Editorial: Controversial bake sales not enough for legislative change

How do you launch a sweetly innocuous bake sale to the national forefront? How do you launch a sweetly innocuous bake sale to the national forefront?

Make it political.

The College Republicans at the University of California, Berkeley, created a media maelstrom when their plans to hold an “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” on campus sparked national controversy. According to a Washington Post article, the organizers said the event, which will feature tiered pricing based on ethnicity and gender, is meant to satirize pending state legislation that would “allow California universities to consider race, gender, ethnicity and national origin during admissions.”

The price structure is set as follows: White students pay $2 for a baked good, Asian Americans pay $1.50, Latinos pay $1, black students pay $0.75 and Native Americans pay $0.25. Being a woman will knock  a quarter off the price of each baked good.

The event’s organizers defended their bake sale, calling it a satire of affirmative action.

“The Berkeley College Republicans firmly believe measuring any [applicant’s] merit based on race is intrinsically racist … The pricing structure of the baked goods is meant to be satirical, while urging students to think more critically about the implications of this policy,” they wrote on the Facebook event page.

But this event does nothing to urge students to think critically about anything. Instead, it’s a publicity stunt that drives the focus away from the real issue — the American education system — and onto the student group iteslf. It’s a tired charade of faux-political activism that has happened almost every year — according to Slate, universities across the U.S. have done the exact same thing since 2002.

And what has been accomplished to deserve such media attention? Nothing. Despite years of affirmative action and affirmative action-bashing bake sales, little has loosened the white man’s grasp on the world. What’s at issue isn’t how much a cupcake costs, it’s how much work our society needs to do to become more egalitarian.

If the College Republicans at Berkeley are earnest about changing this legislation, they should implement a new strategy that serves not as hackneyed satire, but as a true solution to the problem.

We think affirmative action isn’t the solution to unequal distribution of opportunity. It’s an inequality-fraught class system, not necessarily race or gender, that limits peoples’ opportunities. Why should higher education determine acceptance based on appearance?

We need a new solution, not a tired, perennial stunt.