Campus Republicans at the University of California Berkeley have reportedly received threats after creating a novel form of protests against California schools considering race in admissions. The students created a sale of baked goods priced according to their race: white men for $2.00, Asian men for $1.50, Latino men for $1.00, black men for $0.75 and Native American men for $0.25. All women will get $0.25 off those prices.
The Associated Students of the University of California, held an emergency Senate meeting late Sunday to pass a resolution that “condemns the use of discrimination whether it is in satire or in seriousness by any student group.”
I have difficulty with a condemnation (and certainly physical threats by some individuals) over satire. There is a good faith disagreement over race criteria in admissions. This group found a way to dramatize the unfairness and arbitrariness of such policies. It is not actual discrimination but a satire to drive home their point. What do you think?
UPDATE: if the bake sale was not a hit with some people as a political idea, it proved a great marketing ideal. The bake sale sold out.
Source: CNN
http://news.salon.com/2011/10/05/the_unfree_speech_movement/singleton/
Gary Kamiya, co-founder of Salon, writes:
Obama’s crucial point was that the anger and fear of both blacks and whites was legitimate. On the one hand, whites needed to recognize that racial discrimination, past and present, did “not just exist in the minds of black people,” but was a real issue that had to be addressed. But blacks, too, needed to break out of their programmed responses to white grievances. “[T]o wish away the resentments of white Americans, to dismiss them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing that they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.”
Obama’s message has apparently not gotten through to the University of California at Berkeley. As the hysterical reaction to a recent “Diversity Bake Sale” shows, the place that gave birth to the Free Speech Movement (and my alma mater) is not capable of talking freely about race.
Last week, the U.C. Berkeley College Republicans – not a group I ever thought I would find myself defending — staged what they called an “Increase Diversity Bake Sale,” to protest a bill, S.B. 185, that would allow public California universities to consider race, ethnicity and gender in admissions. The bill, which Gov. Jerry Brown has indicated he may sign, is an attempt to get around Proposition 209, which California voters passed in 1996 and which prohibited preferential treatment of minorities by the state.
In the bake sale, cupcakes were offered at different prices to different racial and ethnic groups. For whites, the price was $2; for Asians, $1.50; for Latinos, $1; for Native Americans, 75 cents. Women got an additional 25 cents off.
The cupcake sale was an obvious, and dead-on, political satire. The purpose of S.B. 185 is to give “underrepresented minorities” – blacks and Latinos – preference in admissions. To comply with U.S. Supreme Court rulings outlawing racial preferences in college admissions, the bill disingenuously asserts that it will not give such preferences, but that is an obvious ruse: Its author, state Sen. Ed Hernandez, has stated that its purpose is to increase black and Latino enrollment at California public universities. If it did not give those groups an advantage in admissions, it would be pointless. The Academic Senate of the University of California recognized this in a letter to the U.C. administration recommending that the university remain neutral on the bill. The bill’s intention is to give blacks and Latinos a discounted admission to California colleges. The bake sale, which offered discounted cupcakes to blacks and Latinos, is an exact equivalent. If the bake sale is offensive, then racial preferences themselves are offensive.
Regardless of your position on affirmative action, the bake sale was completely within the bounds of acceptable satire. It was not like one of those fraternity pranks where a bunch of yahoo rich white kids dress up in blackface and pretend to be ghetto gangbangers. Yet many U.C. students, the U.C. student government and the U.C. administration reacted to the bake sale as if the Ku Klux Klan had erected a gigantic burning cross in Sproul Plaza.
Enraged counter-protesters decried the bake sale as “racist.” The student organizers of the parody were threatened, and there was talk of defunding their organization. The student senate voted 19-0 to condemn the bake sale.
Most egregiously, U.C. Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau and two top administrators felt impelled to send out an open letter to the campus community, condemning the bake sale as “contrary to the Principles of Community we espouse as a campus.”
The terrible offense the creators of the bake sale were guilty of? Hurting people’s feelings. “This event has moved the campus community into dialogue, because it was hurtful or offensive to many of its members,” the letter – also signed by Gibor Basri, vice-chancellor for diversity and inclusion, and Harry LeGrand, vice-chancellor for student affairs – piously intoned. Remarkably, this letter did not even attempt to argue that there was anything objectively offensive about the bake sale. The mere fact that it offended some students was considered sufficient grounds to condemn it; whether it was actually offensive, or racist, or beyond the pale in any way, was deemed irrelevant by U.C. Berkeley’s top brass. “The issue is not whether one thinks an action is satirical or inoffensive; the issue is whether community members will be intentionally — or unintentionally – hurt or demeaned by that action.”
If he actually followed this absurd position to its logical conclusion, Chancellor Birgeneau would have to spend all his time firing off open letters. He would have to rebuke pro-Israeli groups for hurting Palestinians’ feelings, and vice-versa. He would have to criticize opponents and supporters of abortion rights for making their adversaries feel bad. In fact, if he really wanted to defend the feelings of the campus community, he should send an open letter to California voters, telling them that by passing Proposition 209 they did something very hurtful.
But of course Birgeneau will not send any of those letters. Because his hypocritical letter is really only concerned with protecting the feelings of one group: underrepresented minority students. Its implicit message: It is not permissible to talk about race except in approved ways. Any deviation from the script will be censured.
Is this any way to run a university? And is it any way to advance racial dialogue?
As then-Sen. Obama pointed out, affirmative action remains one of the most divisive issues in American society. White anger over it has been one of the key factors behind the rise of the American right. Even many of its most articulate defenders, like Orlando Patterson and Glenn Loury, acknowledge how flawed, problematic and morally troubling it is. It needs to be talked about. By trying to make it off-limits to free discussion, U.C. Berkeley has abdicated its proud heritage as a bastion of free speech and succumbed to a stifling racial politeness that does no one any good – least of all the minority students whose allegedly delicate feelings it is at such pains to protect. College is supposed to be a preparation for life, and life is full of arguments and confrontations, some of which can hurt one’s feelings. Condescension and paternalism are not solid foundations for racial progress.
The sanctimonious approach to race in the chancellor’s open letter reflects the anodyne, Mom-and-apple-pie celebration of “diversity” that has become a quasi-official American orthodoxy. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the fact that American institutions, from the government to big corporations, now actively promote racial inclusion, harmony and understanding. But when racial “diversity” becomes a sacred cow, one that trumps everything else, true diversity – diversity of opinion – is threatened. Colleges and universities are one of American society’s last lines of defense of that vital diversity, which also goes by the name of freedom. They must hold the line.
Gary Kamiya is a co-founder of Salon
This issue predated President Reagan by a long shot, but thank you for playing, and in California, we had my favorite Governor by far, Governor Jerry Brown.
Concurrent with those minorities and women moving beyond false barriers to economic equality Ronald Reagan was elected and a deliberate plan to redistribute wealth upward began. Whatever economic grief has befallen the White males of society has not come from any preference to minorities, it’s come from an deliberate contraction in the size of the pie. It’s short-sighted and superficial to buy into the argument that preferences or to blame for a lack of potential earning power.
Your outlook has been manipulated in that regard to deflect your energy and anger from the people that have actually stolen the future.
As OS might say, you assume / presume too much about me. And perhaps Roco too.
The usual spiel I write, because I am never sure which word to use, and because I want to echo back feminist phrases is that it is presumptuous, arrogant, condescending, patronizing to tell people why they hold certain beliefs. And more so when, as mespo does to Broke, you tell a member of some certain group, that you are not a member of, that their views of that group are not as accurate, or authentic as your own.
At any rate, LottaKatz, thank you for your bogus arrogance, you make me quite literally make me feel like a teenager again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke
This issue predated Reagan by a long shot, but thank you for playing.
lottakatz:
“accruing 250K in college loans”
a four year education at instate tuitions for a public school is probably around $80,000.
the 250 k would be for a top 20 school or other private college.
Lottakatz:
The problem is too many people who think giving bail-outs to Wall Street bankers is a good idea. And giving huge loans to companies who are not going to make it based on the market at this time.
I could care less who makes more than me, I figure my earning potential is based on how well I can serve the public. If someone does a better job, they make more money than I do. And rightly so. The problem with most people, at least in my opinion, is they do not want to do what is necessary to keep up and would rather government give them loans or bail them out.
This type of thing hurts the poor and middle class by limiting access to capital and markets. Who can compete with that kind of crap going on. But as a socialist you want more of that type of thing, the only difference is the recipient. While I applaud your sentiment of providing more access to the poor and others, I want to totally eradicate this system of goodies given to one preferred class or another. How about government get totally out of the goodie providing business?
I think that would help the disadvantaged more than redirecting monies from one privileged class to another.
Broke: “As it stands, AA seems like an affront to those 60% of blacks who receive the benefits of more promising futures when they are not growing up in complete poverty, and, indeed, to those whites who are below the poverty line.
——-
I can, as a practical matter agree with this.
Opportunity should not be based on a general idea of poverty amongst races and genders being present, but instead on the actual individual.
——-
I agree with this in major part
A child who is born and raised in poverty is unlikely to have the same opportunities in life as a child raised in wealth. This does not mean that we should assume all impoverished youths are black, or that all wealthy youths are white. ”
——–
Raw numbers would support the statement that Caucasians have more people in poverty, have more teenage mothers, have less health insurance, have more abortions, have less education, have more of all those bad things because as a defined group they are the largest. It;s the % that tells the tale though.
I am a crazy liberal, I think and believe that your first two points are most appropriate for action on a grand social scale. The government should put most emphasis on primary and secondary education and in doing that any college level education concerns would melt away. I also believe that we should not ration college educations by ability to pay and should adopt the model in many European countries that make education through the college level is free or so heavily subsidized that anyone can get one without accruing 250K in college loans.
These days we practice our slavery economically (actually, more-so overtly I should say) and what better way to enslave those in a new generation of potential wage earners (that might actually be able to make some money) than turn them out of college with a debt that will render them no more than indentured servants for much of their lives.
Just call me crazy.
I enjoyed reading your postings, they were well done and logical. I think the “religions not positively perceived’ statement as a criterion for AA is incorrect but that’s appropriate for a whole different thread. 🙂 Thanks for your insights.
Rocco, Anon, SNL did a skit some eons ago wherein a couple of little girls (Radner was one of them) were talking to their granny (Curtain i believe) about their naughty bit. The question was asked, why did god give women more naughty bits than boys and the answer was that collecting most of the naughty bits in one place was more convenient for when one was looking for them. Not particularly funny but deep.
Our society at one time kept the money in the hands of a much smaller segment of society. Caucasian males made the most because we were on an economic upswing and because others were legally prohibited from getting close to it.
Concurrent with those minorities and women moving beyond false barriers to economic equality Ronald Reagan was elected and a deliberate plan to redistribute wealth upward began. Whatever economic grief has befallen the White males of society has not come from any preference to minorities, it’s come from an deliberate contraction in the size of the pie. It’s short-sighted and superficial to buy into the argument that preferences or to blame for a lack of potential earning power.
Your outlook has been manipulated in that regard to deflect your energy and anger from the people that have actually stolen the future. If the social dynamic had stayed exactly the same regarding economic opportunity (and much of that depends on education opportunity) the economy would still be broken and caucasian males would still be sitting around pissed off. The difference is that they would know who their real enemy was.
(Ummmm, think of the naughty bits as your economic enemies.)
mESPO:
what is your opinion as to why the people you mention in Richmond have not made progress?
There are a good many poor white people who havent made progress either and it isnt because of racism.
Personally I think it is some of what you say about not having loving and supporting parents encouraging them to do better but how do you improve that? That isnt a problem that can be remedied by affirmative action or by government fiat.
Poverty is terrible but many, many people rise out of modest circumstances and achieve great things. America is full of those examples, I used to read about those people when I was kid, Lincoln, Carnegie, Edison, Hamilton and many others. I see progressive policies impeding people’s rise out of poverty and preventing them from achieving their full potential.
Good steel has been worked to be able to sustain great stress without breaking. People are the same, and I know it is a bad cliche, but adversity that you come through does put starch in your spine.
As you are a lover of quotes:
“What does not kill me, makes me stronger”.
(That doesnt mean I agree with him on the rest of it.)
True then true today.
If you have reached your breaking point, we as a society should step in and help. But it should be a last resort. People are quite adept at working things out for themselves if they have to.
Broke:
You have the benefit of a sheltered life, two loving parents, and a myriad of opportunities. You’re the exception, my young friend, and not the rule. That’s why anecdotal evidence is always suspect and why experimenter bias is a problem. Come with me one day to Gilpin Court or Blackwell or Creighton Court here in Richmond and I’ll show you the other side of African-American progress. You’ll get a fast education and maybe a persepctive. You could also read Michael Harrington’s book, The Other America. Not much has changed for some. You might then see why these bake sales are insults from punks who possess neither the perspective nor the decency to help instead of harp. Jumping somebody when they’re down isn’t funny and it isn’t American.
mespo727272 1, September 26, 2011 at 8:55 am
I think you have the right to be insensitive, demeaning, historically blind, and callous, but no right to be free from the scorn of those who aren’t.
anon : 1, September 26, 2011 at 11:53 am
mespo, you are the last person at this forum to be calling out others for their insensitivity. Anyone that calls out a person as a “gay porky pig” should stfu about tossing accusations of insensitivity and demeaning around.
But once more, you are wrong even on the merits of your argument:
“I think you have the right to be insensitive, demeaning, historically blind, and callous, but no right to be free from the scorn of those who aren’t.”
Two groups have a fundamental disagreement, not about discrimination, but about remedies.
mespo727272: 1, September 29, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Roco:
We agree on the goal then, just not the means of effecting it. I’ll agree to your way if you agree to mine should yours fail. That seems fair to me.
Lot’s of other extraneous mespo bullshit redacted. Credit where credit is due, mespo can learn new things.
“What we haven’t done so well is to explain to its beneficiaries the reasons for the movement in the first place. Since you are currently in college you have the opportunity to find out how really bad it was. I bet your parents can help you understand it, too. Everyone deserves a boost now and again especially those sytematically held back for racial and cultural reasons.”
I can never truly understand how bad it really was, as much as my parents tell me their struggles and the struggles of their parents. Indeed, many times I find myself questioning whether my mother really had it as bad as she says (truth be told I’m fairly certain she didn’t as she got a cushy government job right before graduating college and has been there for 3 decades without the slightest worry of job security). But you know what? That’s the proof that society HAS changed. When people of my generation start asking ourselves “is it really fair that minorities get a boost” it’s proof that we haven’t the slightest idea of how difficult it was for the people who were not afforded the benefits of Affirmative Action. We have no idea how hard it was because we as a generation growing up in the 1990s-2000s did not experience this. So why should we reap the benefits of hardship we did not overcome?!
Current Affirmative Action policies should be centered solely on people who practice religions not very positively perceived by the general populace (Muslims come to mind), people who are poor, regardless of race or gender, and people who aren’t allowed to marry their significant other merely because they are both of the same gender. But blacks? Maybe I’m merely lucky and have never had the displeasure of meeting someone so overtly racist that I could not only tell they hated my guts because I was black, but that I was also denied an opportunity because of the color of my skin. I like to think, though, that the world has changed, and thus we should not continue to offer benefits to people merely because of the color of their skin.
That’s why I agree with this bake sale. They should do another where worthwhile AA is examined, however, and poll students about their current income (they’ll be college students, so all pretty poor I guess) and put the lowest incomes in a bracket where they receive large discounts, and those who have higher incomes pay normal price. That would be a boost both much needed and much appreciated in today’s society.
Roco:
We agree on the goal then, just not the means of effecting it. I’ll agree to your way if you agree to mine should yours fail. That seems fair to me.
Mespo:
I have a pretty good idea how bad it was, my wife’s grand parents owned a large farm Near Emporia, Virginia. I have also read a few books on the subject. It makes me weep when I think about how blacks were treated in that time in our history and I hate racism with a passion, it is pernicious and evil. To judge another human being on DNA is, well, nothing short of what the Nazis did. It is a form of collectivism and you know how much I hate that.
But it is time to start judging people on their own merits as human beings and not on skin color.
A hooded white guy in front of a black church should have been shot and taken to the city dump for the feral dog’s evening repast.
Roco:
I wish I could have strolled you around Southside Virginia in 1967 when I was a kid to see the segrerated bus stops, restaurants, stores and even pharmacies. I would have liked to let you see the hooded white guys strolling around on Sundays as black congregations were letting out with their implicit threat of violence. You’d get a much firmer feel for how bad it was then in the South and the progress both morally and politically we’ve made.
Broke:
as a white conservative who is against race and gender preferences, I find I agree with Mespo on this. I was a kid in the 60’s so most of my knowledge is anecdotal but from what I can glean from speaking with older people and from what I have read, blacks were not treated all that well by certain segments of our population. Especially in the south. And so I think we needed to have things like affirmative action to “jump start” blacks to help them “catch” up.
I believe they have caught up 40 years later and it is time to end affirmative action. Blacks dont need it and are more than capable of holding their own in any field of endeavor they choose. If you look at any field you see blacks at or near the top, for gods sake one of the top earners in bass fishing is black, law, medicine, finance, philosophy [my 2 favorite philosophers are Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, both are brilliant men and the idea they need any help to compete on an even playing field with whites is an insult to them], to say nothing of sports and entertainment.
In my opinion the finest actors in Hollywood today are Morgan Freeman and Lawrence Fishburn, Denzel is pretty good too.
Which leads us to another thought, where the market is pretty free, Hollywood and sports, blacks have risen to the top and far surpassed whites. Is there any doubt they could do the same in other fields of endeavor? I have none, and I would say there is the possibility that affirmative action is holding them back by creating a stigma “oh he/she is black they did such and so just because of race.” I would personally like to be known as the guy that did it on his own merits.
But with all that being said, I think we needed to do it but it is past time for it to be abolished.
mespo,
I did not take the post you responded to seriously….. I thought it was another fraternity prank…
http://blog.koldcast.tv/2011/koldcast-news/10-fraternity-pranks-gone-horribly-wrong/
Broke:
Thank you for anecdotal proof that the policies adopted by progressives in the Country since the 1960’s have worked. What we haven’t done so well is to explain to its beneficiaries the reasons for the movement in the first place. Since you are currently in college you have the opportunity to find out how really bad it was. I bet your parents can help you understand it, too. Everyone deserves a boost now and again especially those sytematically held back for racial and cultural reasons.
I’m a black male attending University right now and I have to say… I completely agree with what these guys did. Despite my ambivalent views on Affirmative Action (I won’t lie and say I’ve never appreciated the “black boost”, but if it were to disappear I won’t be upset at all if my merits alone aren’t enough to secure that job, graduate degree etc…) I find any such protest that actively seeks to change the status quo commendable.
Perhaps it’s less so if the organizers of this bake sale are the “privileged WASP-types” that everyone alleges they are (it may be mentioned in the article if this is true, but I must confess I skimmed).
What I find most interesting about the discussion of this issue though is the arguments on the side of those who are offended by this bake sale because it (to paraphrase) trivializes the struggles of impoverished minorities. I was raised in a home where both of my parents worked, though neither graduated from college, and made sizable incomes. I was not in poverty and my parents’ combined annual income was over well above middle class when I was growing up (think $75,000 a year). Yet I still reap the benefits of AA merely because I’m black. Being black does not make me underprivileged, and, indeed, the whites whose parents split earlier than mine did (when I was a teenager in my final year of high school) or, indeed, who only ever had one parent struggling to pay for rent and food, much less college, could more greatly benefit from a special admissions boost or scholarship opportunities etc.
As it stands, AA seems like an affront to those 60% of blacks who receive the benefits of more promising futures when they are not growing up in complete poverty, and, indeed, to those whites who are below the poverty line. Opportunity should not be based on a general idea of poverty amongst races and genders being present, but instead on the actual individual. A child who is born and raised in poverty is unlikely to have the same opportunities in life as a child raised in wealth. This does not mean that we should assume all impoverished youths are black, or that all wealthy youths are white.
Racism may continue to perpetuate because of instances where poor whites have to work harder to gain jobs that middle class blacks were given merely because of our skin color, or, in the case of females, because of their gender.
Lotta:
Josh sees what he wants to see and Rhages hears what he wants to hear. Sometimes he sees things that aren’t even there like threats being reported by rich, white victims on some Facebook page. What better way for panty-waist neocons to get some publicity coated with sympathy than citing threats that may or may not be real by outraged California liberals. Too good to be true? Sorry but Republicans, young and old, will stoop to anything to win. Their cries of “Wolf!” fall on deaf ears here. See the gospel according to Atwater, Lee.
“I assert that whites and other minority races, specifically blacks because of the long standing history of discrimination in the USA, are now on equal footing with white americans in most everyway.” (Josh Brock)
I read the rest of this post but in the end the sentence quoted sums up the author’s point of view quite nicely. It’s all bullshit of course, but convenient bullshit never-the-less. Convenient in that it pretends equality has been attained and thus no longer has to be addressed. Fear is assuaged. News flash … More equality is coming … read it and weep.
“Josh, check your own tables, they don’t show major gains for anyone in a protected class.” (Lotta)
Uh-oh … how inconvenient.