Friday, September 30, 2011

How UC Berkeley Republicans' Affirmative Action Bake Sale Could Have Turned Out

How it could have turned out if there were any adults at Berkeley:
Gibor Basri, Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and diversity, could have served a valuable role here by pointing out that the bake sale was obviously a parody of racial and gender preferences, not a criticism of students themselves. Whatever one thinks about the issue of preferences, he might have said, such political theater belongs to Berkeley’s once-revered tradition of free speech. Instead, Basri chose to stoke the melodramatic self-pity of today’s college students. “A lot of students, especially students of color, read [the bake sale] as placing a higher value on white students,” 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. Students in the ever-expanding roster of official campus victim groups flatter themselves that by attending what is in fact the most caring, protective, and opportunity-rich institution in the history of the world, they are braving unspeakable threats to their ego and even to their physical safety. (Indeed, so desirable is this alleged threatened status that a gender and women’s studies major held a sign during Tuesday’s protest of the bake sale decrying the exclusion of “queer people” from the Republicans’ pricing structure.)
Via City Journal and NewsAlert.

3 comments:

Jean said...

So...charging white guys two bucks for a cupcake that someone else can get for half-price is preferential treatment? Seems like math skills at Cal are slipping. In MY day, we knew a bargain when we saw one! (I did go to Berkeley back when affirmative action was in effect.)

Jean said...

"Berkeley is the home of the free-speech movement. We want to be sure it doesn't become the capital of political correctness."

Oops, too late! :)

W.R. Chandler said...

Jean beat me to the punch, but I had to toss in my two cents about that moronic statement from the diversity policeperson about charging someone lower prices shows their lack of worth. Um, can you imagine the outrage if black students were charged $2 for a cupcake while white students only had to pay 75 cents? We can't win with these bozos.