Bad Faith and Public Discourse

Does our current model of public discourse reward bad faith argumentation? Yes, it completely does. It does so because the commercial and entertainment values of anything goes up for bad faith arguments. Getting your opponent or the audience "riled up" helps to promote anything. I remember watching the Fab 5 documentary and while the documentary was about the glory of five freshman starting for college basketball and making a back-to-back appearance in the title game. However, the commercials promoting the documentary showcased how these black men were treated because of their race.

The bad faith argument comes in when Jalen Rose, the point guard for Michigan, stated that the Duke Blue Devils only recruited "Uncle Toms" for their program. This argument alone spawned media attention and even became the catalyst for Duke's own documentary covering those same years. This showed their opponent to be for a certain kind of black people (racist), when the fact was that they were a better team and proved it in the second half of the 92 title game. The documentary was phenomenal, but it could've done without the attack on another college. This became the focal point of many people's discussion about the movie instead of how amazing a feat it was to be underclassmen starting at the collegiate level.

Taking Sides: A Source for A4

Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Race and Ethnicity

This book by Raymond D'Angelo and Herbert Russel chronicles a wide variety of issues that are tied to race. From the first appearances of racist thought among children to the racial arbitrariness of a genetic versus cultural definition, this book is a short anthology of every issue concerning race under the sun. I found the book through the USC Homer tool after browsing for a short amount of time. I found three books that were tailored to my argument and decided that this one would be the best among the three because of the wide spectrum of race debates that it covers.

Having already started writing my paper, this book is crucial because it argues how damaging it is to any movement to attach "race" as the primary issue. They show affirmative action for what it is and offer a solution to focusing on the disadvantage of class instead of race. The main focus of this book is to argue about race issues in a debate style format. Each chapter rotates between the "yes" and the "no" on the toughest race dilemmas. It's like watching a tennis match; the passion that each side argues with is heated.

Spectrum Series: Michele Norris

While listening to much of Norris's speech at Bovard last Wednesday, I found myself not one hundred percent engaged. I sat there respectfully trying to piece together exactly what this "post-racial" society is and disagreeing on the fact that the term exists period. It was laughable that anyone could've come up with that term and truly believed that this is where society is today. For most of the beginning I was lulled by the conversation and deep in thought about that term. It wasn't until later in the speech where I really perked up and hung on to every word Norris said.

What was interesting about the section of the event that I keyed in to was that none of the words were Norris's. She created a dialogue using a smorgasbord of six word race cards that could float back and forth between similar ideas and concepts. They ranged form humorous, to dark and traveled through every kind of discrimination in the process. It showed me not that these cards could have an entertainment value to them, but that six words alone is not enough. I was correct in my assessment in how limiting the experience is and while I agree with Norris in forcing you to nutshell your story, I believe that each is a puzzle piece of conversation. Once put together, we will see what the vision of a post-racial society can truly be. Right now, we're still assembling the pieces.