I fail to grasp the deep personal insult allegedly sent by the Berkeley bake sale, unlike some commenters on this site. If you are offended by the idea of someone being offered a benefit based on his race, you should be out there with the Berkeley College Republicans protesting the likely overt reinstatement of preferences at the University of California (as opposed to their covert use through such anti-Prop 209 strategems as “holistic admissions”).
To me, as I write here, the reaction to the bake sale exemplifies the narcissistic irrationality on the part of today’s students that university bureaucrats only pamper and amplify, thus creating a future cadre of self-engrossed adults who will continue to cry racism and sexism as they go through life:
Student Devonte Jackson told the San Francisco Chronicle that the sale was inappropriate and hurtful, “attacking underrepresented communities by reducing their communities to a cheaply priced good.” The president of Berkeley’s student government, which sponsored the pro-SB 185 phone bank, explained to CNN that the bake sale “humorized and mocked the struggles of people of color on this campus.” Another student government officer professed dismay at such a shocking insult to students of color. “We were really taken aback and, frankly, disgusted,” Joey Freeman informed the Los Angeles Times. Capping off this outpouring of what one can only hope is willful misreading, the student senate passed an emergency resolution on Sunday condemning “the use of discrimination whether it is in satire or in seriousness by any student group.”
Who could take such a reaction seriously? Berkeley’s $194,000 vice chancellor for equity and diversity, that’s who:
“A lot of students, especially students of color, read [the bake sale] as placing a higher value on white students,” Gibor Basri told the New York Times. Basri, in other words, obeyed the ironclad script for all such minor perturbations in the otherwise unbroken reign of campus political correctness. That script requires that the massive campus-diversity bureaucracy treat the delusional claims of hyperventilating students with utter seriousness.
I can’t say the bake sale was good manners, but it made a clear point and was well within first amendment limits. Hmmm…has the ACLU jumped in to defend the CRs? Oh, no, that’s right–it’s fine for Lefties to be as rude as they want to be (e.g., Dan Savage’s comments about Senator Santorum on Bill Maher’s show), but the Right is always wrong and hateful and racist and homophobic. And conservatives don’t love the Earth. And we hate poor people. What did I leave out?
I’ll admit that on first hearing of the bake sale I was a bit put off…which wonderfully proves that which seems so simple a concept; discrimination = discrimination. If this sort of thing offends you, then why doesn’t “positive” discrimination? I find it interesting that the student senate condemns “the use of discrimination…”, how far are they willing to take that condemnation?
OTOH, where does all of this leave racial profiling? Where do we draw the line between what is and isn’t acceptable?
Many liberals don’t take the time to understand where conservatives are coming from in their arguments, and thus have a purely emotional reaction whenever they encounter one. It’s not unlike a sheltered, devout Christian encountering an argumentative atheist.
I’m not sure how bright the students are.
A bright minority student would have offered to buy baked goods and re-sell them to white male students, splitting the difference in the price.
A female Native American could have gotten the baked goods for free and sold them for half price.