At least to some people. A ‘Diversity Bake Sale’ Backfires on Campus:
Student leaders worried that the bake sale would make students uncomfortable and aggravate tensions on campus.
“A number of students have come to me very concerned,” said the student body president, Vishalli Loomba, 20, a fourth-year molecular and cell biology major. “Many feel the differential pricing is offensive and that it makes them feel unwelcome.”
The reality is that Berkeley is filled with a lot of Leftist activism which explicitly intends to make certain people and views feel “unwelcome.” So the issue here is not offense, but who is being offended. I recall watching as a McCain supporter was literally mobbed by a crowd of agitated people on the corner of Vine and Shattuck near the Gourmet Ghetto Peet’s Coffee in 2008 (he admitted to his Republican sympathies when approached by a voter registration worker or something, and it started from that). There wasn’t any intimation of violence from what I could tell, but the lone McCaine supporter wasn’t being engaged in a dialogue. He was being harangued and mocked, and his views were being abused. But it’s the USA, and free speech is free speech, right? Not when that speech offends protected classes.
That’s all fine. This sort of Left hypocrisy is par for the course. The interesting point is that many of those who espouse in these sorts of behaviors in a place like Berkeley literally don’t even understand how they could be hypocrites. Wrong views are not views worthy of respect or some minimal level of engagement.
What is the leftist answer to why Asians/Jews do better than whites on academics? “Culture/Values/etc.”
Now, what is the leftist answer when you ask if this could explain even part of the black-white gaps? Change the subject? Shout?
It is simple really – the progressive yahoos who harangued the McCain supporter were being dickheads; and the Berkeley College Republicans are being dickheads too.
However, I suspect the progressives were being spontaneously offensive and were not from an officially recognised campus organisation who planned their of insulting behaviour a long time in advance as a publicity stunt.
You can disagree with Positive Discrimination policies and disagree with the College Republicans’ stunt. I actually think they are behaving more egregiously that the progressive yahoos; their actions just further bolster the narrative that graduates of color are not real graduates, despite most of them not gaining priority because of positive discrimination policies. At its most simple – the McCain supporter chose his political philosophy and thus the risk of dispute that goes with it. Minority students did not choose to be from minorities and have their achievements undermined by others.
Finally, I think it comes down to class (and I do not mean social stratum) – this is just a cheesy stunt
So mortgages, bank fees, groceries, and transportation are more expensive or nonexistent in poor and racially non-white neighborhoods around the country, every day in every zip code in the land, without a peep from Secular Right. Makes sense, as this blog’s charter is to comment on religious incursion into the conservative domain.
Or is it that this blog DOES care about these issues, but only in the 1/1000% of instances where some white kid has to pay more for a cookie? And is willing to go off-charter to complain about the poor downtrodden white people. Anybody for “You don’t HAVE to buy that cookie, Snowflake” free-market accountability system? Not here, I suppose.
Does anyone know of a blog that comments on the Religious Right’s takeover of the American conservative movement? I’d like to follow something like that. I know, off-topic here, right?
Tom M,
Are you suggesting that a banker should disregard a borrower’s level of wealth when deciding what mortgage rate to offer that borrower? Would that be rational?
So mortgages, bank fees, groceries, and transportation are more expensive or nonexistent in poor and racially non-white neighborhoods around the country, every day in every zip code in the land, without a peep from Secular Right.
Here’s what Thomas Sowell says about the canard that the poor pay more for groceries:
The clinching argument is that, despite higher markups in prices in low-income neighborhoods, there is a lower than average rate of return for businesses there — one of the reasons why businesses tend to avoid such neighborhoods.
Mortgages are priced primarily on the applicant’s credit score. Asians are actually approved for mortgages at a higher rate than whites, which I believe is one of the inconvenient facts that those who claim the “Boston Fed Study” proves credit discrimination against blacks.
Maybe “Tom M” should read a few books on basic economics – I’d start with Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics – before I post emotional comments on a blog, rather than stating facts.
their actions just further bolster the narrative that graduates of color are not real graduates, despite most of them not gaining priority because of positive discrimination policies.
well, actually asians suffer some negative discrimination at cal. and it isn’t true that pos. discrimination is gone, cal has figured out how to infer race from the essays kids write to get in. if a poor korean kid from LA writes one, and a poor black kid from LA writes one….
Does anyone know of a blog that comments on the Religious Right’s takeover of the American conservative movement? I’d like to follow something like that. I know, off-topic here, right?
don’t be an obtuse asshole. andrew s. posts a lot of stuff in that vein.
I’ve spent enough time in academe to know that free speech doesn’t apply to conservatives (including secular conservatives), because conservative ideas are regarded at best as wrong and at worst as evil. Certainly they’re regarded as evidence of gross stupidity or lack of education on the part of those who espouse them. Therefore, those ideas need to be combated and suppressed. This is why hate speech rules and laws were invented. It’s a very clever way of circumventing the First Amendment.
“many of those who espouse in these sorts of behaviors in a place like Berkeley literally don’t even understand how they could be hypocrites”
That’s exactly right. They are completely blind to their blindness, and so they have all the moral confidence of the righteously indignant. It’s almost…religious.