Instigator / Pro

Undefeatable

1644

rating

debates

65.63%

won

Topic

#2965

THBT Systemic Racism Is Definitely a Problem in the US

Status

Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics

Better arguments

Better sources

Better legibility

Better conduct

After 3 votes and with 9 points ahead, the winner is...

coal

More on this later

Call to Action

Understandably, Con and many others feel the way they do. Some are simply not knowledgeable enough and only know about one side of the debate. But learning history and the truth paves a path towards greater understanding. As yet another study highlights, educating history lets us learn about how and why systemic racism exists today. The researchers stated, " Participants listened to a control clip or historian Richard Rothstein discuss the federal government’s role in creating Black ghettos, and how racialized space still perpetuates structural inequality today (cf. Bonam, et al 2015)", [9] and as a result, they were able to further the battle against Systemic racism today, changing people's point of view for the better.

My voters, friends, the time to act against systemic racism is here and now. Already, six corporations have donated millions to billions of dollars to fight the inherent bias within people. [8] Police and judges have not self-reflected or educated themselves enough, and the evidence I have provided is as resounding as any scientific theory, such as evolution or the age of the earth. To deny the existence of systemic racism is to deny the very effort to fight for equality, and potentially return to a world where white males dominated and minorities are snuffed out like a candle. It is true that the Supreme Court, with 12 incredibly strict judges, has established a baseline. But it takes more than 12 to change the world and to demonstrate the lack of systemic racism.

coal

04.03.2021 09:21PM

Con

Systemic/institutional racism (“SR”) is not a significant problem in the United States.

As a threshold issue, it is not enough for PRO to point to various societal problems that appear to apply to one racial or ethnic group. Those discrepancies have to actually be caused by racism, proof for which cannot be inferred simply by looking at data that purports to show a lack of “proportionality” in outcome.

1. Disparity Fallacies. Picking the data to support your narrative isn’t good enough.

Essentially all SR-type theories are based on disparity fallacies: there is one set of outcomes for white people, and that set of outcomes is different than those for black people (e.g., in criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, political, educational or other contexts). Thus, the society is systemically racist based on “unequal” or “disproportional” outcomes (Carmichael 1967).

This doesn’t cut it; it's not enough for SR-theorists to simply pick the data that support their claims and ignore everything else (Sowell 2018). It turns out that if you don’t stick your head in the sand, SR-theory evaporates like fog against a rising sun.

For example, in 2019, researchers at Harvard explored census data to examine race and economic opportunity in (Chetty 2019). According to census data they cite, “[a]mong those who grow up in families with comparable incomes, black men grow up to earn substantially less than the white men.” Yet, that same data set clearly shows that black women attend college at higher rates than white men and have higher incomes than white women.
And this is nothing new. Census data as early as 1980 clearly indicate that college educated black women out-perform college educated white women (Sowell 1984).
Ten years later, the New York Times found that trend continued: “black college-educated women…earn as much or more than white women with similar education and similar work experience,” (NYT 1994).

And if there is a discrepancy, attributing the difference in outcome to racism based on nothing other than some proposed statistical difference is intellectually dishonest, untrustworthy and wrong.

For example, in the medical context, according to Dr. Rajat Deo (professor of cardiovascular medicine at U. Penn), based on his clinical analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology “we just don't have a full understanding of why patients who are black are more likely to succumb to [sudden cardiac death] -- a clear problem and knowledge gap on many levels,” and even accounting for risk factors like income, education, smoking, exercise and bad cholesterol, “other factors, perhaps genetic, are at play, and we need more exploration to better understand this disparity,” (WebMD 2018). There is not now, nor has there ever been, any evidence that it’s because of “systemic racism"

2. Unconsidered alternative causes & Nonsensical causation theories. Institutional racism doesn’t even explain the non-equal outcomes.

Simply claiming that "systemic racism" explains allegedly disproportional outcomes in any context invariably ignores alternative causes.

To illustrate, a key factor that predisposes kids to criminality and subsequent incarceration is familial breakdown (Harper 2004). Hymowitz 2012explains: “[t]he bottom line is that there is a large body of literature showing that children of single mothers are more likely to commit crimes than children who grow up with their married parents.”

For example, Harper 2004 (among scores of others) found that “controlling for income and all other factors, youths in father-absent families (mother only, mother-stepfather, and relatives/other) still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those from mother-father families,” (Harper 2004).
Additionally, black children are overwhelmingly more likely to live in single-parent households than children of any other group, (Pew 2018)and now, less than a third of black children even live in two-parent households(Williams 2020).

So, we've established that black kids now are far more likely to come from single parent homes. But, that wasn't always true. In fact, there was almost no difference between black families and any other racial/ethnic group up until around the 1960s in terms of who was growing up in a two-parent household.

In New York City, in 1925, 85% of black households were two-parent: 5/6 lived with both parents. There were only slight differences in family structure between racial groups. The percentages of nuclear families were: black (75.2%), Irish (82.2%), German (84.5%) and native white Americans (73.1%)."
“Going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery, we find that census data of that era showed that as lightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. This fact remained true in every census from 1890 to 1940,” (Sowell 1984)

Williams 2020 compellingly argues: “If today’s weak family structure is a legacy of slavery, then the people who make such a claim must tell us how it has managed to skip nearly five generations to have an effect.” Claiming the disproportionate outcomes in black familial structure are because of SR is “an explanation turns out to be sheer nonsense when one examines black history,” (Williams 2020).

So, did society somehow get more "institutionally racist" after the 1940s, to the preset day? That argument is nonsensical, since the years that followed witnessed the end of segregation in schools and society, the end of Jim-crow type policies and saw tremendous economic gains based on merit for black women, in particular (as stated above).

Regardless of race, if you complete your education, don’t have kids out of wedlock and maintain full time employment you’re far more likely to join the middle class than otherwise (Brookings 2013).

3. Narratives vs. Data. Test case in the criminal justice context: claims about institutionalized racism based on non-equal outcomes do not withstand scrutiny.

For the sake of argument, let’s use the same logic to disprove institutional racism that its proponents use to support it. If the “racist cop” theory was true, wouldn’t you at least expect white cops to be more likely to shoot black perpetrators than non-white cops?

It turns out that in 2015, the Department of Justice investigated that question and found just the opposite: white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects (Fachner 2015).
Likewise, in 2019, a multi-university initiative found the same thing: “no evidence of anti-black or anti-hispanic disparities across shootings,” and that “[w]hite officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-white officers,” (Johnson 2019).

There are discrepancies. Those discrepancies just don't show what you might think.

For example, “[i]n 2019 police officers fatally shot1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015.
That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population,” (MacDonald 2019).
Likewise, the University of Washington investigated the relative frequency of cops shooting black suspects versus white suspects, and found that “officers were slower to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White suspects, and they were less likely to shoot unarmed Black suspects than unarmed White suspects,” (James 2016).
Moreover, proponents of SR-theories will be disappointed to learn that “[a]djusted for the homicide rate, whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks (to) die at the hands of police” and “[a]djusted for the racial disparity at which police are feloniously killed, whites are 1.3 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police,” (Elder 2017).

So, how exactly did we get here? The evidentiary burden for establishing that institutionalized racism even exists lies on those making the claim (Sowell 2018).

Simply assuming that there is such a thing as "institutional racism" based on disparate outcomes is inadequate because, at least, the argument is impermissibly based on a disparity fallacy; and even if some disparities exist, other data obviate their significance by providing context or alternative causes for them that have nothing to do with racism.

SOURCES:

Brookings 2013 (Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class)
Carmichael 1967 (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation)
Chetty 2019 (Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective)
Elder 2017 (Double Standards: The Selective Outrage of the Left)
Fachner 2015 (Department of Justice: Collaborative Reform Initiative)
James 2016 (The Reverse Racism Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects? )
Johnson 2019 (Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings)
Harper 2004 (Father Absence and Youth Incarceration)
Hymowitz2012 (The Real, Complex Connection Between Single-Parent Families and Crime)
MacDonald 2019 (The Myth of Systemic Police Racism)
NYT 1994 (Black Women Graduates Outpace Male Counterparts)
Pew 2018 (The Changing Profile of Unmarried Parents)
Pinker 2018 (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism & Progress)
Sowell 1984 (The Economics And Politics of Race: an International Perspective)
Sowell 2018 (Hoover Institution, Stanford: Discrimination and Disparities, and published book by the same title)
WebMD 2018 (Why Are Blacks More Prone to Sudden Cardiac Death?)
Williams 2020 (Opinion: Is racism responsible for today's problems?)

Round 2

Undefeatable

04.03.2021 09:51PM

Pro

Con opens up with a three pronged argument, claiming that I am merely cherry-picking data to support the premise, but rarely have I ever seen any fallacious claim that 30+ expert studies, journals, and analysis all fail as a whole.

He argues that there are disparity issues, that the racism doesn't explain the non-equal outcome, and that two studies found the opposite information about cops shooting black people. However, he offers zero information about arrests, and drops a significant proportion of my argument concerning incarceration issues. Just because there are fewer killings does not negate the ability to detain minorities unjustly.

Okay, let's get to the idea about black women. Notice how his only current source is from Harvard, and that he doesn't tell us which page it speaks about black women's income. Doing a quick word search on "black women" brings up "... black women also have poorer labor market opportunities thanwhite women", which ruins Con's credibility. Next, doing a google search about the open ended question, we already see multiple sources in favor of black women's pay gap, destroying con's assumption. I may go into more detail next round.

And while con valiantly tries to negate the logic of the health care, another study explains that stereotypes, language barriers, lack of respect, lead to misdiagnosis, and the resulting setting. Therefore, if you believe they are worse, you may treat them as such and inevitably cause more deaths. More on this later.

Firstly, let's negate the non-equal outcome explained by the history and the perpetuation of Racism. I'll be copying from my other debate, which highlights why poor/rich separation is not the explanation (and thus, even if America was Communist, that wouldn't solve our issue).

How racism is the main cause of the inequality

The mere cause of cultural divide does not explain fully the socioeconomic inequality. A paper in depth explains that institutional racism has been a long cause of this wealth gap. The accumulated wealth from past family travels from generation to generation, propelling an unstoppable quest to fortune for privileged people. The unique power of wealth ensures that "this intergenerational transmission create[s] an unequivocal link between the present and our racialized past of enslavement, extermination, and expropriation". [37] In other words, the cycle of money loops back to help white male who are treated well and will be treated well, while the blacks who were treated poorly in the past are doomed to repeat their mistakes. The obstacles in the way inherently prevent them from reaching the goal.

Even if voters don't buy this, I have another source that speaks of a vast social transformation as the main solution. Don't focus too much on the economic aspect. Notice how Con has nearly no support nor sources that the economical issue is the sole cause, nor the main cause. On a report of the wealth gap, the source opens up with "There are no actions that black Americans can take unilaterally that will have much of an effect on reducing the racial wealth gap" [38]. Already, something is suspicious. If the wealth was caused by problems of capitalism, surely all you'd have to do would be work harder, or get lucky with education, or have connections. But no. This problem has gotten out of the hand of citizens. This is the true extent of systemic level of racism.

Next, let's keep adding more arguments and analysis to prove why my sources aren't merely cherry-picking. (How do you "cherry pick" ~40 high level sources, anyways?)

III. Education:

Another research article furthers on how Brown V Board was not enough to dismantle our systemic Racism. "[Schools] remain effectively segregated due to the following: discrimination in schools by administrators, teachers, and students; racial bias in the school curriculum... use of standardized testing that contains significant racial and class bias." [25] The law wasn't effectively enforced, proving that our system has failed.

The publication first counters Con: "[Those] who drafted the U.S. Constitution...built into the country’s foundation certain mechanisms designed to maintain the enslavement of African Americans to unjustly enrich many white Americans..".

Indeed, the article further lists that many cases show our unfair discrimination and inability to fulfill the ideals of equality. "Cases which have come to this Court depict a spectacle of slavery unwilling to die. . . . Negroes have been excluded over and again from juries . . . . They have been made to attend segregated and inferior schools . . . . They have been forced to live in segregated residential districts . . . ." The problems and accusations go on.

There is also expounding upon how white men tend to abuse their power within the education system. As a collective whole, merely a handful of individual racism could not have caused this problem. The corruption of bias influences the use of power, which stems from systemic racism. "The failure of school desegregation lies primarily in the hands of those with the greatest political, economic, and civic power, who have long been mostly white....made decisions that have reversed progress toward substantial school desegregation since the 1970s."

Unfortunately, despite the momentary successes of Brown, our society remains unchanged with the practices of segregation. It's first highlighted that President Dwight Eisenhower faced pressure from white teachers and school leaders, making it impossible to make further progress. The history displays precisely this: "...Supreme Court would permit large-scale resegregation of schools. The Freeman decision gave lower court judges much discretion to abandon supervision of desegregation before a school district was in full compliance.46 Today, as Orfieldand Eaton notes, “[d]esegregation remedies can even be removed when achievement gaps between the races have widened.” You can see how deep the racism goes, going beyond mere persons and now into the most trusted authorities in the US.

VII. Occupational Racism

Systemic racism exists clearly throughout careers for minorities as well. In a Journal of Occupational Science, the expert echoes my previous research, first listing all the instances that further prove my argument: " Voting laws (Jones & Williams, 2018), educational systems (Kozol, 1991), housing policies (Gonda, 2015; Rothstein, 2017), judicial and penal systems (Cole, 1999), healthcare systems (Hoberman, 2012), labor markets (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004), deep social prejudices (Greenwald et al., 2009), and countless other everyday instances of racism (Kendi, 2019) systematically oppress people of color." If this wasn't enough, he also goes on to analyze the problems within jobs. Because having a job counters homelessness and poverty, this is still related to the economic factors listed above.

The expert explains the "systemic" level of racism. In our society, we have a hierarchal relation of people to their skin color. The categorization had been used far in the past to justify the dehumanization and slavery of blacks. After the talks of the entire history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, he leads into our modern-day setting. He explains that "racism was still present in the expectations of this occupation. Black drivers were not permitted to pass White drivers and could face violence from police or vigilantes if they did so (Berrey, 2015)." He also lists examples of blacks gaining more rights and fighting against expectations especially with avenging the police brutality, proving that the problem existed.

He then notes that the unemployment of blacks, caused once more by racist employers [24], was the true cause of the crimes: "US residents often assume higher crime rates are directly correlated with higher numbers of residents of color, but there is no such correlation; in fact, unemployment is a much more accurate predictor of crime (Kendi, 2019)". In other words, we are giving a big reason for the crimes to occur. We are the problem. If we resolved our biases and hired people regardless of color, we would inherently prevent crimes. The system has a feedback loop that lets our racial bias feedback into inherent reasons for blacks to fulfill our expectations. A vicious, inescapable cycle, unless we change our mind.

Current Legal Information

As the research lists, our foundation had racist laws, to begin with. "US legal and political institutions have a long history of establishing racist laws and policies that actively segregated and subordinated racial groups on many levels.... The US Constitution and early and later US Supreme Court cases operated to create and sanction a slave society and then a Jim Crow society that denied rights, opportunities, and citizenship to people of African, Asian, and Latin American descent. As critical race legal theorists demonstrate (Bell 2005), recent conservative political policies and legal rulings continue to legally or informally uphold segregated realities for whites and racial minorities." [21]

At last, all my arguments finally come together. You can see the big picture now. The Supreme Court contradicted itself and was unwilling to listen to the people. Despite Brown V Board of Education, all of that was just a front, and education remains unconsciously biased towards blacks. Combined with the inability to access healthcare and difficulty in jobs, we find that blacks suffer a difficult life. And the result is either poverty or jail for the vast majority of circumstances.

[For sources, see my previous debate on this topic]

37. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1007/s12114-017-9259-8?casa_token=cHazIHQm2h0AAAAA%3Av3jA1ZsiHKwfsph4lRqR08SQLxehjIPatanrAib07AU6VHzWm7TSmJlrW0i_EXSctgqRQi0N3tAM

38. http://narrowthegap.org/images/documents/Wealth-Gap---FINAL-COMPLETE-REPORT.pdf

coal

04.04.2021 12:25AM

Con

PRO's argument is heavy on adjectives and logical fallacy, but weak on evidence. Having provided no evidence that systemic racism is a problem in the United States, he has lost this debate. As established above, even if some outcomes are non-equal, that is not now nor will it ever suffice to prove that there is such a thing as "systemic racism," (Sowell 2018).

Let us review, together.

FRAMEWORK: PRO's framework fails, because it assumes that which is his burden to prove.

This debate is about whether systemic/institutional racism is a problem in the United States. Wholly absent are data supporting his claim that "[t]he marginalization of persons [based] on their race has grown to a pervasive and intrinsic level." PRO does not specify against whom such "systemic racism" is directed.
Moreover, if as he claims "[t]he actions of individuals and...ignorance of government combine to the now infamous system of systemic racism," such that "individuals are what make up the system," he would need evidence of the individualized racist intent of each such contributing individual to "the system" that he contends is systemically racist.
PRO cites no evidence that even touches upon the individually racist intent of those whose actions "make up the system." As such, by his own standard he has lost this case.

"A powerful [meta-]analysis": PRO claims that "a powerful meta-analysis covers the overall problems with economics and incarceration with racial inequality."

It is unclear to me whether he thinks his citing a couple of articles is a meta-analysis, which it is not, or whether there was a meta-analysis he intended to cite but neglected to. While he did not provide sources in this debate instead referenced prior debates, I found the article he cites as [1], and it is not a meta-analysis.
It's a weak correlation study that purports to associate heart attacks with disparate impacts in political participation, employment/job status, educational attainment and judicial treatment between blacks and other groups which evidence "structural racism" that undermines "the health of Blacks in the United States."
Shaky methods aside, this article and the other he cites is readily dismissed based on its disparity-outcome-fallacy reasoning. Disparate outcomes do not evidence systemic racism (Sowell 2018), and it is intellectual error to assume otherwise without evidence of causation between the alleged disparate impact and racist intentions of the system and the individuals who, according to PRO's framework, comprise it.
No such evidence of causation is provided by his source, or the other. But moreover, according to WebMD 2018, any number of several factors at many levels explain disparate outcomes in cardiac health between blacks and other groups, including risk factors like income, education, smoking, exercise and bad cholesterol---none of which have anything to do with racism, systemic or otherwise.

Education: PRO claims without evidence that "[r]acism begins at a young age in school, which inherently causes" other problems later in life, like incarceration.

PRO cites more disparate-outcome-fallacy papers that attribute non-equal outcomes in academic achievement, public perception and school discipline, to systemic racism.
Again, disparate impacts do not evidence systemic racism (Sowell 2018), and it is intellectual error to assume otherwise. Even if it did, the systemic-racism theory does not explain any of these particular disparate outcomes.
Yet, surrounding poverty is more directly linked to academic achievement than race, or anything else including among blacks (Carnoy 2017).
And it turns out that "[t]he good news in the literature is that achievement differences between blacks and whites and between Hispanics and whites have apparently declined over time," (Carnoy 2017). For example, according to the empirical literature, "[i]n the context of steadily rising mathematics and reading test scores from 1996 to 2013, minority groups in the United States made achievement gains in both areas compared to white students," (id.).

Health Care: PRO claims that health care inequality has caused countless deaths, which he claims is evidence of systemic racism.

This circular argument must be dismissed. (Differences in health care outcomes caused differences in outcome?) Tautology notwithstanding, yet again PRO makes the same mistake as he has before: non-equal outcomes are not evidence of systemic racism (Sowell 2018), including based on his own framework that requires proof of the intent of the individuals who comprise the allegedly racist system to which he refers.
But the fact is that once again, socioeconomic status is the controlling factor based on the empirical literature both historically and at present (Chokshi 2018). Indeed, "[t]here is a robust literature linking income inequality to health disparities—and thus widening income inequality is cause for concern. US Census data show a steady increase in summary measures of income inequality over the past 50 years. The association between income and life expectancy, already well established," (id.).
For example, Chetty 2016 found a gap in life expectancy of about 15 years for men and 10 years for women when comparing the most affluent 1% of individuals with the poorest 1%. To put this into perspective, "the 10-year life expectancy difference for women is equal to the decrement in longevity from a lifetime of smoking," (Choksi 2018).
Yet again, the unconsidered alternative causes explain these differences better than disparity-fallacy-based logic of systemic racism.

Incarceration: Having not yet learned that disparate outcomes do not evidence systemic racism, PRO cites evidence that blacks are incarcerated at disproportional rates as evidence of systemic racism.

Black men are indeed incarcerated at higher rates, but the 2002 law review article he cites identifies the 1994 crime bill (which was passed by Democrats, who according to conventional wisdom are less racist and pass legislation for the purpose of ameliorating racism) and mandatory sentencing protocols as the cause of those outcomes; not "systemic racism."
The article does not even propose solutions to address systemic racism. Rather, it recommends ending failed policies like those associated with the so-called "war on drugs," with drug treatment programs. This has nothing to do with systemic racism.

Inequality's Cause? Having failed by his own framework's criteria to prove that non-equal outcomes evidence systemic racism, PRO now argues the reverse: that "racism is the main cause of the inequality."

Obvious problems notwithstanding, PRO's journal abstract assumes that because "wealth is easily transferable across generations," that "household wealth serves as a source of economic stratification as it functions to preserve and even widen the racial wealth gap." So, according to PRO there is nothing that black people can do to get themselves out of the rut.
This argument is absurd. According to Sowell 2019, the origins of economic disparities do not lend themselves to unidimensional causation. Until the mid 20th century, progressives argued this was because of IQ disparities or genetics. In the 20th century's latter half, discrimination became a prevailing theory. But empirically, nowhere at any point in human history has there ever been a society that was "equal" in any sense of the word. Inequality is the norm, everywhere on earth throughout space and time and it manifests on every level that lends itself to measurement.

Current Evidence/Occupational Racism: Having still not yet learned that inequality is not evidence of systemic racism, PRO retreats to more "inequality-based studies."

Yet again, PRO makes claims without evidence to the effect that "current trends highlight that systemic racism is an unstoppable force. I tried and was unable to locate his source nos. [26], [27] and [28]. They are identified in brackets but not linked. He can point me to them in the next round I guess, but I would have preferred to see them here.

Note that I find it ironic that in Round 2 he complained that I just quoted sources which I clearly linked, but didn't provide page numbers. He hasn't provided a single page number for any of his sources, including the law review article above.
I also linked my sources, but he just copied/pasted from another debate and neglected to link his. Further, numerous of his links went to the wrong source.

But, in the final analysis, the weight of the evidence favors CON and obviates essentially every claim that PRO has made in the course of this debate. After all, disparate outcomes are not evidence of systemic racism, whether in occupation (the sole source he linked at least eleven times), or otherwise.
Even if they were, the evidence goes both ways. For example, let's consider disparate outcomes in another context. As of November 1, 2019, 83.1 percent of the NBA’splayers were people of color; comprising 74.2 percent who were classifiedas Black or African-American (Lapchick 2020). For the 2019-20 NBA season, the average player salary is roughly $7 million, (Barrabi 2020). Do differences in outcomes only matter when they show a "victim group" being "victimized"?

SOURCES:

Barrabi 2020 (How much do NBA players earn?)
Carnoy 2017 (Five key trends in U.S. student performance)
Chokshi 2018 (Income, Poverty, and Health Inequality)
Chetty 2016 (The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014)
Lapchick 2020 (The 2020 Racial and Gender Report Card: National Basketball Association)
Sowell 2019 (Thomas Sowell on the Origins of Economic Disparities)

Round 3

Undefeatable

04.04.2021 03:28AM

Pro

Framework: Con claims that I have failed to specify or meet my burden, however, it's clear that Systemic Racism is impactful against minorities such as blacks and Hispanics, as shown in my evidence. Furthermore, the individuals include police, doctors, government elites, so on and so forth, as my evidence highlights.

"Meta analysis"

Terribly sorry about mis-titling the source, but the logic largely stands. Con focuses mostly on the economic disparities, but misses that this argument is largely not economic.

Recall: ...in 2011 six states passed laws that ...have demonstrated to systematically exclude racial/ethnic minorities from voting[.] They are less likely than Whites to have official government identification (Parson & McLaughlin, 2007). Previous work … has shown that state-level variation in policies and laws has substantial consequences for the health of minority groups.

With the difficulty to obtain the voter ID’s, it is clear that anti-voting suppression is severe on US minorities. As The Conversation [32] warns, these strategies may lead to allowance of gerrymandering, shuttering locations, etc. We must not allow this slippery slope to continue and have politicians abuse their power on citizens.

In addition, Con drops the logic of Source 2, which stresses the connection between segregation and illnesses. While the famous Sowell tries to link economic disparities to birth location, not all my eggs are in one basket and hence Sowell has little to no impact on my first source, except denting the economic argument.

Education

Con once again only focuses on one thing: Academic achievements. Yet he drops the entire analysis on how Brown V Board of Education was dismantled by current practices, which is the bigger fish to fry in this debate.

Extend: "Cases which have come to this Court depict a spectacle of slavery unwilling to die. . . . Negroes have been excluded over and again from juries . . . . They have been made to attend segregated and inferior schools . . . . They have been forced to live in segregated residential districts . . . ."

Extend: "...Supreme Court would permit large-scale resegregation of schools. The Freeman decision gave lower court judges much discretion to abandon supervision of desegregation before a school district was in full compliance."

From the American Psychology Association, "black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent" [17].

"School to Prison" is a known term, where the schools cause the minority students to become ostracized. The extremely harsh punishments push them to become neglected and build upon their vulnerability, raising this point to the next level. [19] As a result of this educational racism, a very high proportion of minorities are also dropping out of school. [20] How does Con explain this, if this is not due to the problems I've listed?

Health Care

Con tries to link economic inequality as the sole cause, but misses out on the point of the articles. The argument was that even the expert agreed that this inequality could not account for the vast amount of deaths. Remember that blacks died TWICE as much as the whites during Covid, [15] a FAR greater disparity than the 10 vs 15 life expectancy.

An expert explains that there is an undeniable correlation. The social forces shape up the toxic environment for the blacks to be unable to access health services. The synergy between the biology and the sociological processes combine to ruin the minorities. Like deja vu, we see additional problems within COVID-19 situation alone. My researcher further explains, "in COVID‐19 treatment ...we know that discrimination in healthcare settings adversely affects the management of chronic conditions like diabetes." [15]

Incarceration

While I admit the paper's core point may have been muddled by also advocating against the war on drugs, he nevertheless brings back the highlight at the very end. Con noticed that 1994's bill was passed as a result which allowed for racial profiling, but arbitrarily decides this doesn't belong to Systemic Racism. I await further explanation. As the author notes, "As evidenced by the lack ofsuccessful challenges to racial profiling, Title VI and § 14141 havealso proven insufficient to address the problem of racial profiling." Silton further follows through with the nail in the coffin, noting how the Supreme Court's interpretations precisely destroyed the Constitutional amendments themselves. "The Supreme Court made it possible for a racist officer to justify pulling over only African Americans by showing that he had the modicum of reasonableness necessary for probable cause… mere "articulable suspicion." Therefore, my argument stands strong in the end.

Inequality

Obviously, racism isn't the *only* cause of inequality, but rather an *inescapable* cause of inequality, which creates an impossible problem. This is why it is called *systemic* racism. Its impact is so great that individuals in general cannot get out by choosing different actions or trying harder with their abilities.

Recall:

On a report of the wealth gap, the source opens up with "There are no actions that black Americans can take unilaterally that will have much of an effect on reducing the racial wealth gap" [38]. Already, something is suspicious. If the wealth was caused by problems of capitalism, surely all you'd have to do would be work harder, or get lucky with education, or have connections. But no. This problem has gotten out of the hand of citizens. This is the true extent of systemic level of racism.

Occupational Racism

Effectively Dropped by Con.

__________________________

Con tries a weak rebuttal regarding NBA players.

Who's Cherry picking now?

The amount of NBA players and the amount of American citizens are ridiculous to compare. Imagine I said worldwide poverty is not an issue because I can drag out Switzerland as having a very high GDP per capita. Come on, it's obvious why this analysis fails. The "Systemic racism" only works because it's on such an incredibly large level, rather than a single basketball league. Con will have to better than this to show that Racism being overturned in general.

Since Con is so obsessed with how inequality perpetuates the minorities' conditions, let's challenge that assumption further.

One editorial published in 2020 further solidifies my stance. [16]

The article notes that the vast majority of blacks experience at least one form of racism. Nearly 80% of blacks reported experiencing discrimination, resulting in isolation and alienation. They also feel less supported and committed, perhaps even having an "emotional tax in the workplace". The research further proves the economic inequality, showing that the wealth gap is significantly related to segregation. The "adverse intersectionality is expected to occur due to (1) a compounding of overrepresentation in lower-paying ... and (2) underrepresentation in highest growth geographies". The association of minorities with bad-paying jobs leads to an endless cycle where blacks are forced into poverty due to racial biases.

The expert furthers that racial injustice even causes psychological distress. The most famous example, George Floyd, caused massive riots calling out the message "black lives matter". There are repeats of the same problems I keep listing: health care, wages and wealth, policing and criminal justice, education, etc. It doesn't matter if we consider exactly 2020 or two years ago; both cases have significant evidence to support my position.

Similarly, other laws like redlining continue in the present. Blacks still have problem obtaining loans to buy housing. The grandchildren of those who suffered under the racist policy results in a compounded disparity. Whites were able to buy houses and grow rich, while blacks lost those opportunities. [29] The discrimination within the mortgages and lack of wealth kept the communities separated by race.

Since I have extra space let's stack on yet another study for safety and power. Expert Elizabeth Aranda analyzes our racist immigration policies, which further the racial profiling previously stated. Our government effectively criminalizes merely based on the color of your skin. Even in her abstract alone, " policies and programs that exclude, segregate, detain, and physically remove immigrants from the country reproduce racial inequalities in other areas of social life through spillover effects that result in dire consequences for these immigrants and their kin." [37] As the author continues, the detriments to the immigrants treat undocumented similar to sex offenders and murders. Along with this abhorrent act, the enforcement creates fear and vulnerability in the immigrants community. This in turns negatively affects the socioeconomic results of the immigrants, directly highlighting how we perpetuate the inequality. Through her analysis, Aranda realizes that the laws spread the "meanings recursively across social levels", proving the foundation of systemic racism. While opponents would commonly say there exists an inherent inequality between minority races and whites, our practices perpetuate this inequality. And so our government is directly responsible for these outcomes listed above.

32.https://theconversation.com/voter-id-laws-dont-seem-to-suppress-minority-votes-despite-what-many-claim-114349

37. https://v.gd/immigrationracism

coal

04.04.2021 06:16PM

Con

Once more, this debate is about whether systemic racism is definitely a problem in the United States.

PRO's Deficient Framework: PRO's framework's deficiencies are not corrected by his R3 argument. He still assumes as true that which is his burden to prove.

PRO's framework assumes that systemic racism is a problem, without evidence that there is such a thing in the first place. Further, he declines to provide criteria by which to assess the scope or magnitude of the problem.
PRO's framework didn't even indicate which racial groups were affected until R3, at which time he identified blacks and Hispanics. Yet, each aspect of his prior arguments focuses only on blacks and doesn't even touch upon Hispanics.
Pro specifically claims that "[t]he actions of...individuals and ignorance of the government combine," to produce "systemic racism in the United States." Yet, PRO provides no evidence of (a) the alleged racism of the "individuals" whose "actions "make up the system; and (b) "ignorance of the government"; nor (c) any link to explain how either give rise to "systemic racism."

PRO's Insufficient Evidence: Weak correlation studies & Disparity fallacy speculation are insufficient to support claims of "systemic racism."

PRO's arguments fail to establish that systemic racism is a problem in the USA, because his case lacks the evidence his framework requires while assuming as true that which is his burden to prove. As I said above and in R2, PRO's case provides no evidence for the alleged racism of individuals who comprise the system as he has defined it, nor indicia of governmental ignorance; nor any link between either and any "systemic racism."
Rather than meet his burden, PRO cites to one genus of evidence: weak correlation studies, that at best show non-equal outcomes between blacks and whites in health/healthcare, education, criminal justice, wealth accumulation and work/occupations.
And for each species, PRO's case fails to provide any indicia of causation, nor could he. After all, he didn't provide evidence that systemic racism even is even the case; nor did he offer any way to measure whether it is a problem. To wit, PRO has no evidence that the non-equal outcomes in health/health care, education, criminal justice, wealth accumulation are either the result of systemic racism, or evidence for it (no matter which direction of his circular argument you want to follow).

The argument for systemic racism being a problem fails: Seemingly inequitable outcomes do not evidence systemic racism.

1. Disparity fallacies: Narrow evidence of purportedly inequitable outcomes do not generalize to the systemic level.

In R1, I provided evidence of why pointing to disparities at one narrow level of analysis do not generalize to broader "systemic" or "institutional" levels (Sowell 1984; Sowell 2018; Sowell 2019). Basically, you can't use particular non-equal outcomes at a narrow levels and argue that they show racism at higher or more general levels.
Logical fallacies notwithstanding, other data contradict that narrative.

Occupational Outcomes: For example, and with respect to occupational outcomes (which PRO incorrectly claims I "dropped"), I cited in R1 a 2019 example where Harvard researchers relied on census data to support their claim that uneducated black men earn substantially less than uneducated white men, to support their claim for systemic racism (Chetty 2019).

If the systemic racism theory was true, then the data should have been consistent: white college-educated women should out-perform black college educated women. Yet, the data state just the opposite: black college educated women out-earn white college educated women (Chetty 2019).
The researchers at Harvard may be surprised to learn that according to census data going back to 1980, black college-educated women have consistently out-performed white college-educated women in terms of actual dollars earned (Sowell 1984) and that trend continued through the 1990s (NYT 1994) and to the present day (Chetty 2019).
So, the systemic racism theory fails to explain why black-college educated women have consistently out-performed white-college educated women based on census data since at least the early 1980s. The evidence says exactly the opposite of what the systemic racism theory would predict.

Criminal Justice: Further, and with respect to criminal justice outcomes, I cited in R1 multiple studies based on data from across the United States which similarly indicate the exact opposite of what the systemic racism theory would predict. As I stated in R1, which

PRO has ignored data illustrating that:

(1) blacks actually commit more crime than non-blacks (e.g., 53% of all homicides and 60% of all robberies, despite the fact that they comprise about 13% of the population) (MacDonald 2019) (which is also an unconsidered alternative cause for why blacks may be disproportionately incarcerated);
(2) controlling for the crime rate and frequency of police interaction, whites are about 1.3-1.7 times more likely to die at the hands of police than blacks (Elder 2017). If the systemic racism theory were true, the data should say just exactly the opposite; and
(3) according to data from the DOJ, white police officers were each less likely than black or hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects (Fachner 2015) and the data reflect that white cops are not more likely to any non-white criminal than cops that are not white (Johnson 2019).

So, the systemic racism theory fails to explain why despite the fact that blacks commit far more crime than non blacks, whites are still at least 1.3-1.7 times more likely to be killed by the police than blacks.

2. Alternative causes & Nonsensical causation theories: Narrow evidence of purportedly inequitable outcomes often fails to account for unconsidered alternative causes.

In R1, I provided evidence for how purportedly inequitable outcomes either do not account for, or are better explained by causes other than "systemic racism," such that the systemic racism theory doesn't withstand scrutiny (Harper 2004; Hymowitz 2012; Pew 2018; Williams 2020; Brookings 2013; Sowell 1984; Sowell 2018; WebMD 2018).
In particular, for each category of non-equal outcomes PRO cites (i.e., health/healthcare, education, criminal justice, wealth accumulation and work/occupational (see above)), alternative causes are in play based on the empirical literature and even the evidence he cites.

Health/Healthcare: PRO cited a weak correlation study that purports to link heart attacks with various disparate impacts. Yet, according to research of U Penn professor Dr. Rajat Deo, disparate cardiac outcomes between blacks and other groups are not explained by singular causes (WebMD 2018). At least income, education, smoking, exercise, bad cholesterol, underlying physiological causes and genetics are in play (id.). None of these have anything to do with "systemic racism," and PRO's study does not even acknowledge much less account for these other factors.
Education: PRO cites the abstract of an article that finds "significant success" in "desegregating educational institutions as well as in the larger society," emphasizing in particular that post-Brown v. Board efforts have resulted in black students doing "better in job and educational attainments later in life." By PRO's logic, this should suggest that systemic racism is on the decline. At least the number of disparate impacts certainly are because, as I said in R2: "[t]he good news is...that achievement differences between blacks and whites and between Hispanics and whites have apparently declined over time," (Carnoy 2017). If the systemic racism theory was true, blacks/hispanics should not be experiencing these gains. Rather, the system should be keeping them down. Clearly, it is not; and causation theories otherwise are nonsensical.
Occupational/Wealth: PRO ignores the evidence against his occupational/wealth points, opting instead to incorrectly claim that I "dropped" them. Not so.

PRO ignores the impact that the decline in black family structure has had on wealth accumulation (Williams 2020), and clear link between children born out of wedlock/not raised in 2-parent households and cyclical poverty (Williams 2020; Brookings 2013). PRO further has no explanation as to why, if the "systemic racist" theory was true," it took five generations after the end of slavery for its impact to manifest (Williams 2020).
As Sowell 2018 & Sowell 2019 explains, black Americans made tremendous economic improvements from the end of the civil war up until after the end of WWII. Things changed in the 1960s, however, primarily around the time of the welfare state's expansion under the Johnson administration. Notably, those Great Society policy initiatives were intended to remediate the effects of systemic racism.
Further, actual data on lending practices refute the redlining argument (Sowell 2019). Before any redlining policies, banks lent money based on their expectation of being paid back. That is why, for example, in early 20th century San Francisco, Italian-Americans were more likely to be approved for loans/mortgages than Irish-Americans (Sowell 2019). Systemic racism can't explain.

Voting: In R3, PRO introduces a new theory of institutional racism based on voting. To wit, his source claims that "voter ID laws don't seem to suppress minority votes." Still, PRO assumed that Republicans implemented things like voter-ID laws to disenfranchise black voters because they're black. Yet, gerrymandering and other trends he references suggest the motivation was to disenfranchise all voters who didn't vote for Republicans, regardless of their race (Rakich 2020). The unconsidered alternative causes strike again.

SOURCES:

Rakich 2020 (Republicans Won Almost Every Election Where Redistricting Was At Stake)

Round 4

Undefeatable

04.05.2021 02:18AM

Pro

Reading over Con's third round, I believe he is merely repeating points and is proving nothing.

Let's re build my narrative.

“I ... can’t ... breathe.”

These infamous three words strike at many’s hearts. On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd passed away with a cop having knelt on him for nine minutes straight. With unnecessary forceful violence exerted, the police demonstrated just part of the systemic racism that penetrates the core of United States values. Here, I will demonstrate with countless research and evidence that what happened was not an outlier. Within education, health care, incarceration, policies, et cetera, the government has neglected crucial issues relevant to minorities. Employees in all these institutions add to the poison that is Systemic Racism.

Through my argument, it's clear that Systemic Racism is impactful against minorities such as blacks and Hispanics. Furthermore, the individuals include police, doctors, educators, government entities, so on and so forth, as my evidence highlights. Even though each source may seem weak on its own, they tell stories about the actions of those accountable for discrimination. Through poor treatment of minorities due to personal biases, the people and the government perpetuate Systemic Racism in the US.

Occupational Racism: Instead of stating exactly where the research shows that the black woman gender gap is a myth, he opts to repeat his claim without any evidence.Extend all points proving that the wage gap is a real problem. I highly recommend Voters to deduct source points for this flaw.

Incarceration: Con chooses once again to focus on shootings, missing the entire point of this argument that police are able to racially profile and select people to arrest.

From a previous debate on this topic, I also note the focus heavier on Hispanics in specific:

Though opponents suggest that blacks may commit more crimes, more in-depth research proves that Hispanics are the ones at risk in this argument. Within the point of black-and-white prison rates, the true overrepresentation is due to Hispanics inherently having a disadvantage. The key takeaway to a lengthy study display that due to their inability to understand the law, lack of resources, and poorness, they are overrepresented in prison [41]. In the expert's words, officials believe they are less likely to rehabilitate -- despite lack of backing for this, lacking resources against sanctions, and especially limited English language skills. And so they conclude, "the white–Hispanic gaps in arrest and incarceration are large, with whites constituting a small and Hispanics a large proportion for all offenses." Remember that my argument is primarily that we are partially at fault with assuming minorities to be criminals or evil, merely due to the societal disparities.

Health Care: Con completely ignores my logic and the poor treatment of patients due to racial bias.

Recall: Even if we account for socioeconomic equality, this alone cannot attribute to all the deaths and sicknesses gone untreated. One study explains that stereotypes, language barriers, lack of respect, lead to misdiagnosis, and the resulting setting. [35] The beliefs in real life are reflected in the health care system, and raise the urgency to resolve systemic racism. If doctors believe their patients are worse or better than other patients, they may treat them as such and inevitably cause more deaths.

Education: The fact that we are making progress in this problem should raise a red flag; Con is basically conceding that Systemic Racism is a problem in the US. Tell me, if we implement a gun control policy and the gun murder rates are dropping, that proves that gun homicides are a problem, yes? And if people would still be murdered by a significant amount, then the problem still exists, yes? Then, all my previous evidence adds together to put the nail in the coffin and defeat Con's assumptions. He has not shown how we have resolved for equality. The wide gap between minority and non-minority students still exists, and Con fails in the end.

Occupational/Wealth: Con contradicts his own model by now assuming that outcome based model *can* show lack of systemic racism or existence of racism. So which is it? Do we take all my immense impacts and weigh it against Con's poor showing and small attempts at improvement? My multiple massive mountain of impact completely and utterly outweighs the mere economic improvement, destroying Con's argument. If Con believes that we should consider the source of the racism instead of results, then he loses based in the Redlining laws continued to modern day.

An expert delivers more detail on how federal, state, and local policy separated blacks from whites. Starting with a personal story from Ferguson, the discrimination from real estate agents is reinforced by policies. These include, but are not limited to racially explicit zoning decisions, housing projects, restrictive covenants, subsidies excluding blacks, and annexation designed to remove blacks. [41 Even though these effects are no longer explicit, they endure due to a lack of government action. And so the racial zoning continues, the penalty of those living in black neighborhoods increases, and in the author’s words, “we may be replicating segregation on the European model”.

Con has completely dropped my immigration policy argument. Let's tack on more sources to prove this to be the fatal flaw of Con's rebuttal, shall we?

Sabo et al. prove the immigration-related mistreatment of Latino US citizens and residents. [40] Through their research, they find the local policy uses military-style tactics and weapons to oppress the minorities. These victims were mistreated and prove the “normalization of immigration-related mistreatment among the population”. Connecting back to the police’s use of racial profiling, it seems to me that we will use any justification to support our bias against minorities.

Conclusion

Remember the round 1 conclusion and cross apply all arguments, which have been dropped by con.

As yet another study highlights, educating history lets us learn about how and why systemic racism exists today. The researchers stated, " Participants listened to ... the federal government’s role in creating Black ghettos, and how racialized space still perpetuates structural inequality today (cf. Bonam, et al 2015)", [9] and as a result, they were able to further the battle against Systemic racism today, changing people's point of view for the better.

Why would experts willingly deliver false information about Systemic Racism if it wasn't a problem?

The amount of conspiracy required to have FORTY different articles, across different journals, to collaborate and agree on systemic racism's problems, and propose solutions, make it near impossible that S.R. is NOT an issue. Think about it. Just as there are zero papers on Flat Earth, there are zero papers that applaud US's great equality among races. US being the forefront of democracy and freedom should have all leaders pulling over the wool over people's eyes and agreeing that SR is not an issue. But Barack Obama the president in 2016 was forced to attend to these issues. Notice how Con could only mildly reduce impacts, rather than causing a complete reversal. Not to mention that RICH people would want to keep their profits and their gains, so they would be encouraged to deliver news about America's equality and kill black people in secret, rather than openly allowing police to execute these racist actions. If Systemic Racism was a conspiracy theory, then there's no reason for corporations to donate the billion dollars to help the blacks in poverty.

If SR was not an issue, why do 2020 scholarly articles relate COVID 19 deaths to cause of discrimination?

If SR was resolved, why would countless newspapers ruin their reputation, and even the PHD author would list 100 relevant statistics to support its problematic nature?

If SR did not perpetuate economic inequalities, does he believe that Brown V Board of Education was useless and shouldn't have been enacted?

Would he say that even Hitler did not enact systemic racism, as the Jews were economically inferior to Hitler's secret police force, and therefore deserved to die?

And lastly, it seems that Con thinks Racism doesn't exist at all in the US. But clearly, Psychology has overwhelmingly agreed on this issue.

From the study “Polluting Black Space” from the Standford University, Eberhardt demonstrates that the physical spaces that were associated with Blacks attributed to the negative racial stereotypes. [42] Through the assumption that they are impoverished, crime-ridden, and dirty, we ironically perpetuate our stereotype. We have all heard of the Golem Effect, where assuming negative outcomes leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, the study finds that the stereotypes contribute to the racial disparity in wealth and even overexposure to pollution.

As you can clearly see from this line of questioning and my overwhelming evidence beyond reasonable doubt, combined with Con's poor choice of sources and cherry-picking far worse than any "picking" from my side... it's definitive that Con's arguments are racist, no different from a cruel murderer, no different from the most immoral people who think that black people deserve to be born poor and want to keep all the riches to the government. We must not accept this point of view. Let's get rid of systemic racism by working together, and acknowledging that the people in the US significantly detriment the minorities with their bias.

Vote for Pro.

40. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4111266/

41. epi.org/publication/making-ferguson/#epi-toc-3

42.drive.google.com/file/d/1k7EFYDIoJrc4NroagMLwRfsutlHODkCf/view?usp=sharing

coal

04.06.2021 01:35AM

Con

This debate was about whether "Systemic Racism Is Definitely a Problem in the US."

PRO has conceded framework and evidence, because he chose not to respond to (much less rebut) anything I've said.

The remainder of his responses (including his R4 reference to immigration, whatever he was trying to accomplish there; or his R5 discovery of this "polluting black space" throwaway point) have no link to his burden of proof or any of my arguments. I also don't understand why he is calling systemic racism a "conspiracy theory" in R5. I never called it a conspiracy theory in this debate.

Anyway, I won this debate for at least these reasons:

PRO's entire case reduces to one flawed argument. Contrary to his claims, non-equal outcomes do not mean that systemic racism is a problem in this country.
For every alleged non-equal outcome he cites at a very low level of analysis, I provided counter-evidence proving that the trends he references do not generalize to the systemic level.
And to the extent there non-equal outcomes exist at any level, he failed to prove that they are the cause or effect of systemic racism.
I should get voting points because he failed to correctly link, cite or quote his sources for what they actually say (I discuss here and above). He complains that I cited books. As if libraries do not exist? Plus, all of Thomas Sowell's books are readily available online.

These are the voting issues:

Framework: PRO concedes by omission at least these points:

His framework assumes as true that which is his burden to prove. Throughout this debate, he assumed that systemic racism was a problem. That's what this debate was all about. He never bothered to establish that it was the case, much less provide any standard to measure it (or to whom it might apply, e.g., which he only figured out in R3).
He failed to provide the evidence his framework requires. He never provided evidence that (a) the alleged racism of the "individuals" whose "actions "make up the system; and (b) "ignorance of the government"; have the effect of (c) give rise to "systemic racism," problem or otherwise. Evidence for exactly none of these is found anywhere in his case, across all previous rounds.
Having based his case on a circular framework while failing to provide evidence his framework requires, PRO has lost this debate.

Evidence:

PRO has no links (necessary, sufficient, causal, etc.) between any non-equal outcomes and "systemic racism" being a problem in the US.

His entire case just assumed as much. Not good enough.
All PRO offered were weak correlation studies that purport to show non-equal outcomes between blacks (and hispanics in R3-R4, a goalpost he only proclaimed in R3) and whites, within the contexts of: (a) occupational outcomes, (b) criminal justice, (c) health/health-care, (d) education, (e) wealth accumulation and (f) (only in R3) voting.

Disparate-outcome fallacies: You can't take a narrow piece of statistical information and say it represents some kind of rule at higher levels, when other data from the same data break the rule you're trying to hold out as true. Across R1-R4, I demonstrated how purported inequity based on narrow statistical data at a lower level of analysis do not generalize to illustrate systemic trends, at a higher/institutional level of analysis, when other data contradict that rule.

Occupational/wealth:

If the United States was a systemically racist country, black-college educated women should not be economically out-performing white-college educated women.
I cited unrefuted evidence that they do, and have for at least four decades based on census data (Sowell 1984; Sowell 2018; Sowell 2019). PRO totally drops this point, and instead complains about sources. (Ironic, given that he didn't link more than 32 of his, mis-linked at least 11 others and introduced new arguments in the final round).

Criminal Justice:

If the United States was a systemically racist country, black people should be more likely to be shot by cops than white people and white cops should be more likely to be behind the barrel.
I cited unrefuted evidence that just the opposite is true, according the data. Despite the fact that blacks commit crime at disproportionately high rates (e.g., 53% of all homicides and 60% of all robberies, despite the fact that they comprise about 13% of the population), controlling for the black crime rate and frequency of police interaction, whites are about 1.3-1.7 times more likely to die at the hands of police than blacks (Elder 2017). And further, the data clearly reflect that when black people are shot by the police, black/hispanic cops are more likely to have done it than white cops (Fachner 2015).
Having lost this point, PRO cites to George Floyd in a desperate attempt to play on judges' emotions.
PRO has yet to explain why the systemic racism theory's predictions fail to materialize across each of these outcomes.

Education/Voting:

PRO tried and failed to make a disparate impact argument for both education. His own source, as I said in R4, says there is no disparate impact now. There may have been at one point in time, but according to his own source, desegregation efforts have resulted in black kids making significant gains in education at all levels. PRO drops this entirely, as he should because as my unrefuted evidence indicates, based on student performance data "achievement differences between blacks and whites and between Hispanics and whites have apparently declined over time," (Carnoy 2017) which should not be happening if systemic racism was actually a problem.
PRO tried and failed to make a disparate impact for voting. His own source, as I said in R4, says that based on the evidence "voter ID laws don't seem to suppress minority votes."

Causation: It is not enough to just say that non-equal outcomes are the cause or result of systemic racism. You have to have proof and at least rule out alternative causes. PRO's case does neither.

Wealth/Criminal Justice:

For example, in R1, I cited evidence linking familial breakdown to higher incarceration rates (Harper 2004), overall criminality (Hymowitz 2012), lack of being raised in a two-parent household (Harper 2004) and bring raised in a single-parent household (Pew 2018). I also cited evidence that having kids out of wedlock is directly linked to never making it into the middle class (Brookings 2013).
I cited unrefuted evidence that before about 1960, there was basically no difference in the familial structure and integrity of black and white families (Williams 2020). In fact, in every census from 1890 to 1940, census data indicates that blacks tended to get and be married at higher rates than whites and accumulate wealth at the same rates as whites (Sowell 1984). That trend only changed in the 1960s (Sowell 1984, Williams 2020), at which time the massive inequities we see now in wealth and criminal justice contexts started to manifest (Sowell 2018, Sowell 2019).
PRO has never explained why, if systemic racism was the cause of that decline in black family structure and wealth accumulation, it took five generations after the end of slavery to take hold (Williams 2020). PRO has no explanation as to why; he totally dropped this entire point in R2 and for the rest of the debate.
Likewise, for incarceration, in particular, PRO has failed entirely to account for what impact black's disproportionately high contribution to the crime rate (e.g., 53% of all homicides and 60% of all robberies, despite the fact that they comprise about 13% of the population) might have on their levels of incarceration (Elder 2017). This so-called incarceration gap assumes without evidence that the underlying crime rates are equal, which they are not and PRO has provided no evidence otherwise.
He also dropped my R4 counterpoint on redlining.

Health/Healthcare:

PRO claims based on some weak correlation study that black people have more heart attacks because of "institutional racism," and the paper he cites doesn't even consider whether other controlling factors may be in play. It just says "here's this non-equal outcome, therefore institutional racism."
I cited unrefuted evidence that based on the clinical/empirical literature (e.g., WebMD 2018) disproportionately high amounts of cardiac-related health problems among black patient populations are caused by myriad factors, including education, smoking, exercise, bad cholesterol, underlying physiological causes and genetic predisposition---which have absolutely nothing to do with systemic racism.
PRO has offered less than nothing to explain why systemic racism rather than actual underlying risk factors cause black people to have more heart attacks than white people.
Given these known alternative causes for why the health/healthcare outcomes PRO declined to consider, his argument that they are either a cause or effect (he can't make up his mind) of systemic racism must be dismissed.

Education/Voting:

To the extent there are non-equal outcomes in education (and if there ever were, they're disappearing, see above), PRO fails to consider (much less rule out) alternative causes. For example, low socioeconomic status is a consistent predictor of low educational achievement, as well as a host of other ills (APA 2017).
To the extent there are non-equal outcomes in voting, PRO likewise failed to consider, what other motivations might be in play for why Republicans have engaged in efforts that they have; e.g., self-interest as opposed to racism. In the previous round, I cited unrebutted evidence that political self interest seems to be the animating factor for why Republicans are so keen to disenfranchise people who do not vote for them (Rakich 2020). Pro totally dropped.

VOTE CON!

SOURCES:

APA 2017 (Education and Socioeconomic Status)

Sum1hugme

05.04.2021 07:13PM

#35

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@Undefeatable

Lol, "disprove" evolution

coal

05.04.2021 07:08PM

#34

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@Undefeatable

Evolution is one of those subjects I don't debate. Not because I couldn't, but because I don't care to spend time debating a subject that really comes down to the religious right vs. everyone else.

Undefeatable

05.04.2021 06:31PM

#33

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@coal

nice win. I bet you could also disprove evolution if you really wanted to; I feel like the weak link between fossils and differentiation of micro/macro bear remarkable resemblance to "you can't use results to prove the past/present" [and individual vs systemic]. Not to mention alternate explanations with Noah flood is probably really problematic lol.

Username

05.04.2021 03:02PM

#32

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@Undefeatable

Systemic racism debates are difficult. I honestly give you credit for just making a strong effort here, and I haven't even read the debate lmao

whiteflame

05.04.2021 10:45AM

#31

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@Undefeatable

I think you did better this time. You were more directly responsive to his points and built up a generally stronger case, though I can still see you falling into the same trap of believing you’ve addressed certain points that are still very much a problem for your case.

Undefeatable

05.04.2021 04:39AM

#30

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@whiteflame

do you think I did better than my previous time, at least?

coal

05.04.2021 03:29AM

#29

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@whiteflame

Thanks for the vote and RFD!

logicae

04.07.2021 03:28AM

#28

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@Undefeatable

Sure,
For voter ID:

This to me is a very partisan issue. coal (<---lol, do I capitalize this?? A proper noun, but that IS his name...oh the things I go through) pointed out that methods such as gerrymandering are politics at play and the black vote happens to vote more democrat (What is it, like 80+ percent?). So I think it makes sense why Republicans would want these ID laws enforced and Democrats not, given these communities are generally more in poorer standing, have more criminal convictions, and, for immigrants, lack citizenship and or proper documents. Regardless of your stance on voter ID, this shows all the signs of standard political partisanship.

For Housing:

This is actually a great point! I need to see your case focus on the housing act of 1934 (less is always more). You did touch on loans, but these things could also be explained via other reasons such as higher criminality and bad credit...speaking of which, housing projects would have been an excellent example of government interfering in the African American community, explaining their current conundrum. It would be a great argument turn of coal's single motherhood example, using it instead as the impact to the housing and anti poverty legislation which continues to this day.

To Truth!
-logicae

FourTrouble

04.07.2021 02:19AM

#27

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@Undefeatable

I was on DDO, yeah.

The issue isn't lack of character space. The issue is conceptual. Please review Con's response to your framework, and work on responding directly to those issues.

Undefeatable

04.07.2021 01:54AM

#26

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@FourTrouble

aren't you that one guy from... Debate.org? Unfortunate for me. I did my best with research but it's really hard to prove Pro side with only 10k characters per round.

FourTrouble

04.07.2021 12:43AM

#25

I don't think Pro had a clear grasp of what systemic racism is, and Con made that quite clear in his attacks on Pro's framework.

Lack of conceptual clarity also made it difficult to evaluate empirical evidence. But I'm a casual reader who isn't thinking about this debate too hard. Big picture, seems like a fairly clear win for Con.

Barney

04.06.2021 09:58PM

#24

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@logicae

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>Reported Vote: logicae // Mod action: Not Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: Arguments to con.
>Reason for Decision: See Votes Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
Not sure why this one was reported... High quality vote, with feedback for both sides. It does include outside content in mentioning another vote, and giving personal feelings on the issue; but that was clearly wholly separate from the point allocation weighing.

The vote was found to be sufficient per the site voting policy standards.
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Barney

04.06.2021 09:47PM

#23

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@TheHammer

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>Reported Vote: TheHammer // Mod action: Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: legibility to pro.
>Reason for Decision: See Comments Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
In short, you did not even look at the arguments, and nitpicked a non-issue in punctuation to poorly justify giving points to one side. While punctuation can rise to be enough, it would have to be abysmal; either from the complete lack thereof, or, like' ungodly; terrible.

Arguments must always be reviewed even if left a tie (in which case less detail is required, but some reason for said tie based on the debate content must still be comprehensible within the vote).
Arguments go to the side that, within the context of the debate rounds, successfully affirms (vote pro) or negates (vote con) the resolution. Ties are possible, particularly with pre-agreed competing claims, but in most cases failing to affirm the resolution means pro loses by default.
Weighing entails analyzing the relative strength of one argument or set of arguments and their impacts against another argument or set of arguments. Weighing requires analyzing and situating arguments and counterarguments within the context of the debate as a whole.

Legibility is an optional award as a penalty for excessive abuse committed by the other side, wherein sections of the debate become illegible or at least comparatively burdensome to decipher.
Examples:
• Unbroken walls of text, or similar formatting attempts to make an argument hard to follow.
• Terrible punctuation throughout.
• Overwhelming word confusion, or regularly distracting misspellings.
• Jarring font and/or formatting changes.

The voter acted in such a way to suggest they did not give fair weighting to the debate content.
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Barney

04.06.2021 09:42PM

#22

TheHammer
Added: 19 hours ago
#1
Reason:
From CON:

"Regardless of race, if you complete your education, don’t have kids out of wedlock and maintain full time employment you’re far more likely to join the middle class than otherwise (Brookings 2013). "

Pretty sure he's missing a comma or two.

Sum1hugme

04.06.2021 02:54PM

#21

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@Undefeatable

It is definitely possible to gish gallop someone with sources. You should focus on drilling down hard on a few reliable ones that clearly establish causation, rather than an avalanche of sources that 1) have to be meticulously picked through, and 2) can dilute the point you're trying to make.

Theweakeredge

04.06.2021 12:44PM

#20

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@Undefeatable

Er.. No, I wouldn't say so. Here's what I would do - take a look at all of your quotes - paraphrase them - your doing good as far as not responding in segments, but you drop far too many points. I'd say try to acknowledge EVERY point brought up by your opponent, combine points as you've been doing. Even if you don't think the point is important, respond to it, you never know when your opponent might try to pivot off a peripheral point. You don't need more room - you need to reprioritize how you debate

Undefeatable

04.06.2021 12:41PM

#19

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@Theweakeredge

unfortunate. I suppose I'll have to add 5,000 more characters to my argument before trying this again...

Theweakeredge

04.06.2021 12:34PM

#18

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@Undefeatable

If you can sell your narrative, then you've won - you can do that with only one source - or none at all. Lot's of debaters use a break down and re-present style, arguing that the interpretation that their opponent got out of sources aren't what is the truth of the matter. You touched Coal's narrative, but you ultimately let it stand - that's why people will vote for him.

whiteflame

04.06.2021 11:10AM

#17

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@Undefeatable

I’ll work on this, though it’ll be a hot second before I can get to it.

If the lesson you took from the last debate was “present more sources”, though, that’s not what I was trying to tell you with my feedback. I talked a bit about better source utilization, I.e. digging down into the elements of a source that establish their value, defending them more effectively from rebuttals, etc. Sheer numbers may win you some debates, but they tend to mean you undercover each one, which makes the sum often worth less than the actual number of sources.

RationalMadman

04.06.2021 05:43AM

#16

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@Undefeatable

Sources don't win debates, they prevent the other side winning and are a very defensive thing to use to back up what your saying as something more than paperweight in backing (if it's a direct claim the other side may dispute).

Undefeatable

04.06.2021 04:43AM

#15

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@whiteflame

any feedback is appreciated from your side too. I'm astonished that 40+ sources couldn't prove this topic. I guess I might really need 100 to win this debate...

Undefeatable

04.06.2021 04:38AM

#14

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@logicae

wait, what about the voting laws and housing policies I mentioned? What happened to those arguments?

coal

04.06.2021 02:08AM

#13

Try to be a good sport about this. That kind of commentary is misplaced.

Undefeatable

04.06.2021 01:51AM

#12

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@coal

if I lose *THIS* one, mark my words, I can easily destroy you with 20 more sources = 60 sources if we ever meet again...

Undefeatable

04.05.2021 02:22AM

#11

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@coal

I'm sorry for injecting so many emotional arguments, but I'd argue you forced my hand by reducing my ability to show deeper analysis and more arguments. They always say the best way to get through a conspiracy is to use emotional arguments to throw them off their assumptions...

coal

04.05.2021 01:11AM

#10

You can concede if you like, but I don't think that agreeing to a tie is worthwhile at this juncture. We're four rounds in.

Nothing wrong with conceding, though. In many respects, it might be best here; and we can debate this again at some other time.

Undefeatable

04.04.2021 11:56PM

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@coal

are you willing to agree to a tie? My case was so complex and filled with research such that my entire "constructive" wasn't nearly done until round 3. I intended to have a 30,000 character limit but forgot to change it. I feel like we're talking over each other, because my case has to be taken as an overall whole rather than small piece of tidbit facts. I'd like an opportunity to rebuild my story and have a more proper debate, because my in-depth analysis of impacts will address your problems if we had 20k~30k characters.

With this debate right now, I don't think I'd be happy even if I won, and I'd be especially frustrated if I lost. My research was more in depth than before but it's very hard to prove Pro's case with only 10k per round plus rebuttals...

coal

04.04.2021 06:29PM

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Undefeatable

04.04.2021 03:45AM

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@coal

whoeee, you're giving me a tough time here. Good job man. Having to do more research on the policy related side and seeing why Fauxlaw was able to negate all my 20 sources. Well, I doubt you can negate all my 20 other sources...

(Also sorry about my numbering of sources, I lose track of them very easily)

coal

04.04.2021 01:02AM

Wish I'd seen that before posting the last round.

Undefeatable

04.03.2021 10:44PM

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@coal

here's the full list (some numbers are not used) if you need them. They're a bit of a mess to organize, sorry about that.

1. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4133127/
2. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4306458/
3. scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1376&context=dissertations
4.science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6464/447.abstract
5. science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6502/351
6. science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6510/1440.2.full
7. news.mit.edu/2020/letter-systemic-racism-mit-0701
8. raliance.org/6-companies-taking-action-to-confront-systemic-racism/
9. v.gd/historyracism
10. annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040218-043750
11.pressley.house.gov/sites/pressley.house.gov/files/Anti-Racism%20in%20Public%20Health%20Act%20Summary.pdf
12. v.gd/encyclo
13. scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=lawineq
14. academyhealth.confex.com/academyhealth/2019nhpc/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/29586
15. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7441277/
16.journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0890117120943736?casa_token=OZfxmkIyeXEAAAAA%3AOXVithEmZZu3JDYr5zhhXqvxPL_wthBTAGhdb6MXg_fgys5tHCQBj-nz3pWROgsE9LXSFut3lM9A
17. apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older
18. gao.gov/products/GAO-18-258
19. aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/school-prison-pipeline-infographic
20. racismreview.com/blog/2011/07/12/racism-k-12/
21.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2012.669839?casa_token=CADVrp2R-yAAAAAA%3AnKtSGcJRdVYTJgx8xtdQrzNVWj7UVlXrDOXFpR-FSxrJc1fRPINy2ro2ArIV-fE3UxTtYHGaCtrg
22. link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-72233-7
23. routledge.com/Systemic-Racism-A-Theory-of-Oppression/Feagin/p/book/9780415952781
24. aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0002828042002561
25.https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/success-and-failure-how-systemic-racism-trumped-the-ibrown-v-boar
26.https://www.businessinsider.com/us-systemic-racism-in-charts-graphs-data-2020-6#similarly-overall-income-for-black-americans-was-about-42-lower-than-for-whites-in-2018-6
27. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/100-statistics-prove-systemic-racism-thing-kelly-burton-phd/
28. https://www.vox.com/2020/6/17/21284527/systemic-racism-black-americans-9-charts-explained
29.https://www.businessinsider.com/how-redlining-kept-black-americans-from-homeownership-and-still-does-2020-6#redlining-reforms-were-passed-in-the-late-1960s-and-70s-but-its-legacy-is-still-felt-today-3
30. https://www.today.com/tmrw/what-systemic-racism-t207878

coal

04.03.2021 10:20PM

Where are your sources?

coal

04.03.2021 09:58PM

Did you use all of your characters?

Also, I am 100% pro spanking, mostly because keeping black boys in class as opposed to suspending them is the best way to prevent future criminality and maximize lifetime social and economic attainment.

Undefeatable

04.03.2021 06:29PM

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@coal

given your research on corporal punishment in school, I thought for sure you would be Pro sided in this debate...

Undefeatable

03.27.2021 11:41AM

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@Ancap460

here you go.

whiteflame

05.04.2021 03:19AM

Criterion

Pro

Tie

Con

Points

Better arguments

3 point(s)

Better sources

2 point(s)

Better legibility

1 point(s)

Better conduct

1 point(s)

Reason:

What ends up making this debate relatively simple for me is pretty straightforward: one side is doing resolution and burdens analysis, and the other isn't. That's pretty important when I'm looking at a topic like this because there are some very important terms in here that could have been debated if both sides had fully considered them. Simply saying that "Burden of proof is shared", as it does in the description, doesn't accomplish anything because I don't know where the burden splits, yet Con goes into great detail explaining precisely where Pro's burdens lie and I don't get much pushback on that analysis.

The topic is about systemic racism, meaning that Pro had to prove that systemic racism "definitely" exists within the US as a starting point. He then had to demonstrate who it affects. Finally, he had to establish that its existence was a substantial problem to those populations. That's a lot to manage, and while Pro presents a lot of sources, I think in his efforts to just present more, he's missing opportunities to break down where he's being successful along this path and wield any such successes as a voting issue. What Pro does here just doesn't really accomplish that. Pointing out that you have many sources that show a thing is just one small point along this scale, and unfortunately for Pro, it comes towards the end of this, with almost all of Pro's sources focused on establishing a degree of harm. That might be enough to satisfy the last of those 3 burdens, but Pro needs to do the work to explain why, and essential to that is establishing what makes a problem substantial. Even setting aside the lack of support for the existence of systemic racism and the somewhat late designation of blacks and Hispanics as targets thereof, Con is giving me an awful lot of alternative explanations for the various outcomes that Pro cites. If your only response to that is that each of those causes may not be complete, then you need to tell me why systemic racism is the only explanation to fill some portion of the causation and, more importantly, why any portion of a problem being caused by systemic racism makes systemic racism significant. If Con successfully convinces me that many if not all of these issues are complicated by the presence of multiple causative factors, then why should I designate systemic racism, specifically, as a significant contributor? A wall of sources, no matter how big, doesn't do much if you don't put them in a context that allows you to gain full advantage of them. It doesn't help that there's very limited effort to establish that Pro's stronger sources demonstrate the harms of systemic racism rather than individual racism, a point that Con hammers repeatedly.

Also, that Hail Mary at the end where you tried to simply claim that all those sources validate the existence of systemic racism doesn't help you, either; all it does is tell me that your sources all try to attribute their established outcomes to a cause they don't endeavor to prove. That isn't proof of its existence, just proof of a commonly held belief in its importance. Speaking as someone who has read a lot of research papers, source agreement on an assumption doesn't validate the assumption. Nor does stating that your opponent's argument is racist, indistinct "from a cruel murderer" and "the most immoral people who think that black people deserve to be poor" assist your point, though it does get you dangerously close to me giving out my first conduct point in a long while.

Ultimately, in a debate with "definitely" in the topic, Pro's argument falls short. There's demonstrable evidence that black and Hispanic minorities suffer from a variety of harms, but there are simply too many complicating factors to attribute them to systemic racism and establish the significance of that attribution. The lack of support for the existence of systemic racism in a way that distinguishes it from individual racism (an issue probed more deeply in a previous debate on a similar topic, but nonetheless still present here) doesn't help. Though I generally agree with Pro, I vote Con.

thett3

04.11.2021 08:56PM

Criterion

Pro

Tie

Con

Points

Better arguments

3 point(s)

Better sources

2 point(s)

Better legibility

1 point(s)

Better conduct

1 point(s)

Reason:

I was asked to vote by Con.

Ultimately, Con's argument that disparate outcomes does not necessarily require racism as the cause carried the day. Con's initial round argued compellingly that differences in things like crime rates and health outcomes could be attributed to factors beyond systemic oppression, such as a collapsing familial structure among black communities, in addition to poking several holes in Pros narrative, with his contentions about police brutality and economic outcomes. From that point on, it became Pro's job to either prove that the factors Con points to as the culprit are not the primary cause of these disparate impacts, or to argue that those factors are themselves caused by systemic racism.

To his credit, Pro seemed to realize this and argued in his second round that at least some of the racial wealth gap can be attributed to things that happened in the past. This is compelling, and it engages somewhat with Cons main contention, but the argument was very poorly written. The rest of Pro's second round is spent mostly quoting from sources and listing other disparate impacts without engaging the argument that Con actually made, which is that we can't simply presume that this automatically means racism. Pro also brings in a new contention in his second round--please do not do this in the future. Pro's new contention about employment discrimination could well have been a compelling argument, but he doesn't actually argue anything. Here is an excerpt:

"Voting laws (Jones & Williams, 2018), educational systems (Kozol, 1991), housing policies (Gonda, 2015; Rothstein, 2017), judicial and penal systems (Cole, 1999), healthcare systems (Hoberman, 2012), labor markets (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004), deep social prejudices (Greenwald et al., 2009), and countless other everyday instances of racism (Kendi, 2019) systematically oppress people of color."

This is just a series of assertions, and merely providing a citation does not make the assertion true, particularly in a debate context. So the only real offensive argument I see sticking from Pro's round 2 is that at least some of the racial wealth gap is due to historical oppression, but I'm not given any numbers. Cons round two is mostly spent hammering in the point that disparities can come from other sources, and explaining some of these other sources.

Going into round 3, Con was winning the debate, but after this round it became clear. He simply did not sufficiently engage the most important argument in the debate: that it isn't enough to point to disparate impact and say "racism", it needs to be proven. Pro would have done much better to cite fewer sources, because the sources he did cite in the debate tending to be so different from his prose as to be jarring, and his evidence largely consisted of more claims of disparate outcomes or assertions from people that systemic racism is to blame. Pro's racial wealth gap argument would've been more compelling if you had more numbers and had strung together a more coherent narrative. How much wealth have white families retained from houses their ancestors bought in the 40s-60s when blacks were redlined out? Is it a significant amount, or is in a negligible amount? Pro doesn't tell me, and Con argues that the real culprit to the racial wealth gap is the destruction of the black family. Without numbers I don't know who is right, or how important it is. I am hammering on the racial wealth gap point because I think it's the only point Pro made that he at least somewhat successfully linked to systemic racism, everything else was essentially wasted space because he never explained in detail how systemic racism was to blame.

So overall that is why Con won, from a debate standpoint. From a writing standpoint, Con's arguments were also much better. As I was writing this I was able to easily recall what Con argued but had to flip back and forth between the vote tab and the arguments tab to reread what Pro said. Pro, your arguments were simply too scattered, which makes them a lot less convincing. Con used sources to tell a story, where Pro was trying to tell a story using sources. I can tell that Pro has a lot of potential, but in this debate he was outmatched.

logicae

04.06.2021 03:19AM

Criterion

Pro

Tie

Con

Points

Better arguments

3 point(s)

Better sources

2 point(s)

Better legibility

1 point(s)

Better conduct

1 point(s)

Reason:

I do not vote too often, because I enjoy the exchange of ideas more than I do the competition. But I must say something in regards to the last vote and also give my own analysis. Whether intentional or not, TheHammer seems to gloss over the issues and focuses on a single grammar mistake by con. This is totally fine, but TheHammer did not touch the debate itself, which I think is missing the whole point of voting.

Now on this debate. Great topic guys! Relevant, important, and needs more conversation. Let's not let the politicians beat us to it!

First off, Pro does a great job setting up the status quo view of systemic racism and I am glad he gives the important distinction from the individual and collective, while maintaining the "system" in question must be viewed in terms of individuals. A point usually missed these days. Pro also makes a good point that racism is indeed a factor in people's lives. I'm sure we can all agree there.

There is a point that I think was missed though. (Con hammered on this hard) That even though there is racism on the individual level and there are disparities in health care, the prison system, and education, that does not mean these are linked to racism itself. Pro does an excellent job pointing out the troubles black Americans and minorities face however and I think these problems should be further analyzed.
Now to Con. This debate was well handled and though I do not care much for evidence critiquing, I applaud you for showing the missing link in Pro's reasoning, that "Disparate outcomes do not evidence systemic racism" (Sowell). Well played, but true none the less. I do not see a direct refutation of this reasoning, but instead Pro adds on inherited racism and occupational racism to the mix. Con's response encapsulates this debate round. He points out that other factors including the overwhelming problem of black single motherhood are understood as key issues which might explain the higher crime rates, poorer education, and other key disparities. It shows that the focus of Pro is on correlation, but not on the causation of those bad outcomes.
There is of course much more refutation, but my poor analysis can not cover every last detail. I choose not to dip into the evidence battle, because reason takes precedence over data and the lapse of causation is most important.

In conclusion, though Pro makes an excellent case for serious problems in black and minority communities, Con holds Pro hostage to prove that these problems are the result of systemic racism. Con makes a positive claim that these problems are the result of other key factors and this remains the issue at large.

My thoughts on the issue: (Skip if you wish ;D)

I agree with the con side of the issue, at least for the most part. But I think I am fatefully wrong. Cons mentioned single motherhood as a major cause of these terrible disparities, but why did single motherhood jump to such high levels so quickly? There is indeed something to be said for systemic racism, in that, our government largely encouraged and encourages family breakup at the minority level. They do this with housing projects, child subsidies, unemployment, and planned parenthood, all of which largely target poorer and minority communities who had just escaped the previous racist Jim Crow system. This would be an interesting line of argumentation for Pro and I would like to take a look at this more myself.

Anyway.
I give the argument portion to Con, but I give good conduct to both sides. A great debate and I will be watching both of you guys in the future.

To Truth!
-logicae