Announcing the Final Examination of Inte'a DeShields

Date and Location: 

April 18, 2018 at 12 p.m.

LLC Conference Room, 422 Sherman Hall

Title: Spitfire: Framing White Rage in Response to Black Rhetoric

On March 26, 2014, for the first time in intercollegiate competitive debate history, two

African American women won top honors and were named champions of the Cross Examination Debate Associations national tournament. Using this particular incident, this dissertation explores the press reports published about this historic moment. Through a collection of 18 artifacts, this dissertation offers an emblematic example of how American culture emboldens the white gaze to impose a culture of oppression, intellectual repression of Black thought while victimizing and silencing Black women. This rhetorical analysis considers the 2014 Cross Examination Debate Associations final tournament outcome to explore press reports as an exemplary case of how American cultural standardization edifies the white gaze and its rage in reaction to Black youth and Black rhetoric.

Pulling from Whiteness Studies, this dissertation presents a history of intercollegiate

competitive debate alongside a history of the development of American culture to frame

unmarked whiteness as problematic. Citing this historic moment, this incident demonstrates how whiteness operates culturally and rhetorically to maintain a system of intellectual repression of Black youth. This project uses exnomination, abstract liberalism, American Africanism, and cooptation to frame the rhetoric of whiteness as rage and demonstrates how this rage acts as a violent terror tactic that passively and aggressively coopted the Debater's strategic use of the "nword" to create symbolic dissension that elevates the Black male debaters while simultaneously silencing the Black women debaters. It is the goal of this project to demonstrate how whiteness

operates, to resist its violent terror tactics.

Dissertation Committee: Craig Saper, Chair

Beverly Bickel

Kimberly Moffitt

Lester Spence

Christel Temple

The public is welcome to observe.