A Call for Authentic Discourse: The Plague of Performative Activism in Debate

Rounds begin, and as your opponents read their Aff you panic. Scouring through the backfiles, you find a K you think is just as confusing to throw back at them.  Using some pre-prepped blocks, you win the round, and break. What’s stopping you from using that identity K again if it wins you rounds? After all, any advocacy is good advocacy right? Well, yes and no.

Performative activism refers to actions or behaviors that are done to appear supportive and or knowledgeable of a cause, rather than being motivated by genuine commitment or a sincere drive to make change. It focuses on surface-level actions, like posting on social media or participating in trends, that provide the illusion of activism but lack sustained effort for real change. In debate, this can manifest itself through the arguments run by debaters about identities, marginalized groups, ability, etc, that usually don’t identify with the group or issue the argument is advocating for. This becomes performative when debaters use these arguments without genuine interest or having not put any effort into engaging with the argument’s literature before reading it in round, but run it anyway. This happens more and more often in debate, and instead of not discussing these issues, debaters should learn how to stop hiding behind blocks and engage in the causes we advocate for outside of a round. Although most advocacy is valuable and should not be discouraged, we must take responsibility to be genuine when presenting these arguments. 

“Isn’t bringing up the argument at all a form of advocacy?” While bringing these issues to debate is important, doing so for the sheer sake of winning and calling it advocacy, might not be the right move.  Articulating these arguments can be challenging, and it becomes even more challenging when we haven’t researched any of what we're saying and don’t care about it in the first place. By not intentionally engaging with the content we read, we risk losing nuance. We risk spreading misinformation, or even harmful rhetoric to an issue or group. It is hindering the debate space because it fails to create meaningful improvements to the environment. 

The prevalence of surface-level activism within debate stifles the activities' potential to evolve into a genuine tool for youth to develop and research new ideas, instead of only serving as yet another trophy on the shelf. Becoming an expert and consuming all media about every argument we read in debate is impossible, but when you choose to bring a unique argument to the round that could have real world impacts on the way you, your friends, or judges perceive the world, you should probably care at least a little before you call on your opponents to care about it too. 

In comparison to other high school extracurricular activities, debate has a lot of diversity in those who participate in the activity and the arguments read, and most of these arguments’ literature you wouldn’t encounter until you took Philosophy 101 in college. For this reason, the importance of debate as an educational tool can not be emphasized enough. Debate is a privileged space where we not only get to educate ourselves and others, but get to do so while creating new friends, traveling, and winning shiny metals. We should take advantage of this unique space that rewards us for using best research practices as a way of becoming well-versed in the arguments we choose to read. In a world where research, cutting cards and reading literature can shape our worldview and amplify passion for activism, reading blocks straight down is a wasted opportunity.

So the next time you want to scroll through the backfiles to find an obscure argument that makes you look like an advocacy hero, think twice. Instead, try and make a real effort to understand the issues we discuss, ensuring that our arguments are informed rather than just rhetorical tools that secure us a W on tabroom.