Starting a student debate career in an inner-city high school, Ryan Wash and his team of African-American students really stick out in the debate community. This experience helps Wash when he entered at a collegiate level.
Wash and his teammates use “Louisville Project’s strategy”, they always ignored the pre-declared debate topic — or, allowed the topic to flavor the side they used while putting forth their true argument. They focus all their debate energy on directly attacking the entire concept of competitive debate, making it a racist and exclusionary practice. At the merits of an American energy policy debating, Wash dismissed both the topic and the tournament as wholly irrelevant when impoverished Americans who shared his background can barely scrape together the personal energy to live every day within an oppressive system set against their thriving.