On Tuesday, the Berkeley College Republicans at UC Berkeley hosted their controversial “Increase Diversity Bake Sale.”
According to the L.A. Times, the event was designed to protest Senate Bill 185, a bill that would essentially reinstate affirmative action in California universities’ admissions process, by satirically pricing cookies and muffins based on race and gender: $2 for Caucasians, $1.5 for Asians, $1 for Latinos, $0.75 for African Americans, $0.25 for Native Americans and a $0.25 discount for women.
The baking event was met with hundreds of angry student protesters, an unflattering media spotlight, and countless accusations of the event being “racist.”
But isn’t that exactly the point the Berkeley College Republicans were making? It was supposed to be racist — a reflection of the SB 185 bill itself.
“They should have called it a white supremacy bake sale,” Revolutionary Communist Party member Larry Everest told The Daily Californian, Berkeley’s student-run newspaper. “They are mocking people of color. There is nothing funny about the years of oppression faced by African-American slaves.”
I just can’t agree with that sentiment. The Berkeley College Republicans are not mocking a people — only a policy. To claim otherwise is just a demonstration of willful ignorance, and only creates unnecessary antagonism between race relations.
Still, I understand the controversy with affirmative action — and perhaps the Berkeley students should have shown more sensitivity when they decided to draw attention to SB 185. But then again, are Americans really that sensitive about racism? Must we always tiptoe around the issue?
As a June 27 NPR article notes, “That’s racist” is such a commonplace quip in our culture that it rarely carries any weight with it. And perhaps this is a good indication that racism — while undeniably thriving in parts of the country — is no longer mainstream enough to be taken seriously by the general public.
I don’t intend to marginalize the pain and suffering of victims of racial discrimination in America. It is the nature of democracy that minorities will get trampled — the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville called it the “tyranny of the majority,” and argued that it is the most oppressive social and political force on the earth — far more even than a tyrannical monarch or a cruel dictator.
But discrimination has not been government-sanctioned since the '50s, and now I think we can safely proclaim that it is no longer socially sanctioned either.
As a white male — of Irish decent with zero slave-holding ancestors — I still hold few to no qualms with affirmative action as it currently exists. However, I have a problem with the dialogue — or more accurately, the accusations — taking place around its politics.
In terms of political correctness, “racism” is one of those monumental Catch-22s, second only to religion. It seems that when it comes to affirmative action, white people better take it with a nod and a smile or be instantly labeled a “racist.”
This is inherently unfair — the type of “tyranny of the majority” that allowed racism to flourish so well in the first place.
And finally, as a larger concern, what exactly is the difference between “Black Pride” and “White Pride?” In my humble observations, I cannot distinguish between the two — why is it only deemed “racist” for the white group? Perhaps somebody could calmly explain it to me.
Contact this white guy at djoconn1@asu.edu
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