaced by a discourse of command and certainty backed up by the militarization of local police forces, the surveillance state and all of the resources brought to bear by a culture of fear and a punishing state aligned with the permanent war on terror. Informed judgment has given way to a corporate-controlled media apparatus that celebrates the banality of balance and the spectacle of violence, all the while reinforcing the politics and value systems of the financial elite.~3~ cur'hegemonyhunters6203 ~Credit: hegemonyhunters6203.~ Following Arendt, a dark cloud of political and ethical ignorance has descended on the United States creating both a crisis of memory and agency.~4~ Thoughtlessness has become something that now occupies a privileged, if not celebrated, place in the political landscape and the mainstream cultural apparatuses. A new kind of infantilism and culture of ignorance now shapes daily life as agency devolves into a kind of anti-intellectual foolishness evident in the babble of banality produced by Fox News, celebrity culture, schools modeled after prisons and politicians who support creationism, argue against climate change and denounce almost any form of reason. Education is no longer viewed as a public good but a private right, just as critical thinking is devalued as a fundamental necessity for creating an engaged and socially responsible populace. Politics has become an extension of war, just as systemic economic uncertainty and state-sponsored violence increasingly find legitimation in the discourses of privatization and demonization, which promote anxiety, moral panics and fear, and undermine any sense of communal responsibility for the well-being of others. Too many people today learn quickly that their fate is solely a matter of individual responsibility, irrespective of wider structural forces. This is a much promoted hypercompetitive ideology with a message that surviving in a society demands reducing social relations to forms of social combat. People today are expected to inhabit a set of relations in which the only obligation is to live for one’s own self-interest and to reduce the responsibilities of citizenship to the demands of a consumer culture. Yet, there is more at work here than a flight from social responsibility, if not politics itself. Also lost is the importance of those social bonds, modes of collective reasoning, public spheres and cultural apparatuses crucial to the formation of a sustainable democratic society. With the return of the Gilded Age and its dream worlds of consumption, privatization and deregulation, both democratic values and social protections are at risk. At the same time, the civic and formative cultures that make such values and protections central to democratic life are in danger of being eliminated altogether. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish – from public schools to health-care centers – there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values and the common good. One consequence is a society stripped of its inspiring and energizing public spheres and the "thick mesh of mutual obligations and social responsibilities to be found in" any viable democracy.~5~ This grim reality marks a failure in the power of the civic imagination, political will and open democracy.~6~ It is also part of a politics that strips the social of any democratic ideals and undermines any understanding of higher education as a public good and pedagogy as an empowering practice, a practice that acts directly upon the conditions that bear down on our lives in order to change them when necessary. cur-Sam Bosma ~Credit: Sam Bosma.~ At a time when the public good is under attack and there seems to be a growing apathy toward the social contract, or any other civic-minded investment in public values and the larger common good, education has to be seen as more than a credential or a pathway to a job. It has to be viewed as crucial to understanding and overcoming the current crisis of agency, politics and historical memory faced by many young people today. One of the challenges facing the current generation of educators and students is the need to reclaim the role that education has historically played in developing critical literacies and civic capacities. There is a need to use education to mobilize students to be critically engaged agents, attentive to addressing important social issues and being alert to the responsibility of deepening and expanding the meaning and practices of a vibrant democracy. At the heart of such a challenge is the question of what education should accomplish in a democracy. What work do educators have to do to create the economic, political and ethical conditions necessary to endow young people with the capacities to think, question, doubt, imagine the unimaginable and defend education as essential for inspiring and energizing the people necessary for the existence of a robust democracy? In a world in which there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people to challenge authority and in the words of James Baldwin "rob history of its tyrannical power, and illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place"?~7~ What role might education and critical pedagogy have in a society in which the social has been individualized, emotional life collapses into the therapeutic and education is relegated to either a private affair or a kind of algorithmic mode of regulation in which everything is reduced to a desired measurable economic outcome. Feedback loops now replace politics and the concept of progress is defined through a narrow culture of metrics, measurement and efficiency.~8~ In a culture drowning in a new love affair with empiricism and data, that which is not measurable withers. Lost here are the registers of compassion, care for the other, the radical imagination, a democratic vision and a passion for justice. In its place emerges what Francisco Goya, in one of his engravings, termed "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monster." Goya’s title is richly suggestive, particularly about the role of education and pedagogy in compelling students to be able to recognize, as my colleague David Clark points out, "that an inattentiveness to the never-ending task of critique breeds horrors: the failures of conscience, the wars against thought, and the flirtations with irrationality that lie at the heart of the triumph of every-day aggression, the withering of political life, and the withdrawal into private obsessions."~9~ Given the multiple crises that haunt the current historical conjuncture, educators need a new language for addressing the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which there is an unprecedented convergence of resources – financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military and technological – that are increasingly used to concentrate powerful and diverse forms of control and domination. Such a language needs to be political without being dogmatic and needs to recognize that pedagogy is always political because it is connected to the struggle over agency. In this instance, making the pedagogical more political means being vigilant about those very "moments in which identities are being produced and groups are being constituted, or objects are being created."~10~ cur'edu At the same time it means educators need to be attentive to those practices in which critical modes of agency and particular identities are being denied. For example, the Tucson Unified School District board not only eliminated the famed Mexican-American studies program, but also banned a number of Chicano and Native American books it deemed dangerous. The ban included Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed by the famed Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. This act of censorship provides a particularly disturbing case of the war that is being waged in the United States against not only young people marginalized by race and class, but also against the very spaces and pedagogical practices that make critical thinking possible. Such actions suggest the need for faculty to develop forms of critical pedagogy that not only inspire and energize. They should also be able to challenge a growing number of anti-democratic practices and policies while resurrecting a radical democratic project that provides the basis for imagining a life beyond a social order immersed in inequality, degradation of the environment and the elevation of war and militarization to national ideals. Under such circumstances, education becomes more than an obsession with accountability schemes, an audit culture, market values and an unreflective immersion in the crude empiricism of a data-obsessed, market-driven society. It becomes part of a formative culture in which thoughtlessness prevails, providing the foundation for the curse of totalitarianism. At a time of increased repression, it is all the more crucial for educators to reject the notion that higher education is simply a site for training students for the workforce and that the culture of higher education is synonymous with the culture of business. At issue here is the need for educators to recognize the power of education in creating the formative cultures necessary to both challenge the various threats being mobilized against the ideas of justice and democracy while also fighting for those public spheres, ideals, values and policies that offer alternative modes of identity, thinking, social relations and politics. In both conservative and progressive discourses pedagogy is often treated simply as a set of strategies and skills to use in order to teach prespecified subject matter. In this context, pedagogy becomes synonymous with teaching as a technique or the practice of a craft-like skill. Any viable notion of critical pedagogy must grasp the limitations of this definition and its endless slavish imitations even when they are claimed as part of a radical discourse or project. In opposition to the instrumental reduction of pedagogy to a method – which has no language for relating the self to public life, social responsibility or the demands of citizenship – critical pedagogy illuminates the relationships among knowledge, authority and power.~11~
This is not a monolithic demand. Understanding the power of whiteness requires multiple perspectives from other subaltern groups. Antiblackness is rampant under the police state, but using social location as a starting point is key to radical solidarity to combat militarization of the law and racial injustice. Our visibility is key to necessary mobility.
Wang 14 (Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, as worked in philosophy, anthropology, international development, nonprofits, small business start-ups, and ethnic new media, "Eric Garner Case Resonates Among Asian Americans," December 11 2014 9:02 pm, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/eric-garner-case-resonates-among-asian-americans-n262406) KVA
After a Staten Island grand jury decided to not indict white New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the choke-hold death of Eric Garner, Asian-American activists and academics have been issuing calls for shows of solidarity for the family and community of Garner, as well as imploring Asian America to better understand the connections it has with other communities of color. "While we do not experience racism in the exact same way as Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans," said Minneapolis-based poet and activist Bao Phi, "I think we should look at cases of state-sanctioned violence and police brutality against Asian Americans, Fong Lee being one example, to engage our communities." Phi encourages Asian Americans to reach out to "those that may be hesitant or haven't had access to anti-racist frameworks or language access to grassroots-based movements" in order to "involve our communities to honor and learn from the history of shared struggles and solidarity." Asian Pacific American Advocates (OCA-NY) participated in the rally at Manhattan's Foley Square seeking justice for Eric Garner and noted in a statement that police brutality also occurs in the Asian-American community, such as the case of "84-year-old Kang Wong who received stitches to his head after being issued a jaywalking ticket in Manhattan. Other incidents involve unlawful strip searches, assaults, and fatal shootings." "Justice shouldn't only matter when it involves people who look like us, but sometimes it's easier to relate when the issues hit home in our own communities," writes blogger Grace Hwang Lynch about the connections between Eric Garner and Cao Bich Tran, a Vietnamese-American woman who was shot and killed in 2003 by San Jose police after allegedly threatening them with a vegetable peeler. Those officers also were not indicted. "JUSTICE SHOULDN'T ONLY MATTER WHEN IT INVOLVES PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE US." Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEAFN) called upon their community to use its inter-generational understanding of pain, trauma, and war to better understand the experience of others. "As Black communities charge genocide, war and state violence on their lives and futures by the forces that are meant to protect them, we know deeply the meaning of these very words and experiences as we carry the weight and history of mass human rights violations against our people from one side of the world to the other." University of Washington Bothell History Professor Scott Kurashige says the image of Asian Americans as a "model minority" pitts them against other communities of color, and masks the reality that many of the struggles with institutional repression are shared experiences. "These contradictions," he said, "must be wrestled with by anyone seeking true solidarity in the struggle for social justice."
This advocacy matters. Understanding the power of an individual allows for further understanding of agency and ways people can combat oppression themselves. We must end our concessions to a higher power that will never reciprocate, and rather invest within ourselves.
Osajima no date
(Keith, teaches in the School of Education at the University of Redlands, specializing in race and the experiences of Asian American students in higher education. "Internalized Oppression and the Culture of Silence Rethinking the Stereotype of the Quiet Asian-American Student." Our Asian Inheritance (No. 6).
How can the general discussion on internalized oppression be applied to the experiences of Asian American students? I think it is useful to view the behavior of Asian American students as manifestations of two ways that they have experienced and internalized oppression as students and as members of a racial minority group. First, as students in this society, Asian-Americans participate in an educational system that is often structured in an oppressive manner; a system that does not consistently encourage the development of people’s natural intelligence, and joy for learning, but instead forces students to comply to a form of instruction that is severely limiting and disempowering. Again, Freire provides a useful analytical framework. He argues that much of formal schooling follows the "banking system" of instruction. In this mode, teachers are seen as the legitimate holders of knowledge. It is their role and their power to disseminate that knowledge, mainly through lectures, and "deposit" it into the empty receptacle— the student. Students are primarily passive recipients. Their role is to listen, and to replay the information in the form that it was given. In this mode, students are rarely encouraged to think, question, analyze, or synthesize. One of the ways that the structures of this banking system are held in place is through clearly-defined images of what it means to be a "good student." A good student is quiet, obedient, unquestioning, prompt, and attentive. They do well on tests designed by the teacher. They can give the right answer. In return for this behavior, "good" students are rewarded with good grades, praise from teachers, honor rolls, and college entrance. A "bad student", who is loud, rebellious, defies and questions authority, skips class or comes in late, and doesn’t do the homework, is stigmatized and isolated from the rest. For many of us, these messages are so strong that they become a natural, internalized indicator of our self-worth. We come to believe that our abilities and our intelligence are best measured by our grades, or by the opinions and praise we receive from our teachers. This creates a tremendous pull to adhere to the image of a "good" student. At the same time those rewards become a means to control students, for in the process we lose sight of the fact that we are smart enough to think and figure many things out ourselves, and we also lose sight of our critical, reflective abilities that allow us to question the ways that schooling may be oppressive. I think for Asian students, the pull to be "good" students becomes even stronger when we place that student oppression in the context of the way Asians have responded to racial oppression in this country. For many Asian-Americans, silence and education lies at the heart of how we have dealt with racial oppression. As Colin Watanabe and Ben Tong argued in the early 1970’s, Asian-Americans often adopted a passive, quiet, conforming behavior as a means to survive racial hostilities. It was deemed safer not to rock the boat than to call attention to oneself and risk oppression. Many of us learned these lessons from our parents as we were growing up, internalized them, and came to believe that we too might be in danger if we speak out, or call attention to ourselves. Thus, even when the situation may not be threat-ening, the internalized oppression often makes us feel that we need to be quiet in order to be safe. On another front, AsianAmericans have long identified education as a strategy to deal with racial discrimination. Education has been seen as a way to gain social and economic mobility and to fend off racism. The result has been a tremendous pressure on Asian students to do well in school, which in many respects has been realized. This success, in turn, has been institutionalized as another stereotype in the media’s portrayal of Asians as the model minority. It is here that student and racial oppression merge and reinforce each other. On the one hand, Asian students believe that education is the key to overcoming racial oppression. Many of us are also told that being quiet, conforming, and invisible is a good way to avoid being the target of racism. We take these internalized messages to school where they meld neatly into the way that students have been oppressed. Recall that being quiet and conforming is encouraged and rewarded in schools, for it is a central facet of the banking system of education. Thus, we have a situation where the oppressive features of the educational system work to reinforce the ways that Asians have dealt with racial oppression. Young AsianAmericans often internalize these images and come to believe that their identity and self-image hinge upon being the successful quiet student. It is understandable, then, why they often carry these feelings, perspectives, and actions into every classroom situation, and have difficulty breaking with familiar patterns and feelings to answer questions in our classes.
Debate is more than a game, it’s a community, and only by upholding ethicality should we let the game continue. Creating proper pedagogical practices within this forum must take a precedent above all else. Ethicality undergirds the daily practices of everybody, informing the implications of these choices on the matrix of race is a starting point to better practices that spillover to outside this space.
