Racial Profiling Affirmative Breakdown

Hello there! If you need a quick run-down on the racial profiling affirmative, then this is the post for you. Please comment or contact me if you have any questions.

Good luck - Victoria Stafford

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I. Vocabulary

racism - the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior to another race or races

structural violence - a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs

marginalized - to relegate to an unimportant or powerless position within a society or group

anti-blackness - Simply put, it is being "against black" or "against color." While African American discrimination is a type of anti-blackness, it can also be concentrated into other groups, such as Asian culture and its lighter skin beauty standard. This only scratches the surface, but I encourage you to read this for more information.

II. Plan: The United States federal government should rule that its domestic surveillance on the basis of race, religion and ethnicity is unconstitutional.

III. Contention One: Inherency

​Currently, the FBI is able to monitor people based on their race, religion and ethnicity, which is a form of discrimination. This means that they're able to target certain communities, businesses, and even places of worship when looking for "threats" to our country.

IV. Contention Two: Racism

The Cyril cards: The way domestic surveillance is conducted now maintains anti-blackness, and this system has gone on for centuries. Historically, government surveillance has been used to monitor activities carried out by people of color when they're clearly within their constitutional rights. The author does a really great job citing historic examples, such as how President Hoover's #1 targeted group to surveil was African Americans and how the police threatened her mother, a former Panther, that they would be watching her. This is bad because it maintains racial hierarchy by labeling blacks and other people of color as "special risks" and continues the stereotype of "what a criminal looks like" or "what a terrorist looks like" (refer to Family Guy picture above).

The Verchick card: This card basically says why the consequences of racism are more important than any other impact brought up in the round. Typically, policy debate rounds are very quick to make some obscure claim about how nuclear war will happen, written by some white dude with a PhD. This card claims that there's a problem when that white dude with a PhD claims that "NUCLEAR WAR IS COMING AND THAT IS THE BIGGEST IMPACT EVER": The person doesn't consider the impacts of structural violence that are happening right now. Racism wins out on probability, because it is happening right now and therefore is much more likely than any obscure scenario for nuclear war or extinction, and it wins out on magnitude, because racism is a societal structure that continuously disadvantages certain groups of people and their past and future generations.

The Khalek card: Domestic surveillance targets black communities which ensures that they remain marginalized. This card talks about the Snowden leaks and how shocking it was to middle and upperclass white communities that they, too, could be targets of surveillance, and yet this shock factor didn't carry over to black communities because it was and still is considered the norm. The card also explicitly states how the NSA "has particular concerns for communities of color because of their unique relationship to the criminal justice or social control system."

V. Contention Three: Solvency

The Unegbu card: There is a lot of indirect evidence that the government's surveillance practices intend to discriminate against certain ethnic, racial, and religious groups, which means that the government can only continue to conduct this targeted surveillance if they can prove that these acts or "narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest," meaning that all of these acts of surveillance have reasonable cause behind them and it's just coincidental that they're all of a certain background. However, the government's monitoring system is very inclusive in the way that it targets A LOT of people simply on the basis that they're of a certain race, ethnicity or religion. This means that these surveillance practices are in violation of the constitution (specifically the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause).

The Bouie card: This card pre-emptively answers arguments that the government cannot solve issues of race because they are inherently racist and prejudiced. The card claims that court rulings are important to dismantle anti-blackness. Logic: "Racism was created by policy. It will likely only be ultimately destroyed by policy."