Chicago Debate League 2013/14 Core Files
NC Extension [Critical Immigration]: A/t #2 “Deconstruction fails” [2/3] 464
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- 2NC Extension [Critical Immigration]: A/t 2 “Deconstruction fails” [3/3] 465
- 2NC Extension [Critical Immigration]: A/t 3 “Racism is root cause” 466
2NC Extension [Critical Immigration]: A/t #2 “Deconstruction fails” [2/3] 4643) Turn: American Nightmare. A) They romanticize the American dream by promising immigrants they can become “American” as long as they work hard and don’t violate the law. This ignores the ways American identity privileges Whiteness. ROSHANRAVAN, 9 [Shirren, Ph.D., assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Kansas State University; “Passing-as-if: Model-Minority Subjectivity and Women of Color Identification;” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, Volume 10, Number 1, 2009] The self-negating mimicry of white/Anglo norms takes on a new dimension in the post-civil-rights-era United States. Whereas the colonial context of British India made explicit the racialized boundary between colonized Indians and British colonizers, in the post-civil-rights-era United States, the manifestation of what many have called the “new racism” (Omi and Winant 1994; Collins 2004) relies on a hegemonic discourse of a falsely inclusive “America,” to which all U.S.-citizen men and women can equally belong regardless of racial classification. The nation-state’s struggle to “find a racial logic capable of circumventing the imperative of equality established by the Fourteenth Amendment” shaped the historical development of this racial discourse (Ngai 2004, 9). Crucial to this logic was a shift from biological notions of race superiority to an emphasis on cultural differences whereby ethnicity and race became uncoupled for Euro-Americans and conflated for those of Mexican and Asian ancestry. The separation of whiteness from European ethnicity exposes the empty constitution of white racial identity that, in turn, facilitates its conflation with an all-inclusive “America.” According to this logic, those who were of European origin possessed ethnicities amenable to “American” (read: white) ideals, while those with national origins racialized as non-white would forever be labeled foreign and incapable of assimilation (Ngai 2004, 7–8). If white is a racial prerequisite for citizenship, and one’s national origins are racialized as non-white, then becoming “American” is an impossible task. Hailed as a color-blind meritocracy, this white-supremacist America nevertheless denies racial barriers to national inclusion. The popular discourse that anyone can achieve the “American Dream” so long as they work hard seduces immigrants of color to negate their racial-ethnic identity as a means of becoming “American just like everybody else.” The [End Page 22] seduction is facilitated by the negative formulation of white racial identity. After examining federal court cases filed in the early part of the twentieth century by people hoping to legally establish their whiteness and thus their right to naturalize as U.S. citizens, Ian Haney Lopez concludes: [T]he courts defined ‘white’ through a process of negation, systematically identifying who was non-White. Thus, from Ah Yup to Thind, the courts established not so much the parameters of Whiteness as the non-Whiteness of Chinese, South Asians, and so on. . . . In this relational system, the prerequisite cases show that Whites are those not constructed as non-White. 2NC Extension [Critical Immigration]: A/t #2 “Deconstruction fails” [3/3] 465B) Independently, this turns their Affirmative because immigrants will be compelled to become as White as possible, thus giving up their native culture and identify. Rather than embracing Latina/o identity, we will all just be different shades of White. ROSHANRAVAN, 9 [Shirren, Ph.D., assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Kansas State University; “Passing-as-if: Model-Minority Subjectivity and Women of Color Identification;” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, Volume 10, Number 1, 2009] If whiteness is that which is not non-white, then immigrants racialized as non-white, seduced by the promise of a falsely inclusive and color-blind America, must assimilate through processes of self-negation—becoming non-Mexican Mexicans, non-Indian Indians, non-Korean Koreans, and so on. The illusory base of the seduction is evidenced by the fact that one remains “Mexican,” “Korean,” “Indian,” “minority,” or “foreign” even after the processes of negating one’s racial-ethnic self in a mimicry of white/Anglo ways. Nevertheless, in a racial context where whiteness is coded as the unmarked norm of society, inclusion in that society may seem less impossible. Whereas the mimic man was never promised entry into British identity, the “model minority” is subject to the illusion that s/he can become “American just like white/Anglos.” The empty identity “American” becomes a means for avoiding articulation of one’s contradictory status as a non-minority minority. For example, elders in my middle-class Indian immigrant community often insist on defining their children’s racial-ethnic identity as “American,” advising them to check “other,” instead of “Asian,” on school applications. Similarly, my mother’s suggestion that my experience of racism was a case of “mistaken” identity implies that we have achieved the unmarked status of “being American just like white/Anglos.” Who “we” are in terms of racial-ethnic identity remains unclear in my mother’s response; however, our distance from “Mexicans” entitles us to honorary white status. The logic of her response thus echoes the negative formulation of white racial identity as that which is not non-white. In other words, my mother insists that we are beyond suspicion by the police state because we are not Mexican (not-non-white). [End Page 23] 2NC Extension [Critical Immigration]: A/t #3 “Racism is root cause” 4661) Capitalism creates the structures that make racism possible, not the other way around. REICH, 74 [Michael, Professor of Political Economy at UC-Berkeley, and Director at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC-Berkeley, “The Economics of Racism," http://tomweston.net/ReichRacism.pdf] Once again, the results of this statistical test strongly confirm the hypothesis of our model. The racism variable is statistically significant in all the equations and has the predicted sign: a greater degree of racism results in lower unionization rates and greater degree of schooling inequality among whites. This empirical evidence again suggests that racism is in the economic interests of capitalists and other rich whites and against the economic interests of poor whites and white workers. However, a full assessment of the importance of racism for capitalism would probably conclude that the primary significance of racism is not strictly economic. The simple economics of racism does not explain why many workers seem to be so vehemently racist, when racism is not in their economic self-interest. In non-economic ways, racism helps to legitimize inequality, alienation, and powerlessness—legitimization that is necessary for the stability of the capitalist system as a whole. For example, many whites believe that welfare payments to blacks are a far more important factor in their taxes than is military spending. Through racism, poor whites come to believe that their poverty is caused by blacks who are willing to take away their jobs, and at lower wages, thus concealing the fact that a substantial amount of income inequality is inevitable in a capitalist society. Racism thus transfers the focus of whites' resentment towards blacks and away from capitalism. Racism also provides some psychological benefits to poor and working-class whites. For example, the opportunity to participate in another's oppression compensates for one's own misery. There is a parallel here to the subjugation of women in the family: after a day of alienating labor, the tired husband can compensate by oppressing his wife. Furthermore, not being at the bottom of the heap is some solace for an unsatisfying life; this argument was successfully used by the Southern oligarchy against poor whites allied with blacks in the interracial Populist movement of the late nineteenth century. Thus, racism is likely to take firm root in a society that breeds an individualistic and competitive ethos. In general, blacks provide a convenient and visible scapegoat for problems that actually derive from the institutions of capitalism. As long as building a real alternative to capitalism does not seem feasible to most whites, we can expect that identifiable and vulnerable scapegoats will prove functional to the status quo. These non-economic factors thus neatly dovetail with the economic aspects of racism discussed earlier in their mutual service to the perpetuation of capitalism. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2011 2011 -> Voices of the Old Sea Norman Lewis 2011 -> Malevil Robert Merle 2011 -> The Elephant Keeper’s Children Peter Hoeg 2011 -> Jv packet •Mars Colonization Affirmative •Mars Colonization Negative 2011 -> Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) omb no. 1024-0018 2011 -> All America Looks Up to Virginia;” Virginia and the Declaration of Independence 2011 -> Rao bulletin 2011 -> Christopher Columbus was born between 25 August and 31 October 1451 in 2011 -> The Battle of Frenchtown (1855), Washington Territory: the Political and Demographic Context rev 9/4/11 2011 -> Seti aff •seti neg •Asteroids Aff Download 3.16 Mb. Share with your friends:
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