Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Sep 2011 Open Access

African American Community Literacy and Urban Debate

Susan Cridland-Hughes

Abstract

This article examines an African American urban debate league in order to understand the types of literacy training youth in these leagues undergo. As the author notes, debate leagues are important sites of community literacy that are often overshadowed by the popular views of these leagues as highly competitive, predominantly white, and for the socially affluent. However, Cridland-Hughes shows that facilitators and organizers in urban debate settings often shape these leagues as sites of communal and cultural education and support. Her discussion of City Debate, one such organization enacting community literacy, illustrates the relationships built through these sites of rhetorical training and their connection to the development of black youth as critical thinkers, speakers, and citizens of tomorrow.

Journal
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Published
2011-09-01
DOI
10.59236/rjv11i1pp109-125
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Topics
rhetorical criticism argument literacy studies race and writing community literacy
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