Last Update - Fri Jan 17 2025
HWS RR 2020 (Round Robin) Round 2, Room A Eva-Marie Quinones 83, 83 OO | LO Society Youtube Link (Timestampped):Here Introduction Three points: Framing Rebuttal: The second thing then is how you end up getting this interaction between socially negative stereotypes and these positive stereotypes. Recognize that in either world, society will likely continue to voice negative stereotypes on these children. We accept that—that's exogenous to the debate. What changes is how parents respond to these social narratives. In Gov's world, parents say that these stereotypes are false by pursuing individualistic narratives of success, like "Asian children are smart," based on a very narrow perception of success. We think that this can be equally as negative if a child doesn't conform to those stereotypes—and I'll get to that more in my substantive. But even if the child does conform to these stereotypes and you have a nerdy Asian kid, I think that this ends up being really harmful because those stereotypes often aren't mutually exclusive with the negative ones. For example, an Asian girl may think, "I am nerdy, and I am not pretty," and combine both the positive and the negative stereotypes. In our world, we eschew all stereotypes as a whole, which means that children are more likely to reject all stereotypes because they view individuals as not fitting into a group mold. This is because their parents aren't conditioning them to accept this group mold. I’ll take a POI from Opening: Response 1st Argument The stress on positive stereotypes can lead to harmful behaviors in and of itself to try to fulfill that stereotype when the child isn't naturally inclined to it. This is how you see kids overstressing results, using study drugs, or cheating on exams. They may not be necessarily academically inclined 100% on that test or else their parents won't love them, or they're a failure as an Asian student, etc. People are always going to be comparing them to their stereotype, and their ability to resist that stereotype hinges on the extent to which the stereotype is accepted. So it's harmful to their mental health and to their ability to pursue self-actualization as a whole. 2. Conformity at the Cost of Other Interests I also think that there's also a dynamic of competition with a lot of these very uh like uh values like being good at sports being good at academics etc. Being the smartest, the most athletic that creates a dynamic of competition with other minority children that would otherwise be your friends .We think that this is especially harmful when children in school systems are likely to experience racism and these children would be like their friend group in the first place. 3. Unhealthy Parent-Child Relationship POI from CG: "How exactly are parents going to defeat these stereotypes that everyone agrees are entrenched in society? Do they just tell them it's not true and the child believes it?" These societal stereotypes are going to exist in either world. But in like parents have a unique ability to shape what their child views stereotypes as and whether they view stereotypes as valid or not. When parents opt into a world of positive stereotyping that says that stereotyping as a whole is a valid exercise in identifying and defining oneself we think that's really harmful. Political Advocacy: 1. First we say that you disadvantage the children of other minority groups because of the positive stereotype of one group hurting another group. It creates this bootstraps narrative in which success without public intervention to remedy extensive inequalities of poc is possible. think of like how the model minority narrative is being used against the blacks community. We say that intergroup solidarity is the most important value for progress because the only way that you reach a voting majority is via solidarity since each group is in itself a minority. 2. The second thing we say is that you create a perception in which the group issues on the aggregate are swept under the rug because of this narrative surrounding a few successful figures in the whole community like for example chinese americans have the highest rate of illiteracy and poverty in new york city but because of the model minority uh like uh stereotype you're never able to actually get poverty alleviation never able to get a redress to illiteracy. 3. The third thing we say is that you create intergroup conflict because those that don't perform in accordance with the positive stereotype are like in the best case for gov personally failing and in the worst case- undeserving of help uh because they're bringing shame to the whole group because of this we see that you end up like reducing uh inter-minority solidarity you end up getting less beneficial political outcomes you see less progress for the individual and for the group as a whole Proud to oppose.
Speaker, conforming to positive stereotypes is still conforming to an ultimately prejudicial group perception that was created and is enforced to perpetuate ethnic inequalities and harms a child's ability to achieve success after a safe, nurturing childhood.
First, on how this is bad for the children.
Second, on how it fosters an unhealthy parent-child relationship.
Third, on how it lessens a group's ability to advocate for itself and mitigate racial inequalities.
One piece of framing before I get into some rebuttal: I think that our world is one in which parents tell their kids, "Don't worry about what you should be good at." They actively do not accept any stereotypes, positive or negative, and they just tell children, "Do what you love." Like, don't fit into any sort of stereotype—you don't have to be nerdy if you're Asian; you don't have to be hard-working if you're Hispanic; you don't have to be good at sports if you're African-American. Right ? Okay, rebuttal then.
The first thing that OG says is that children are going to be less likely to study hard when you don't inculcate these values. I think that this is super uncharitable. Parents can easily say that hard work is good on our side of the house. We're not telling parents to tell their kids to be lazy, bad at sports, or not work out, etc. We're just saying that parents should say that hard work is good, rather than, "You should work hard because you are Asian," or "Asian students do well, therefore you should be doing well in school." There shouldn't be that link between a positive value and your race or ethnic identification. We're still saying that all of these positive values are things that parents can teach their children.
POI
"But even if parents tell their children to work hard, if they associate this hard work with a lot of negative and derogatory stereotypes, they're just less likely to do this."
Yeah, so I don't think that we're associating hard work with negative or derogatory stereotypes. We're just saying hard work is a value, a good value, that parents should inculcate in their children. Being physically fit is a value; parents should tell their children that they should exercise or eat healthy, things like that. But they should never link it to race. You don't have to tell an Asian child, "You can't be smart or hard-working because you're Asian," but you also shouldn't tell a child, "You should be hard-working because you're Asian." I think that's pretty self-evident.
Going into my Substantive then:
1. We say, this leads to Conformist pressures for children in a way that is deeply unhealthy for their self-esteem and their ability to pursue what they love. Most people don't live up to stereotypes, so they end up constantly comparing themselves to something they can't stack up to. This is really bad for their mental health because they'll always feel like a failure if they're not in the NBA or they're not the debate champion.
You start to conform to the stereotype at the cost of all other interests you have. Sports, is like maybe a tenth of all available extracurriculars. There is no reason to presume more than like 10% of black kids might be interested in sports. But now you’re told that you should be good at sports, that the ideal African American kid should be good at sports They're likely to abandon what they're passionate about, doing something they're A) worse at and B) don't like as much
The second thing then is that this fosters an unhealthy parent-child relationship. Right, I think that parents are going to be pushing children towards specific traits and behaviors if you're encouraging these positive stereotypes. I think that compromises their ability to become a trusted resource for the child. Because they think that their parents are going to be disappointed in them if they don't pursue that path. That's really harmful because these children are going to like feel like they have nothing left to lose, that they're already a disappointment if they don't live up to that and rebel but they're also just like less comfortable and less likely to have a close relationship with their parents and seek comfort in that relationship.
Final thing i want to talk about then is how this lessens a group's ability to advocate for itself politically by creating a stereotype of overperformance