The Confederate Flag

Judge: ColeTrain
Win awarded to: Blackflag
Reasoning:
Stag had more validity to his arguments. He explained how the flag, by itself is simply cloth, and holds no value, but the feelings and history attached to it are something to be preserved. Also, Taniya made some pretty bold and blatant claims, some of which proved to be false with a simple Google search.

Feedback:
Stag: Try refuting more of your opponent's arguments. Attack her correlation between the Holocaust and slavery.
Taniya: Make sure you have evidence to back your claims, false information can cost you the debate.

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Judge: nzlockie    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: Blackflag
Reasoning:
This was a great debate. I read it several times and thoroughly enjoyed it each time. It helped that both sides gave the impression of being passionate about their side while still giving their opponent's due respect. Hats off to both debaters.

In my view PRO wins this debate for the following reasons:
His case was essentially that the flag represented far more than a pro-slavery stance. I felt that he proved this by citing his views on the meaning behind the Civil War. These views were never negated or even seriously contended by CON which means that they stand.
Given that I am left convinced that the Civil war represented a great injustice in the minds of the South, it is a strong case that they should be allowed the right to remember that heritage by flying their flag.
CON's strongest argument against this was that the flag ALSO represented a great injustice in the minds of African-Americans. This point was made strongly, however CON needed to address some of the points that PRO brought up. The fact that the confederate flag was such a poke in the eye, and yet the Ethiopian one is not made her point look confused and ill-thought out.
CON also needed to explain to me why I should favour the feelings of one people group over the feelings of another. From the evidence given here, it seems that BOTH parties were seriously aggrieved.

CON also attacked the relevance of the flag today. This was also a divided argument. At one point CON was arguing that the flag held so MUCH meaning and was flown everywhere in the South, even to the point of NOT flying the current American flag; and then she argued that it was antiquated and irrelevant. These points may have been able to be resolved, but compared to PRO argument, it just came off weaker.

In the end PRO's argument in the defence of the status quo was more consistent than CON's argument for change and his points held more substance. CON made me sympathise with the position that African Americans find themselves in today, but to convince me that that position required civil liberties to be removed from ANOTHER group, she needed to do more to convince me that the flag represented only the racist hurtful viewpoint held by the slavers.

Feedback:
PRO: Great debate. Nice tone, good points and most importantly, you completed every round!
I would have liked to see you attack some of CON's assertions more. There were several points stated that looked open to attack and you let them slide.
Ultimately her attack was that slavery was SO hurtful, that the only just solution was to deprive Southerners of their right to fly their flag. I think you could have done more to support the idea that the confederate flag is flown in conjunction with the Union flag, showing that modern day Southerners are proud of their country but never want to forget their past.
You could have shown pictures of the actual KKK flags, and even show the way they tend to deface the confederate flag when they fly it in order to separate those bigots from the Southerners who fly for pride in their heritage.

For me, your strongest point was your interpretation of why the Civil war started, and the fact that the Confederacy played by the book and then effectively got forced back into the Union. This was a great argument and clearly put. It was never contested, in fact CON supported it a little in Round two, but for such a great argument, you could have hammered me over the head with it a bit more. Make the South look like more of a victim.

CON: First up, this debate was really confusing for me because it was very apparent that you were both arguing against different flags. PRO opened with a picture of the Flag of the Confederacy, so I logically thought this is what you were debating. Then you finished with the picture of the Confederate Battle Flag - a completely different flag.
It made me question your case even more. It's one thing to say the Southerners can't fly one flag, but are you saying that they can't fly ANY flags to recognise their roots?
You needed to be more clear about this. If your opponent sets a definition you're not happy about, call him on it straight away.

Your over all message needed more consistency. It was really hard for me to over look the obvious biases in your arguments. The South can't fly a flag from their heritage because they are American. Does that mean that all those Americans that fly Irish or Mexican or Italian flags can't fly the flags from their heritage either?
I can't argue PRO's case for him so I didn't give him credit for these apparent gaps in your argument, but my advice would be to watch for these kinds of things in the future.

Congratulations on this debate, it was a great first hit out.

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1 user rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: admin    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: Taniya Smith
Reasoning:
Brief summary of the debate as I saw it:
> Pro's first speech told me that the flag had heritage, which is good for the nation as a source of pride and constructive dialogue.
> Con's first speech told me that this heritage was negative because it advocated slavery, which was horrible
> I was confused by pro's next speech. After some thought, I think pro was trying to advocate two separate arguments, though the structure here didn't make things especially easy to follow. First, pro argued that differences of opinion regarding a "piece of cloth" don't invalidate that cloth's utility. Second, pro argued that africans were themselves to blame for slavery. Either way, each of these arguments is inherently problematic, probably because they weren't fleshed out a lot. The first argument can be said about literally anything, while the second is a strawman of con's argument.
> Con's second speech seemed to be designed to distinguish pride in a flag, versus appreciating heritage. I can understand the reasoning that led to this, but I felt this was a strategic mistake, as the point had already been adequately dealt with. Con did do well to catch pro on the strawman.
> Given con's attention to the strawman, it comes as no surprise that pro pushed his other rebuttal hard in this round, arguing that differences of opinion regarding a flag still don't invalidate its utility - some people may love it, others may ignore it. Finally, pro generated a last-round minor point about moving forward as a society by embracing history rather than ignoring it.
> In con's final round, they examined the harms in more depth of a divisive flag, and spun around pro's little last-round thing into a sort of "I don't want our children to embrace parts of history that really sucked for many people". Unfortunately most of this material, while great, came FAR too late in the debate for it to have any weight. This is basic round 1 stuff.

I think therefore, at the end of the debate, a few things are relatively apparent: first, that many people like the flag, and that many people don't. Ultimately, pro's job (as the bearer of the burden of proof), in such a debate, was to convince me that the harms of this were outweighed by the positives of respecting that flag. To that end I saw this as a judgment resolution.

Ultimately, I agreed that racism is seriously harmful. Pro's key counter-point was that the flag isn't really a symbol of racism any more than another flag, but pro's argument all along had been that perceptions of a symbol of racism are harmful, regardless of how accurate those perceptions might be. However, con failed to answer pro's second key counter-point, that flags can be safely ignored, particularly directly - con did have good analysis on this, but it came in the final round of all places. Therefore while I agreed that the flag was a symbol of racism, I couldn't weigh the impacts too strongly here.

I also agreed that limiting freedom of expression and heritage was harmful. Con's key counter-point mirrored pro's - there were more appropriate ways of demonstrating the same thing (ie flying together with the union flag). To a significant degree, I think pro undermined their own argument the worst though, as they argued that our choice on how to perceive a flag tells us its utility to us. That argument undermined the strength of the flag as a symbol. I liked the Michigan analogy (ie, in Michigan it is cared about a lot, outside of it not so much) but that works two ways. If a flag is a strong symbol then it cannot be safely ignored by either group, while on the other hand if the flag is a weak symbol then there's no problem with con's case.

So where does that leave us?

I decided this debate on the basis of burden of proof. I was not convinced by con that the flag was particularly more negative than positive, but neither was I convinced by pro of its opposite. Therefore I award this win to con.

Feedback:
Both of you were pretty similar, so I have similar kinds of things to say:

NARRATIVE
I say this is almost every debate feedback and very rarely do people actually listen to me. Both sides had great narrative in their respective final rounds. I wish I could have put more weight into the tears shed by pro for Michigan, or the struggles of black people con enlightened me on. Unfortunately this narrative all came way too late in the debate. Contrast that with your first rounds. First rounds were all formal and removed and kinda stoic sounding. Passion and emotion goes a long way in charged topics like this. Both sides clearly had it, but it needed to come out clearly.

STRUCTURE
Give your arguments names. This will help me, as a judge, identify different points and how you're using them. For both sides, I had to read between the lines a lot to understand what was being argued when, and when you'd moved on to a new point. Within points, notwithstanding narrative material, if you do have a number of points and/or subpoints, please number them. This both helps me keep track, and also makes it simple to identify which points you consider to be the most important to the debate. Don't be afraid to say "this debate is about..." and tell me.

REBUTTAL
When you do it, make it as simple as possible for me to understand what specific claim of your opponent you are rebutting. I should not have to go back to check myself. This doesn't mean you have to quote your opponent, but it does mean I should be able to follow everything clearly. In particular for this debate, it was especially unclear which material was substantive, and which was rebuttal. I get that integrating rebuttal is awesome, but it should be signposted for me.

As for the actual substance of the points on both sides, there was little disappointment. There was some nice analysis. But it was in all the wrong places. Like I've said too many times, round 3 in this debate should have been round 1 or 2. That clash needs to happen early, and then that can lead on to more decent counter-arguments. The first round of this debate left much to be desired, and the second round was ok-ish.

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1 user rated this judgement as biased
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Judge: Diarrhea Yogurt
Win awarded to: Blackflag