"Diversity Bake Sale"

The UC Berkeley Republicans made a bit of a scandal in the news today when they hosted an "increase diversity bake sale" to satirize affirmative action.

Current California state legislation, under the title SB 185, would legalize affirmative action in state university admissions. In an effort to protest the bill and show how "ridiculous" affirmative action is, the Berkeley Republicans priced their bake sale goods at various prices based on race and gender.

All baked goods were $2 for white males, $1.50 for Asian males, $1 for Latino males, $.75 for African American males and $.25 for Native American males. All women received $.25 off those prices.

Obviously, this event offended a lot of people and created a local controversy.

Supporters of the bake sale received threats and the group was denounced as offensive and racist. Responding to critics, Berkeley College Republicans President Shawn Lewis wrote "we agree that the event is inherently racist, but that is the point. It is no more racist than giving an individual advantage in college admissions based solely on their race (or) gender."

Berkeley Republicans said they were mostly trying to stir debate about affirmative action and its consequences. But their attempts were misguided and they didn't provoke the debate our country needs to have.

I'm not necessarily a believer in affirmative action. Even if affirmative action itself is misguided, at least it made some effort to counteract the centuries of racist inequalities that continue to have serious social and cultural consequences in the United States. Satirizing this effort as trivial and unfair did not help the situation nor the debate, and unfortunately I don't think the republicans learned either of those lessons.

The impression I got most from reading news outlets' coverage of the diversity bake sale is there needs to be more self-awareness surrounding our discussions and reflections on affirmative action.

Yes, I worked hard in high school in order to get into college. I worked hard in college so that (hopefully) I could get a decent job and support myself independently. I too would have been angry if I was denied admissions to my top college choice, in favor of a minority with lower grades, lower test scores, or whatever.

But I was born and raised in a stable middle class white family. I went to good schools, lived in safe neighborhoods and always had my parents to support me. We never struggled financially, and as much as my parents bitched about the cost of higher education, they could afford to pay for my studies so I didn't have to worry about massive student debt.

No one discriminated against or stereotyped me based on my race or ethnicity. No one's ever done that to my family either.

But how many minority communities in this country continue to deal with those problems? Archaic as it may seem in the 21st century, racial inequality continues to exist in the form of poverty levels, unemployment levels, elementary and high school education access, health care access, safe and affordable housing access, and so on. For some kids in this country, the cards are stacked against them before they are even born.

And that's not fair. That's not trivial either. In order to address the problems of affirmative action, we have to acknowledge that the problems affirmative action addresses continue to exist.

Until the Berkeley College Republicans are willing to accept and understand that, the only thing they're going to be trivializing is themselves.