"Bake Sale" Not As Clever As Organizers Think It Is

Apparently, a student Republican group at University of California-Berkeley is holding a satirical "Increase Diversity Bake Sale." Their point is to protest affirmative action legislation that would allow state universities "to consider race, gender, ethnicity and national origin during admissions." Their "bake sale" plans to charge:

— "White/Caucasian students, $2 for each baked good.

— Asians/Asian-Americans, $1.50.

— Latinos/Hispanics, $1.

— Blacks/African-Americans, 75 cents.

— Native Americans, 25 cents.

----an additional 25 cents off for women."

Allow me to make some suggestions for a more accurate sign:

— White/Caucasian students, $2 for each baked good.

— Asians/Asian-Americans, $3.00.

— Latinos/Hispanics, $1.

— Blacks/African-Americans, 75 cents.

— Native Americans, 25 cents.

-----an additional 25 cents off for athletes

-----an additional 25 cents off for children of alumni

-----an additional 25 cents off for veterans

-----an additional 25 cents off for international applicants

-----an additional 25 cents off for students who require no financial aid

-----an additional 25 cents off for students whose parents paid for them to take test prep courses

-----an additional 25 cents off for students who were provided with private tutors

-----an additional 25 cents off for students whose parents paid for them to attend private school

-----an additional 50 cents off for students whose parents paid for them to attend elite boarding school

-----an additional 25 cents off for students who were not employed during high school

-----an additional 25 cents off for women men

So, I'm missing some privileges (and feel free to add them) that many opponents of affirmative action overlook, but the overall point of my revision is to help illustrate some of the ignorant assumptions on which the young Republicans based their "bake sale."

Universities already implement "affirmative action" policies on bases other than race and gender, and so FYI, it looks pretty racist and sexist when people only oppose the race- and gender-based bases of affirmative action. By eliminating only the race- and gender-based affirmative action programs while preserving the more invisible "affirmative action" programs, other race- , gender-, and class-based privileges are thus perpetuated.

In addition to these less controversial "affirmative-action" policies, there's a lot of "bootstraps" myth-believing going on where many privileged kids don't realize that, say, not everyone grows up with their own private computer programming tutor. Perhaps it's human nature for people to want to believe that everything they've "earned" has been accomplished mostly through their own hard work. So, when a person is raised with relative privilege, it's going to be the exceptional person who realizes that ze was born on third base and didn't hit a triple to get there.

I also found it interesting that these young Republican students would assume that it's women who primarily benefit from gender-based affirmative action. The New York Times recently ran a piece where college admissions officers admitted that, for the sake of achieving gender balance on campuses, they had been admitting male applicants with "lesser credentials" over women. (The same article also mentioned that veterans, international students, and students who required no financial aid were admitted with "lesser credentials"). A UCLA study also found that "the male population drops in schools with blind admissions processes."

Ironically, some of the recent Boy Crisis In Education narratives seem premised on the assumption that men's relatively lower enrollment in college compared to women is due to "special admissions criteria" favoring "unqualified women." It's evident that some people simply cannot fathom a world where women have higher college enrollment and graduations rates than men because women are better at college than men. Not that I necessarily think that's the case, but when the numbers are reversed, it seems to pass as "common sense" that men are just inherently smarter than women.

Anyway, some "men's rights" groups' desire to erode gender-based affirmative action is an interesting observation in how the myth of male superiority can actually be counter-productive to men. (Don't worry, I'm sure the Boy Crisis is still totes the fault of feminists). Furthermore, the same UCLA study found that Asian-Americans are actually disadvantaged when race is taken into account in admissions. Thus, to be more accurate, the "bake sale" poster should actually charge a higher price to Asian-Americans than it does to other racial groups.

Rather than basing their poster on these facts, the poster seems premised on the assumption that it is primarily well-qualified white men who are "losing out" when affirmative action programs are implemented- a belief that seems further premised on the assumption that of course white men would be negatively impacted by affirmative action because of course white men are naturally superior to other races and genders in college.

And, of course, that myth gains extra traction when students completely ignore, or are oblivious to, race- , gender- , and class-based privileges that might explain performance disparities.


Related:

There, I Fixed It

Boys and Girls Are Inherently Different, Except When Boys Prove Worse At Stuff (in which case social engineering is to blame, of course!)