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« Totalitarian Appeasers On Parade | Main | Paix Pour Petrole--Non! »

Diversity In Pastry

This is great. The campus Republicans at UCLA had an affirmative action bake sale.

The sale, held on Bruin Walk on Feb. 3, offered cookies at different prices depending on the customer's race and gender. Black, Latina and American Indian females were charged 25 cents for cookies that cost males of minority descent 50 cents. White females were charged $1, and white males and all Asian Americans were charged $2.

Students selling the cookies were assigned name tags portraying them as "Uncle Tom," "The White Oppressor" and "Self-Hating Hispanic Race Traitor."

It really knotted up Art Torres' knickers.

Torres, a former California state senator, believes UCLA Republicans have been "emboldened" by the recent race-sensitive remarks by various Republican leaders, specifically citing Trent Lott's, R-Miss., comments and Congressman Howard Coble's, R-N.C., praise of internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.

"It is a shame that Republicans at UCLA have chosen to mimic the extreme views of their Republican leaders," Torres said.

What a disgusting cretin. Just when did the notion of equality under the law become an "extreme view"? And what does this have to do with Trent Lott?

Juan Carlos-Orellana, president of the Democratic Law Students Association, responded to the event with similar indignation, referring to the bake sale as an "insulting trivialization of the serious issue of race and gender equality."

Orellana sees the effort by the Bruin Republicans as detrimental to the discussion of affirmative action.

"By reducing the complexity of this issue into dollars and cents and cookies they are working to stop discourse," he said.

Translation: "We don't really have a logical rebuttal to the satirical demonstration of the absurdity of our views, so we'll pretend instead that they're censoring us."

They've really got no arguments left, folks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 15, 2003 03:43 PM

Comments

But don't even try to challange the validity of anti-war demonstrations, you fascist.

Posted by Sean Kirby at February 15, 2003 04:59 PM

Now if this was some leftist group, in support of a leftist cause, it would be praised as great street theatre, and would, within a year, become as ubiqitous and cliched as die-ins, large paper-mache puppets and all the other side-show carnival stunts the left has in its arsenal.

Posted by Raoul Ortega at February 15, 2003 06:46 PM

Heh-heh, that's a great story! Nice find.

Posted by Eric Lindholm at February 15, 2003 08:32 PM

This is a brilliant tactic, and I want to see it used more, more, more! The pro-preferences crowd dislikes it because with simplicity comes clarity, and the clarity of their desire to discriminate among us based on our origins is entirely detrimental to them.

Now, can we get a nice application of this tactic to differential taxation?

Posted by Francis W. Porretto at February 16, 2003 04:20 AM

So let me undertsand this by agreeing with the Left name callers, that they are in fact an Uncle Tom, a White Oppressor and a Self-Hating Hispanic Race Traitor, they still find fault.

I thought they wanted us to admit our real views and selves, to bare our souls and ask for forgiveness. Isn't this the first step?

These Lefties are never satisfied!!

Posted by Steve at February 16, 2003 09:32 AM

Got a link, Rand? The one you posted goes to your blog, not to the story.

Posted by Parabellum at February 16, 2003 11:35 AM

In response to one of the posts above- almost the same thing has been done for a leftist cause. Many campus feminist groups hold "equality bake sales" where men pay $1 for cookies that cost women $.60, since women on average make only 60% as much as men.

As predicted, they are met with almost universal acceptance and are often lauded as clever demonstrations of inequality. (Which they are, IMHO) Funny what happens when the shoe's on the other foot, isn't it?

Posted by Jeff Dougherty at February 16, 2003 12:57 PM

Yes, though I think that the latest number I've seen (not that I really trust any such statistical analyses--they're really meaningless), is $0.79.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 16, 2003 01:03 PM

> Yes, though I think that the latest number I've seen (not that I really trust any such statistical analyses--they're really meaningless), is $0.79.

Actually, if you're going to compare like to like, you'd do something like:
(1) Female engineers pay $1.06
(2) Male engineers pay $1.00

Posted by Andy Freeman at February 16, 2003 02:53 PM

It wouldn't surprise me that they were using old statistics, or that the statistics weren't that great in the first place. I just happen to think that it's a clever way of making a point, and I find it amusing that the same people who beamed approvingly at demonstrations like that from the left squawk so loudly when the right uses the same tactics.

Posted by Jeff Dougherty at February 16, 2003 04:58 PM

I don't knbow where some of the numbers come from, but am a police officer and work at a school. All employess of both sexes get paid the same at both the schoola nd the police department. I work for a female sergeant and a female high school principal, who both make more then me. Keep up the good work young republicans. You are our future.

Posted by Clei at February 18, 2003 11:41 AM

I go to the UCLA business school and I saw the display last week. People here were shitting their pants. I am surprised this place even has a republican anywhere. As far as a simple tax illustration please refer to the following.
Since new tax cuts are now being presented, let's all remember the
following:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner.

The bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something
like

this.

The first four men -- the poorest -- would pay nothing;

The fifth would pay $1:

the sixth would pay $3;

the seventh $7;

the eighth $12;

The ninth $18.

The tenth man -- the richest -- would pay $59.

That's what they decided to do.

The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite
happy
with the arrangement -- until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce
the cost of your daily meal by $20."

So now dinner for the ten only cost $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still eat for free.

But what about the other six -- the paying customers?

How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his
"fair share?"

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.

But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man
and
the sixth man would end up being *paid* to eat their meal.

So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each
man's
bill by roughly the same percent, and he proceeded to work out the
amounts
each should pay.

And so the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh
paid
$5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with
a
bill of $52 instead of his earlier $59.

Each of the six was better off than before.

And the first four continued to eat for free.

But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their
savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth. "But he got $7!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man.

"I only saved a dollar, too.

It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man.

"Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2?

The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison.

"We didn't get anything at all.

The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night he didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and
ate without him.

But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something
important.

They were $52 short!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college instructors, is how
the
tax system works.

The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax
reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not
show
up at the table anymore.

Unfortunately, some cannot grasp this straight-forward logic!

Posted by Phin at February 18, 2003 09:15 PM


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