"Your cookie is free, black lady"

Coming into work and finding stuff to blog about has always been interesting. Now I have yet to comment about last week's sanctioned murder of Troy Davis, but this other issue definitely has my stomach growling (but not with hunger).

Yesterday, a college bake sale at University of California at Berkley made headlines across the great USA. Not because the cupcakes could compete with Chicago's famed cupcake store, Molly's Cupcakes (my favorite place to indulge in Chi-Town), but because all of the baked goods were priced based on the customer's race and gender. The highest price were for white males and the lowest were for black females. All other racial groups were somewhere in between and all women got a discount.Crazy, huh? Well, guess what student organization was behind this? The College Republicans (not a surprise). Their point: to show the affects of affirmative action.



I don't know how many times the purpose of affirmative action must be explained, but let's be real. I thought we all knew that affirmative action is in place because historically (and still currently) groups other than white males are frequently discriminated against. Affirmative action is in place to help those in marginalized groups (women, Blacks, Latinos, Asians) cross the divide to ensure a fair chance at an education. It does not mean that those within these groups get it easy but it means that they have to work just as hard as their white male applicants to get in instead of TWICE (or more) as hard.

More bothersome about this bake sale was not the bake sale itself, but the fact that among those who planned it were Asian and Latino. Simply put, they wouldn't have been able to JOIN any college organization because some of them may not have even been accepted if it wasn't for affirmative action. And all because you may be seen as superior to black folk does make you equal to white men.

I don't know if I have said this before or not, but I strongly believe those who have not come from generations of societal (and many cases, legal) disenfranchisement don't (or refuse to) understand why several of these laws have been created - to prevent history from repeating itself and to program those of who come from generations of bigotry to understand what their generations of the past have done and what they are doing now is disruptive to a productive, "post-racist" and culturally relative modern society. If you're a white man and you don't understand why that white woman, who attended a school equal in calibur to yours, scored exactly the same as you did on the ACT and the SAT, got in over you, let me break it down. She got in because YOU have a better opportunity to get into any school of your choice because no one will turn you down because of your race or gender. That white woman could be turned be turned down from several schools simply because of her gender, even in today's society. Why do you think Hilary Clinton is not president today, despite the fact that she's more qualified than Barack Obama? America is still conditioned to think that men are more capable than women, regardless of race.

All in all, I think the discounts are well deserved. Based on data collected by the National Committee of Pay Equity, white men earn the most out of everyone else.