Beginnings

Can You Speak Your Mind? A letter to the teens of Teen Summit 2.0: The Remix I was 15 and still not feeling quite like a sophomore in high school. The seniors seemed impossibly cool, and I was not. I didn’t have a license yet—they drove to school. My hair still didn’t feel quite right. Everything about the place still felt new, and I still felt like I didn’t quite fit in. So, I joined the debate team because I thought if I could argue that I might get some of that swag that I saw in those kids. I could find my voice. And, unlike some schools, our debate team wasn’t the stereotypical nerd herd. It had a real cross section of students—the captain of the football team and some of his buddies, a champion math team member, the yearbook editor, student government members, and then me. I was already on track, in the band, in the church choir, in honors club—but I still felt out of sorts, like I was performing a version of myself I hadn’t fully chosen. When I joined debate, I had no idea what I was walking into. At the time, there was a topic about wetland and kids talked about weird things like watershed and spoke really fast. Even though they were talking about this stuff, they seemed to have an odd confidence—they were doing something called “research” and something called “writing an argument.” I felt so lost. But they were encouraging. They said: “We see something in you. Try it out.” So, I stuck with it. The first couple of times I competed, I almost passed out from nerves. I had to perform on the spot. But slowly, I started learning what it meant to construct a rebuttal—on the spot. How to logically align evidence to a main point, and eventually find what debaters call rhetorical flair—meaning, how do you put your own voice on the ideas? But, that’s when things got complicated… I could argue, but I couldn’t dialogue. I was learning how to think about an issue, write a position, find evidence, make a case—but I could not access my real voice. My voice said “fresh” and “dope” and “fly” and “word”—words that held worlds of meaning with my friends, in my community, but had no place in formal debate. I had to set that part of myself aside to compete. But that part of myself was everywhere—in the music, on BET, in my phone calls with my friends, the magazines we read. Yet, I had to deny that. And the strangest, most disorienting thing happened: my debate partner and I won the Minnesota Governor’s Cup, the highest and most prestigious award in the state. I felt exhilarated AND I felt silenced. Both, at the same time. I carried that contradiction with me for a long time—through college, through graduate school, through becoming a professor. It wasn’t until I started watching what was happening in our larger culture—the rise of fake news, rage bait, shouting matches dressed up as debate—that I finally understood what had been missing. My father, a man who spent his life building bridges between communities who grew up in inner-city Chicago to become a University of Chicago Business school graduate and corporate warrior, used to say that the most important thing a person can do is show up fully—not just with their credentials, but with their whole self. I started to understand what he meant. I realized that those words—the dopeness, the fly, the fresh—were as equally important as the academic voice I had developed. They weren’t less rigorous. They were differently rigorous. They carried my identity, my people’s history and my cultural rhythm and precision. And I began asking a new question, borrowed from hip-hop artist Guru of Gang Starr: could we teach society to “Flip the Script”? People can take sides—but could they actually see the other side? Not just acknowledge it, but say it, explain it, feel it? And if we practiced flipping the script—really practiced it—would it prepare our collective minds for better civic performance? Would flipping the script actually flip the script on how we talk to each other as a democracy? This is why Teen Summit 2.0 begins with debate as dialogue and this is why we chose so many of you who are not from the same backgrounds. Young people need to see that flipping the script is not just a rhetorical move, a stroke of rap genius; it is a cognitive skill that protects democracy. It is the ability to come to any challenging social question with the facts, and not get so rooted in your own position that you lose the ability to listen. And here’s the thing: you can do this in your own language. You can say “That’s sus, bro” and still build a bulletproof argument. You can ask for “receipts” without apologizing for demanding evidence. You can ask “What’s the tea”, and still get the story. Your voice—the full version of it, not the trimmed-down version you perform for rooms that weren’t built for you—is exactly the voice this moment needs. We saw something in you before you fully saw it in yourself. Teen Summit is the space that is built for you, and you only. That’s not an accident. You were chosen for a reason. Maybe the same reason someone once told a 15-year-old girl with not-quite-right hair to try it out and stick with it. So, let’s flip the script, y’all. Welcome to your voice. Welcome to Teen Summit 2.0: The Remix. Civitas, Dr. Malaika McKee Chancellor’s Fellow, Office of Public Engagement Executive Producer & Principal Investigator, Teen Summit 2.0: The Remix Director, Communiversity Public Media Project, College of Education Assistant Professor, Department of Education Policy Organization & Leadership