White Or Black, Who Cares?
By Brian Yates (02/22/03)
The College Republicans group at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) held an affirmative action bake sale on February 3rd. The UCLA bake sale featured discriminatory pricing in which black, Latino, and Native American female students were charged 25 cents for a cookie; black, Latino, and Native American male students were charged fifty cents; white women were charged one dollar; and white men and all Asian Americans were charged two dollars for a cookie.
According to UCLA College Republicans chair, Andy Jones, the sale was intended to “drive home to students the absurdity of deciding college admissions by race through the pricing structure of the cookies we were selling.”
In an entirely unsurprising development, the bake sale was roundly denounced by the Democrats. Josh Benson of the Stanford College Democrats whined that “Like most student conservatives, their need for attention is surpassed only by their need for new ideas. I wonder how many got in through the affirmative action of having a rich alumni dad?” The “rich alumni dad” argument, of course, is entirely original on the part of Mr. Benson. But maybe he’s referring to Al Gore, whose high school transcripts were unimpressive and got into Harvard for two reasons: his father was, at the time, a prestigious U.S. Senator, and Harvard wanted more “Washington and Virginia boys.”
Although it is George W. Bush who is constantly questioned on his intelligence, his father was about to lose a race for Senate when Bush applied to Yale. The president later received his MBA from Harvard as well. Al Gore, on the other hand, finished his high school career ranked 24th in his class of 51. He held a “C” average and yet still managed to gain admission to Harvard. John C. Davis, a former headmaster and teacher at Gore’s high school explained that Gore was exactly what Harvard wanted: “they were very impressed with the fact he was a political son.” (For some reason or another though, only Bush’s “legacy points” matter to liberals. Al Gore is never mentioned.)
This note aside, the UCLA bake sale did a good job of illustrating what affirmative action programs are all about: giving one group advantage over another based on race. Instead of giving minorities cheaper cookies, schools give them lesser admission standards. Are blacks less intelligent than whites? I don’t think so and I doubt Jesse Jackson believes that either.
It seems to me that any more, most of the so-called “civil rights leaders” don’t care about equality – this for good reason because they have that – and they simply cry racism at anybody who disagrees with them. Don’t want to give minorities an extra 20 points on college admissions? You must be racist! Here at U of L in particular, racial tensions are said to be “high” and “strained.” Because of this we want to change the name of a local park, we want to force an engineering professor to get rid of his extra credit questions, and we hold diversity forums every week. Folks, the number one way to get rid of all these “racial tensions” would be to stop making race such a factor. Let people be people. I guarantee you that the majority of people don’t care what color you are, but some such as me really get tired of hearing you whine racism every other day. Now, you’re obviously going to have idiots who are racist.
Namely handing out t-shirts explaining why a “beer is better than a black man.” That should not be tolerated and it wasn’t. However, why do we need an Office of Minority Affairs? Does the U of L Office of Student Affairs not accept black people? I have a feeling that they do. (I wonder how much money U of L could save during this budget crunch by getting rid of wasteful offices such as this?)
Look, if you want to do something with your life you have to do it yourself. Stop whining that the world is racist, stop whining that you need extra points on college admissions, stop whining that businesses should be forced to hire a certain percentage of minorities, and just stop whining.
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