CA college bake sale a teachable moment
This weekend on TJ Holmes' CNN show, there was an interesting segment on a young man, a college group and a college bake sale. It wasn't that baked goods are fattening but the price list for said baked goods.
White men pay $2 for a cookie as opposed to a Native American woman who would pay nothing. Ask a NA woman the last time she got anything of value that she wanted for free. Right.
I guess the point is white men have to pay for every other minority including women, are at the top of the pecking order or are better than everyone else, deserve to not have to consider anyone other than themselves, etc. The bake sale price list says lots of things this young man is in agreement with and he doesn't even know it. That is just how young he is. Look at what this doe-eyed little guy is admitting. It's would be almost sweet if it wasn't so painfully wrong.
Instead of getting on the college student for verbalizing a long standing notion, why don't we teach several valuable lessons from this bake sale list?
I did not hear why the young man thinks white men should pay $2 while a black woman would only end up paying .50 cent. Is it because the black female is near the bottom of the pecking order and needs the help?
I didn't hear the why asked but do realize that this young man is not the only one who thinks this way. In his mind, a black female would carry less value than a white male--as women do overall because all women get a free pass of a quarter discount.
This same type of little boy is in charge of hiring at various places around the country as he is considered a great white hope. Whites place lots of value on their youth and put them in places of authority.
How frequently do you think a young man such as this will hire a black person for anything anywhere -- especially an older black in which he naturally has nothing in common? Many times blacks have to leave their community to seek employment because there is scant little business economy where they live because blacks do not usually have ownership in their own neighborhoods. (Go take a look if you don't believe me.) So we end up looking for work where that young man lives and we already know how he feels about the matter.
Think about that because it is for this reason the black unemployment rate is hovering at 17 percent. It is for this reason blacks need to own more things so they can hire more people. As long as I am in line at his bake sale I guess I have to play by his rules, eh? Well, I cannot get any younger or turn white but whilst I'm in line, I'll be looking. I'm looking for some other bake sales until I can get my own up and running in a few generations.
Also notice the pecking order itself. In this free society, are you in agreement with it? The people at the bottom actually pay more for everything in every way, are naturally disrespected and marginalized by society, usually offered nothing -- even a place in line at the bake sale. The bottom of the totem pole is a place for misfit toys, in effect, and everyone knows no kid wants a misfit toy. The bottom of anything serves as a rock and an a foundation and we all know black don't crack. I also noticed that classism and capitalism is a great neutralizer because blacks and NA with money can climb to the top of the list and be considered like whites because they will have power like whites.
Also, women are judged by their beauty because their attractiveness to a man is their worth, like a hood ornament or a doll, and most NA are considered to be like whites because most who we see are blended with Caucasian. Black Indians look like me--a black person--just like black Puerto Ricans, Brazilians etc.
It is sad that it takes a college bake sale to spawn a discussion on race and class but again, where would you fall on the bake sale list and do you agree?
On Upper Sproul Plaza, where free speech reigns supreme, the Berkeley College Republicans have scheduled a bake sale where the price of a cookie or a brownie depends on your gender and the color of your skin.
The price of a baked good costs $2 for white people, $1.50 if you're Asian, $1 for Latinos, 75 cents for African-Americans and 25 cents for Native Americans.
Women get a discount of 25 cents.
Club president Shawn Lewis planned the event.
"The pricing structure is there to bring attention, to cause people to get a little upset," said Lewis. "But it's really there to cause people to think more critically about what this kind of policy would do in university admissions."
Lewis says the bake sale is the club's way of taking a stand against pending legislation that would let the University of California consider a student's race or national origin during the admission process.
The bake sale wasn't the first of its kind: A similar pricing structure was used for a similar sale in 2009 at Purdue, and the same year, another similar bake sale was held at Bucknell before it was shut down by school officials.
The nasty comments began as soon as the event was posted by Lewis on Facebook. Lewis said several members who created the event have been threatened.
The response was so strong and so negative, the College Republicans group canceled their usual lunchtime tabling at their usual spot for fear their volunteers would be harassed.
"It certainly is stirring emotions," said Lewis, "and that's what we want, but we certainly don't want people to think that we're making fun of racial issues or laughing at them because that's not the message of the bake sale."
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