Finding Their Voices

Jermol Jupiter, left, and Ignacio Evans in an alley near Jermol's house in Baltimore. (Scott Gregory Robinson)

"These debaters have infected the normal circuit," says Melissa Wade, who founded the first Urban Debate League in Atlanta in 1985 and who runs the 37-year-old Emory National Debate Institute, a summer debate camp for high- and middle-schoolers. "The performance debate students make the argument that traditional research was speaking for the other, the powerful in society, but their own voice also has to be heard. And this organic intellectual voice from a community that is under-represented and dismissed needs to play out in the vernacular of that group -- so hip-hop is a legitimate way the black culture might choose to express itself." Still, Wade says, all of these students are well-versed in traditional debate before they begin deconstructing it -- and plenty of them excel at this form.

Whatever style the urban debaters choose to adopt, their debate training has some unexpected results.

"When we introduce an Urban Debate League program in a city, about half the principals usually show up in my office or at a tournament wondering what's going on with their students," Wade says. "They can't understand why all these students are suddenly in their office demanding computers and AP classes and money to go to tournaments."

The debaters' travel to other parts of the country exposes them to the "educational apartheid" in this nation, she says. "They go back to their high schools and start demanding that the asbestos get removed from the ceilings and that a calculus class be offered so they can compete for college admission. They want to be lawyers and politicians and activists, and go back to their community and demand changes."

So, debate can be dangerous?

Wade gives a sly smile. "Absolutely."

BACK IN ATLANTA, IGGY STANDS IN FRONT OF HIS WELL-HEELED OPPONENTS from Milwaukee in a pair of baggy jeans and a T-shirt bearing a Tootsie Roll logo. His hair, a Mohawk that is growing out, coalesces on the top of his head like a peaked cap. He has a wide smile and the easy confidence that comes from knowing he can talk his way out of a paper bag. He hitches up his jeans slightly, turns to address the two judges (college students from nearby Emory University) and lapses into debate jargon to map out for the judges what direction his arguments will take.

"First, we're going to go solvency. Then federalism dis-ad. Then their T. And then back on case," he says.

For layfolks, this means he plans to address an argument about whether his and Jermol's plan solves the problem of improving society through more volunteerism, an argument about the separation of state and federal powers when it comes to implementing and funding volunteer programs, a technical argument about the wording of the topic, and then arguments about why a plan is needed to address the prison crisis and whether their plan solves the problem.

The judges nod and make some notes on the meticulous flowcharts they keep to track which arguments have been made and whether the opposing team has addressed them.

Iggy pauses, waiting for the judges to finish and to make sure all eyes in the room are upon him. Unlike Jermol -- whose mission in the opening arguments require him to cram as much information as he can into a short time; who invokes Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Paulo Freire and a slew of stats to back his assertions; who regularly practices speed-reading by reading texts aloud backward, or with a pencil in his mouth, or with an added vowel between each word -- Iggy opts for drama. He is a performer who likes playing his audience and borrows his style from the best of preachers, beginning slow and soft and building to a climax of impassioned exhortation. During one round at this tournament, he will climb on a desk to make a point. During another, he will lie on the ground and say to his opponents, "Go ahead, oppressors! Oppress me." In Baltimore, he once used a pair of toy handcuffs to hook his opponents to a desk, so they could appreciate a prisoner's plight, then he moved the desk around so they understood how it felt to be deprived of free will. (Surprisingly, Iggy and Jermol won that round.) But right now, in the first round of this tournament, Iggy assumes a pleasant, conversational tone to present some basics.

"Our plan will enrich the community and improve society," he says. "Adopting an each-one-teach-one program like the Delancey Street model means those coming out of prison are going to learn from other ex-incarcerated people how to hold a job and do better for themselves. We are breaking down stereotypes that ex-cons can't do without the system."