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The Morehouse College Speech and Debate team decided to withdraw from the national competition following white debaters racist comments during a tournament on zoom.
According to BET, the HBCU competed in the U.S. Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) earlier this month, but due to anti-Black remarks and taunts that came from white competitors during the fifth round of the tournament caused them to withdraw.
Apparently, rival teams mocked the HBCU team when it was their time to debate.
The virtual format of the tournament listed rules for debate teams to follow and required teams to have their cameras and microphones off. But when it was time for other teams to speak, not everyone followed the instructions, including students from the University of Hawaii, who laughed and made facial gestures at Morehouse. At one point, use of satire toward a Morehouse student’s voice was used.
“It would be a mistake to say this was about one round and one team,” said Morehouse debate coach Kenneth Newby told The Undefeated. “It was about anti-blackness issues within the British Parliamentary debate space.”
Points were given to other teams as judges ignored Morehouse’s arguments that were made during their round. The school says the arguments made during the topic of narrative gentrification were ignored because of the students’ background.
“The judges said they cared more about the Western stories that were being discussed, such as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’ as compared to native African stories that we talked about, like the Epic of Mwindo or Cherokee creations,” said Strickland.
The all-male HBCU made the tournament’s equity team—a team that monitors discrimination of any kind–aware of the situation. The group promised to address the matter in a statement the next round, but that never happened. They instead said they didn’t immediately speak on it because of an isolated issue with certain judges as “trainees” and didn’t want to mix the two problems.
Later in the week, the organizing committee released a statement and apologized for their lack of attention and action during the event. But Morehouse wasn’t buying it.
In a statement to The Undefeated, University of Hawaii spokesperson Meisenzahl said, “The office of Student Conduct is determining if there were violations of the campus code, which could lead to suspension or expulsion.”
Among other colleges that withdrew were Spelman College, Clemson, and Vanderbilt, causing the tournament to be canceled.
Spelman’s debate coach Robert Brown spoke out on the matter: “I don’t want you to think this is an isolated experience. But when white people in this space, they microagress black people.”
