By Amanda ValentovicSTAFF WRITER
The Cambridge Union Society beat representatives from Hofstra at the Second Annual Cambridge Union Society Debates in a debate on racial discrimination’s relation to police shootings.
The debate, held on Wednesday, April 1 in Monroe Hall, was titled “House Believes that Police Shootings of African-Americans Are Not About Racism.” This was the first of two debates hosted by the Hofstra Cultural Center, Departments of History and Rhetoric, and the Honors College.
Tim Squirrell and Ruby Holmes of the Cambridge Union Society, negated the argument, while Hofstra students Garrett Shum and Julia Metlay supported it.
Each of the four debaters had seven minutes to present their position. The audience voted their opinion via a text-messaging system before the debate began.
Shum opened the debate, arguing that there is not enough evidence to support that police shootings are about racism. “There aren’t statistics to back it up and there are other factors; racism is not the primary issue,” he said. Shum also pointed out in his speech that crime rates in specific areas are factors of police shootings.
Holmes combatted Shum’s position attributing racism to the judge and jury system. She also said that African-Americans are more likely to be stopped and searched and that drug crime rates were much higher than among other racial groups.
“Race makes you more likely to be arrested and class is important, especially compounded with being African-American,” Holmes said. She described the ways race is tied to which social class a person is in, and tied that back racism as the motivation for police shootings with African-American targets.
Metlay used statistics showing violent crime versus other crimes to illustrate her points. She also described what she believed to be a bigger problem in the police force.
“Police protect and enforce the law,” said Metlay. “They don’t arrest someone with the intent to put them in prison longer than someone else… Seeing all civilians as an enemy is a bigger problem,” said Metlay.
Holmes’s debate partner Squirrell used recent examples to defend his side of the argument. “Police are shooting black people specifically,” he said. He described the shooting of African-Americans by police as the “product of subconscious racism,” meaning that even if they did not think of it that way, racism was still a motivating factor.
“African-Americans have no confidence in the police,” Squirrell said. “And why would they?”
After both teams gave their rebuttals, a question and answer session was held where members of the audience could ask the opinions of the debaters. Another vote was then held to determine the winner. Squirrell and Holmes won by a vote of 19-8, with one undecided voter.
“Both sides came in prepared on both sides,” said Dr. Tomeka Robinson, the director of forensics and a rhetoric professor at Hofstra. Each team had to be prepared to fight for both sides of the argument and they flipped a coin right before the event started to decide who would argue what. “They both debated really well, and defended their sides,” said Robinson after the debate.
Metlay was not surprised about the outcome. “We knew what the question was going to be,” she said. “Fighting as the government, it’s hard to make the same impact because you have to check your privilege.” Metlay said had she been an audience member, she probably would not have voted for the side she argued. “But I would have wanted to show both sides,” she said.
