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Uh racism. It’s in our school. It’s in the Anchorage School District. It’s in the university systems. It’s everywhere.
It’s at the hospitals that we go to but yet there is no mechanism that allows us to deal with that because it’s institutionalized. It’s selenite.
When you have a preference based on race you create something called infringement. If I’m a racist, I’m going to be a racist, ladies and gentlemen.
But what’s important is how you feed my racist tendencies. Now let’s say I did get to where I am today because I am brown
Let’s just say that that happened. It is very easy for a racist to look at me and say you didn’t earn that.
It was handed to you. It was a handout. Where was the effort you put to get anything you have today?
I’m really pleased with what we did. I think what we are here to do is not necessarily to beat each other with arguments like
we would in sort of a competitive debate setting. We’re really just here to help people think about the issues and think both sides.
And of course, I like to think that we did better since that was the side I was on but that’s not really what it’s about.
It’s just about both sides presenting the material, getting people to think about that material and evaluate the sort of convictions that they had.
And I say just based upon the comments that people have been giving us that we did a very good job of sort of promoting that type of discourse and that type of thought.
Yeah I think so. Because I think when you watch a formal debate, all the ideas get out on the table and let’s say you had an inkling of an idea when you walked into the room
sometimes listening to people talk helps you develop that idea so you find your voice and are less afraid to ask questions about that or start discussion
And sometimes it just takes people having a debate to let other people feel comfortable expressing a passionate opinion or just an inkling of an opinion the might have had walking in to the debate.
I think you have to find the merits in the arguments, like I think it is really easy to be afraid of arguing in favor of ending race based systems if you don’t take a closer
um sort of examination of what they are asking you to look like. Like if racism isn’t the problem, then what is?
Maybe it social economic status. And I think it’s really easy to make arguments of the basics and not be afraid of looking like a racist.
Because you’re saying like there’s like something deeper here and maybe something more and your personal convictions are preventing me to seeing that something more.
I think it can be hard and it can be uncomfortable. But when you feel uncomfortable that’s when you have to reach deep and really examine what it is really going on
so you can make arguments that are just hampering on racist or whatever people expect. You know people are against ending race based preference systems in the state.
I think that there’s, I think Alaska unique because we are such a new state. And I do think racism is particular a big problem.
I mean I you just listen to the language that’s used to describe groups like Alaska Natives it is very clear there is some very negative stereotypes that exist.
And people apply them very liberally to that group of people. And I like think it is so typical that people say
say “oh well, their native so their just drunk” and no one thinks anything of it and people are like “oh yeah that’s funny” but it’s really not.
And I think that in Alaska because of the climate that exists um racism is alive and I think even with the example of Department of Justice.
Like how can you as a state and be legitimate and in terms of being the governing body and saying we’re going to provide laws to citizens and know they can’t read and still say it is an acceptable form in participation the political process.
. And I say Alaska Natives are really, their fight for equality started only recently like 50 year ago whereas the United States, 100 years since reconstruction.
Like in terms of the civil rights movement. Now like how long it’s been they had a much longer to argue why equality ought to be given to them and you shouldn’t view them differently.
I think racism whether it be blatant or institutional is very much alive in society whether you like it or not.
By addressing this in our law schools and looking to promote more Africana American lawyers we get more African American judges.
The bar and the bench will both become more diverse and we will have benefits of equality to the population, in doing so.
I think it is pretty clear that things are not solved and the point is 14% of our population is Africana American. Only 3.9% lawyers and 3.8% of judges are um themselves.
It’s weird because when we debate we have, we find out 20 minutes before the rounds starts what room we’re going to be debating in and what position is in the round.
And then 15 minutes before the round starts we find out what topic we are debating against. So we find out like we’re like the 2nd team in favorite of it and like 5 minutes later
they put it up on a big projector and everybody find out what it is we are debating. So in 15 min to sort of go through our big pile of paper books, because you can’t use electronic research.
Go through in case we don’t know about something and come up with a case and generate a position and then you have that long to figure out what you’re going to say and how to say it.
But in these things we find out like a couple days ahead of time. What the topics is going to be so you do a bunch of reading and have so much time
so you feel obligated like try to plan out what you’re going to say but it never works as good. And I feel like my organization and examples tend to be better when going more off the cuff
and so when I write stuff down, and I try to say just what I wrote down and I get distracted sometimes looking out the corner of my eye to figure out what I’m supposed to be saying.
So, that’s my biggest frustration but all in all. I thought we had a good exhibition of issues
and we hit on most of the major points. Things reflected a lot on the panels talked about we talked about in the debate, so that’s always a good thing.
The panel goes off on these different directions, I’m like we missed the issue, and that’s never a good thing. So I was pretty happy with it.
I think that uh we talked about sort of what really the impact of like race is. Um I thought Bret hit a lot of the stuff that came from several of the panelist
and their talking about sort of the discrimination gradient uh in institutions and in society. Whether or not it is fully conscious.
And um I thought the government did a good job talking about sort of how we can end genders of racism because of these policies
and how even the students who are benefiting from them can feel like they are worthless. So like I think on both sides we hit the major points. And I thought it was a good talk
You get really use to it pretty quickly. I think the important thing to recognize is that any of the debate topics they give us we very rarely debate a topic
for which there is not a legitimate argue to be made for one side, for both sides. Um so even if I feel very strongly that one side is correct I like still feel like my own beliefs in my position are stronger
if I can fully embrace and recognize the rational of the other side. Recognize that they have legitimate values with legitimate goals
um that’s there some rationale in how their seeking to go about them. And ultimately if I can understand all of those things
and still prefer my way and say my goals are more important and my value hierarchy is better suited and perhaps I value personal right more than our military security and this sort of thing is more important to me.
If I can understand why they value what they value and still hold what I value I think debating the contrary side of what you believe is one of the best exercises you can get
Absolutely I think that in many regards in like racism is a lot of worse in Alaska with regards to Alaska Native population. Um and it’s like we get instances where people talk about a lot
where there’s people in downtown shooting Alaska Native people with a paintball gun. Um I don’t think that’s typical but I do think that um the fact of
of high rate of homelessness and alcoholism among Alaska Native population gives a lot of people especially in the cities a really bad perception of those people. As well as high crime rates and stuff in rural communities
And some regards the high crime rates are like partly… a big way our fault. We deny them the legal authority to deal with these issues on their own.
Um we have force them to live like their… we made it legally obligatory to live certain lifestyles. We introduced many of these ills ourselves
and then think badly of them when they have like high rates of domestic violence and stuff. And I think whether or not we consider ourselves to be racist or we think we don’t like Alaska Native people.
I think there I a lot of people who have really harmful stereotypes and perceptions. Um I feel like maybe less well investigated, its less well known and the fact like Africans were enslaved by Europeans for a long time
makes everybody really aware of that and like people think of it a lot more, whereas with Alaskan Natives like maybe nobody had a problem with them but there’s these negative stereotypes that still exist.
We might almost pity them at times. And I think that can be very harmful. So I think like having more Alaskan Natives students in schools really work hard and try to some very valuable things.
Take some classes with them and find out about their experiences and just like their normal people and that can be really valuable and can help out a lot.