One of the world's best oralists and seven-time international debating champion has quit the sport — and not for debatable reasons.

Monash University student Joel Law has been a finalist at all major Australian Debating Tournaments, a grand finalist at the World Universities Debating Championship, two-time finalist at the Australian British Parliamentary Debating Championships and an Australasian and Southern African Universities debating championships adjudicator. That's quite the resume. 

Yet Law says those rankings were “in spite of the racism — not because racism doesn't exist”.

Law, from Singapore, has a degree in international relations from Cambridge, and is in their fifth year of law at Monash. 

They placed eighth and seventh in the previous editions of their final tournament, the Australasian Women and Gender Minorities Debating Championship (or AWGMDC).

“Arguably, the reason why I was able to do well for both editions is because I've always had people of colour judging me. This year it was just white people. Not only did I not break the top 10; I was ranked 26,” Law says.

“I really went to town on [the other teams] so none of them thought that they stood a chance. But all three other teams were able to proceed to the quarterfinals, only my team died.” 

An AWGMDC report by Alexis Mcharo, the Australian Debating Councils's people-of-colour (POC) officer and convener of the competition, found a lack of adjudicator diversity led to POC debaters being consistently underscored.

Despite almost all Asian pros being admitted to the competition below their grade and being recognised as novices, only eight POCs made the top 30. 

The low POC representation in debating finals is often justified along the following lines: that Australian institutions, comprised of mostly Anglo Australians, are thought to produce a higher level of debaters.

But with three of the four teams at the international debating grand final last year from Asian institutions, Law says, this is “straight up blatant rubbish”.

Abigail Clark, Law’s debating partner, says Law was forced to drop out of the tournament prior to the AWGMDC last September because of another instance of accent bias. 

Clark says the adjudicator scrutinised Law  for missing points and poor structure. 

“When I was hearing the adjudication, my face dropped. It was gut-wrenching because immediately I thought this is not right,” Clark says. 

“Joel is literally one of the best speakers in the world. It is true; there is no chance that their structure was just bad," she says. 

"There was no chance that they weren't delivering points. There was no chance that their clarity was bad … It's not like they can't take a loss," she says.

“Joel has a Singaporean accent, and what happens is when you have a non-Australian accent you all of a sudden sound unsure if you speak slowly or you speak fast, and they say you're convoluted.”

She says it became clear among the AWGMDC debaters there was no factual basis for the adjudication and that Law had been discriminated against. 

“We know that accent has a relationship with perceived credibility, and if you’re consistently getting low speaker scores, particularly from adjudicators who are not POCs, you might be experiencing accent bias."

Dr Sylvia Ang, a lecturer in sociology at Monash, says her research shows Australian and British accents are perceived as superior to other accents, even if English is a first language. 

“This assumption is built on the dominance of Anglo-Celtic populations in Australia and a lack of understanding that Australians with non-dominant accents often do so because they know multiple languages — which should really be seen as an advantage,” Ang says.

“Australia is fantasised as a place in which white superiority ‘should reign supreme’," she says.

“It does not surprise me that racism exists in multiple forms and is deeply embedded in Australian society.”

A 2019 study in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism named this phenomenon "linguistic racism", which reflects a broader issue of ethnic accents being perceived as inferior.

Ang says Singaporean students and students from less wealthy, multilingual and non-majoirty-white countries are commonly perceived as using less desirable forms of English and encounter linguistic racism.

She quoted a 2021 BBC article that states:

“A particular status is attached to English that sounds as if it comes from countries that are wealthy, majority white and mostly monolingual. According to this limited view, multilingual countries like Nigeria and Singapore have less ‘legitimate’ and desirable forms of English (even though English is an official language in both)."

As Ang points out, Australia may have abandoned the White Australia Policy many years ago, "but racism is still endemic against people of colour, finding different kinds of scapegoats at each turn".

“Think about racism against Muslims post-9/11, against Asians and the Chinese during COVID-19, and of course, ongoing racism against Aboriginal people.”

Clark says it was “disheartening” to see many peers forced out of spaces they love because of consistent discrimination.

“I step back, and I look at this and I see some of the most intelligent, passionate people and we’re just not getting it right, and it makes me think, why do I want to contribute to something that’s racist?”

Law says every non-POC with whom they have debated has witnessed firsthand the attacks on their norms, people ignoring them and the “horrifying” number of people who are unwilling to credit their ideas.

“Every tournament that I go to in Australia, there is feedback that will be racially tinged, that I speak in a way that 'isn’t Australian enough', which is appalling,” Law says. 

“I'm not a random nobody; despite the respect, they still do this, so imagine what this is like for the ordinary POC speaker. The answer is: horrendous.”

Ang says language is one of the many justifications people use to mark another person as different and inferior. 

“English is my first language and I have a Masters and PhD from the University of Melbourne and I still meet white people who speak to me loudly with exaggerated pronunciation, having presumed I can't understand English, just because of the way I look.”