Affirmative Action bake sale sparks controversy

[The One and Only...]

Libertarians at William and Mary College in Virginia have cooked up a controversy. Or rather, baked up a controversy.

An Affirmative Action Bake Sale conducted by the libertarian group Sons of Liberty was shut down by the administration on November 8.

Sons of Liberty members hosted the event in the University Center lobby, selling cookies and brownies at different prices for different racial and ethnic groups. For example, whites paid more than blacks or Hispanics.

Administration officials showed up at 3:00 pm, and told the libertarians they were in violation of the school's anti-discrimination policies. The group was ordered to sell the baked goods for the same price for everyone. Rather than comply, they closed up shop.

"The whole point was to show how affirmative action itself was racist," Sons of Liberty cofounder William Coggin told the student newspaper, the Dog Street Journal. "The point of the stand was obvious."

Another Sons of Liberty cofounder, Pat Reilly, said he was surprised by the hubbub.

"I didn't think anyone would be offended by the price of a cookie," he said. "The point of the bake sale was just to raise awareness. It was not to offend anybody."

The bake sale put the "college community up in arms," according to the Dog Street Journal. The Student Assembly Senate even passed a resolution condemning the libertarians.

The College of William and Mary is located in Williamsburg. About 7,500 students attend the school.

[Emu]

Where the hell have you been?

[AChimp]

The REAL reason why the bake sale was shut down.

[img]http://members.shaw.ca/achimp/******breadman.jpg[/img]

Nothing stirs up the hornet's nest like a ******bread man.

[kellychaos]

You can't have your ******bread man and eat it too.

[Vibecrewangel]

Once again chimp you have caused me great pain......













Doritos do not feel good coming out the nose.

[ranxer]

achimp you did it again

i loved what right wing radio fumed over this bake sale(i think it was hannity a couple weeks back).. i can't remember the details cause it was insane but i was laughing, ..wish there was a searchable database of radio segments.

oh yea, re: subject
great bake sale.. i hope they make a 30 minute movie for teaching purposes.
they should have let them sell those cookies anyway they wanted, the prices only mirrored the statistical advantages and disadvantages of racial groups in the nation as a whole.. they were a social group not a corporation.. there are different rules for each damnit.

[VinceZeb]

Ranxer, you fucking dumbass. "Right-Wing" radio hosts LOVED this idea and thought it was one of the best things around.

You can't even lie right.

[AChimp]

Vinth, you fucking dumbass. You've ruined all the kudos I was receiving for my ******bread man, and you MISINTERPRETED someone's post yet again.

Ranxer was referring to the fact that right-wing radio shows were mad about the way the bake sale operators were treated.

Learn to read before you go "degenerating."

[O71394658]

Originally Posted by AChimp

The REAL reason why the bake sale was shut down.

[img]http://members.shaw.ca/achimp/******breadman.jpg[/img]

Nothing stirs up the hornet's nest like a ******bread man.

That was amazing.

[Sethomas]

The student Republican club at Stanford did this several months ago. Why should these kids stir controversy just by being poseurs? Further evidence that the American people have a really shitty memory.

[ranxer]

vinceb "You can't even lie right."

woohoo! thanks um, you are correct.. if i am caught in a mistruth its usually because i don't know how to lie right..or i'm taking a stab at something i'm not sure of.. i lie the other direction anyway ..
but really, i don't remember the issues they were trumpeting.. i was in a hurry, i only remember thinking it was a hilarious mix of issues. like i said i wish i could look up what was said.. i think they(hannity) had some spin against the left on this bake sale that didn't fit in thier usual crap..

rightwing radio has a tactic of tacking a quote from the most extreme left they can find then bashing the hell out of it as if it represented all of the left.. i think thats a typical tactic of demonization.. and follows the simpletonism that is a result of gwb being president.

[kellychaos]

Somebody needs some courses in irony. :/

[mburbank]

"The whole point was to show how affirmative action itself was racist," Sons of Liberty cofounder William Coggin told the student newspaper, the Dog Street Journal. "The point of the stand was obvious."

This is what's called a Tautology. They aren't showing HOW affirmitive action is Racist since the price of baked goods doesn't paralell weighing someones ethnicity as a factor in determining hiring or admission. They already concluded Affirmitive Action was racist and paralelled it with something else racist. Affirmative action effects competitiveness, not price. Colleges award admission, they don't purchase students.

"I didn't think anyone would be offended by the price of a cookie," he said. "The point of the bake sale was just to raise awareness. It was not to offend anybody."

Bullshit. I have nothing against offensive protest, and while I think this one was stupid, I have nothing against it and think the college was wrong to shut it down. To me the only point they were proving is that they are idiots. Let them. But they got the best result they could possibly hope for and to say that they didn't think anyone would be offended is a clumsy lie or shere stupidity. Surely they hoped like hell someone would be offended. That's HOW they intended to 'make a point'. They shouldn't follow it up by insulting people's intelligence.

And Vinth... How did you NOT get what Ranx was saying? You need affirmative action for Morons.

[AChimp]

He needs a ******bread man.

[The One and Only...]

The parallel between price and competitiveness is not to hard to imagine, Burbank. Affirmative Action does, in many cases, raise the wage of the minority worker, which could be compared to a proportional reduction in prices for said minority worker.

Besides, the point of the sale was to show that Affirmative Action discriminates.

[mburbank]

I'm not sure I've ever heard of Affirmative action actually rasing someones wage, unless you mean working vs. not working.

How exactly are price and competitiveness paralell? It seems to me they are actually inverse. Regardless, nothing is demonstrated in a tautology, unless you find statements like X=X illuminating.

[The One and Only...]

Affirmative Action can result in being hired to a higher postion than you otherwise may have, thus resulting in a wage increase.

[mburbank]

That's a stretch. he new position comes with a new salary anyway, so it's just competiveness. You don't get a race based raise, you get the job.

Perhaps in their bake sale if they'd allowed an individual ethnic group line priority, or set a certain threshold for number of people served and gave racial preference. No one is denying Affirmative action descriminates bewteen people in the most basic form of the words meaning. The question is, is this type of discrimination effective in levelling the playing field and thus fair, or is all discrimination of any kind immediately wrong in every way.

I get their point. I don't agree, and it didn't get me to think anything new, and I can't imagine it got anyone to think anything they didn't already think. That's the problem with a poorly constructed stunt. It did the main thing it was designed to do, piss people off and thus garner attention. I think the innocent routine the guy quoted plays out confirms the shallowness of the gesture in te first place.

But the university shouldn't have shut them down. They should have asked where the money for this 'fundraier' was going.

[El Blanco]

To buy waterguns for children in Harlem.

[Perndog]

Yes, all racial discrimination of any kind is immediately wrong in every way. A person is a person. A qualified employee is a qualified employee, and he should get a job over an unqualified employee, even if that means 99 white people happen to work in a place with only one black person (or vice versa).

[mburbank]

I'm sure that's laudible, but what do you think about the state of things right now? Do you see the playing field as being level? If not, how do you combat lingering entrenched racism in the workplace and in education and how do you redress the effects of poverty on education?

No one sees Affirmative Action of a perfect tool, not even it's most ardent supporters, but it is a tool. The people who want to do away with it can cloak it in martin Luther King if they want, but mostly they don't intend to replace it with any positive action. It seems the mostly think we did away with racial inequality in the late sixties. I'd like to die them a few shades darker, take away their credit cards, put them in public housing and see if they still felt the same way.

[mburbank]

PS> For the bake sale to be a worthy paralell they should have added the following conditions.
1.) If your parents have a lot of money and good political connections, you get the cookies now and pay for them at a very low interest rate later. Should you be unable to pay, friends of your family will pay for the cookies and stake you to more cookies. You can be bailed out of your cookie debt multiple times until eventually they give you your own cookie bakery. The government then gives you a no bid contract to supply cookies to the Pentagon, who will pay $300.00 a cookie.
2.) If your parents have a lot of money, good political connections but are black, a random number will determine if you get the same treatment as above of if cookie security beat the crap out of you, assuming a guy who looks like you shouldn't be anywhere near the bake sale.
3.) If you are middle class, buy the cookies.
4.) If you're poor, the bake sale is happening outside your community. You might take public transportation to the sale, but there's a good chance once you get there you'll get sent to the back of the line, and truthfully the cookies they do sell you are often of a substandard quality. After a while you start to feel as if the whole cookie thing is just a trap anyway. Who wants their fucking cookies?

[Perndog]

No time to reply now, but I'm thinking about it and I'll have a post about racism for you later.

[Vibecrewangel]

Being from CA, I'm sure my view is pretty damned skewed....

But....I'd like to see affirmative action be more about protecting and less about entitling.

You shouldn't be turned down for a job just becuase you are (insert classification here), but you also shouldn't get the job just because you are "insert classification here"

Yeah I know....in a perfect world..... ::sigh::

[Perndog]

Okay. First, race does not equal income level, and a discussion on racism does not need to include a discussion on poverty. (While we're at it, though, I'll cover both.) While it is true that there are concentrations of minorities with low incomes, being black or Mexican does not make one poor, nor vice versa. Minorities were second-class citizens fifty years ago and couldn't get out of the ghettos, but as far as race is concerned now, they only run into problems when they're confronted with racists in positions of power.

Ideally, you combat entranched racism in the workplace by rooting out the racist employers and shooting them or shipping them to a company where they are the hated minority.

Practically, I'm really not sure what can be done, which is why I'm not a politician or a social worker or anything like that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that real racism is steadily declining. If one employer discriminates based on race, there should be a dozen who don't. And if this isn't the case, I can only hope that people will grow up learning to be more tolerant than they are now. A lot changed in fifty years, and I would bet that fifty more years will see more improvement in this regard.

Now, as far as poverty goes, you're not going to like my opinion. But...

There have been plenty examples of people who have risen from inauspicious beginnings to succeed. If one dirty little Mexican boy from the barrio can get himself a good education and become a successful adult (and some have), that means the opportunity is there. Therefore, the ones with potential will make it out and the ordinary ones will stay poor and do their part to hold up the social pyramid.

I concede, yes, they should have *more* opportunities. How to give them those opportunities? The only real way out that I can see is massive public education reform. Either public schools need to get better in a hurry or private school vouchers need to be handed out much more liberally. Furthermore, poor parents need to take responsibility (give them whatever government incentive you want, I guess) - have fewer kids so they can spend more money and attention on each one. It's pretty obvious that there's not a lot of hope for the people who are already at dead ends, but they can do a lot for their children if they are taught or paid to be better parents.

So if the kids are raised better they will have more potential for success and they can increase the ranks of the people who manage to climb out of the ghetto. I really don't know what could be done to elevate the entire social class, but if the cream can float to the top I consider it a win.