thett3

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.

I found it very hard to vote for Con after his final rebuttal where all he did was assert that he won. Cons most powerful argument, that the trilemma itself was false, was effectively not extended in the final round. He mentioned it but ignored pros argument about how being a legend and being historical are not mutually exclusive. This should’ve been a slam dunk for Con because this argument is only really convincing to wavering Christians who have already attempted most of the premises, but he just didn’t do the things he needed to do to put it away.