Debate

What else? Anyway, the tournament is going alright. I won my first debate, am not sure about my third one, and lost my second one. The resolution right now is something like: in matters of US immigration policy, restrictions on the rights of non-citizens are consistent with democratic ideals. So my affirmative case is about increased crime rates in non-citizens and the money they cost the US economy. In my second debate, during my cross-ex's and every speech of mine, my judge was rolling her eyes, shaking her head, pounding her forehead with her fist, burying her face in her hands, and glaring at me. She wasn't doing this to my opponant. This was rather disconcerting, and definitely threw me off in my cross-ex, because I thought she was doing it because my arguments didn't make sense or were stupid, which just made my arguments make less sense because I was flustered. So after the cross-ex I decided that cross-ex didn't matter, and I was going to get it together and win the debate. I did a bit better after that. It was difficult though because I knew I had to maintain eye-contact with her, but every time I looked at her she was making some rude gesture, and it would make me stumble and lose my thoughts.
In the end, the debate if looked at objectively was probably close. My opponant dropped a ton of my arguments, but I said some confusing things about his which he exploited. I'm not sure who would have one (my opponant, this kid named Nick, was also very arrogant but that's irrelevant to what I'm saying).
At the end of the debate the judge told me that I was being racist, and that none of the figures in my case were true, and that I was putting this horrible blanket-statement lie on the resolution about how illegal citizens don't pay taxes and that wasn't true (I'm not sure how her logic was working for her to totally deny all the concrete figures I had of costs to the states and ways the non-citizens were not paying taxes). She said that my examples of high crime rates were irrelevent because it just mean that the courts in the US were also biased, elitist, and racist; it didn't mean there was more crime in non-citizens, just more convictions. She said that as a white teenager in Montana I probably didn't understand how racist and elitist I was being, but it was extremely offensive to her.
Anyway, she went on for five or ten minutes about how horribly racist my case was, and how she didn't agree with any of it and it was all giving her heartburn.

It kind of bothered me at the time. It kind of chipped at my confidence. I felt... shaken. But I realized a few minutes later after I had calmed down that 1. the resolution demands some form of racism to adequately affirm it 2. I agree way more with my neg case anyway and am definitely not racist 3. what the judge did was inappropriate and ultimately not my problem. I had to suffer in that she judged the round subjectively based on her own political opinions and not the actual skill with which we debated, but in the end it's her that's all worked up, not me, and I know that the things she said were not true.

Last year, a judge in Powell, Wyoming, spent ten minutes similarly abusing me, telling me all of the horrible things I had done wrong and horrible ways a debater. Right as I was starting to cry my coach came and rescued me because the bus was waiting for me. I was shaken severely though. My confidence was shattered. I was depressed and miserable.

A lot has changed in a year. Today, something like that happened and I was able to recover quickly, and now I really don't care. It's her problem if she's so opinionated about something that she won't even recognize I had no choice but to affirm the resolution, and semi-racist arguments were necessary. A year ago, I assumed the judge was right about all the things he said. Today, I assumed the judge was crazy. I can tell how much I've changed by just this one incident.

I called my coach and left her a message and then she left me a message, saying amidst a lot of supportive stuff about me not being racist that it was "just debate."
Just and debate should never be placed next to each other in any sort of sentence.
Just debate? What was she thinking? Debate is life!