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Affirmitive Action bake sale

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What does everyone here think about the idea?

Have an affirmitive action bake sale charging different prices to different students based on ethnicity. If you want a cookie and are white you pay $2.00. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics pay $1.00.

What do you think would become of students on a campus who did this? The school recognized club they are affiliated with?

They can offer pamphlets and fliers about the injustice of affirmitive action. Do you think this would be an effective way for (positive!) promotion and exposure?

How long do you think this could go until the tables are thrown over on top of the students having it or until university administration catches a whif of it and shuts them down?

Any and all opinions would be appreciated it. Thank you everyone :P

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Yes Steve is right. Ask the members of the old Northwestern Objectivist Club. "Old," because defunct, in large part because of that project.

It's not productive activism. You're not going to convince anyone that affirmative action is wrong this way. It's not intellectual, it's more of a publicity stunt. No wonder it's the darling of College Republican groups. Leave the publicity stunts to them. Objectivists should concentrate on spreading Ayn Rand's ideas.

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I recently put the kibosh on a plan to do one of these floated by several members of a law school student organization of which I am Treasurer. They are not a good idea for promoting good ideas.

~Q

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I took photos of my school's AA bake sale in 2004.

What struck me was that (1) the cookies were no good and (2) neither were the ideas promoted. It's like someone had a good idea to get attention (it worked, they got huge publicity) and then failed to follow through on everything else. The goal should be to use the publicity to spread good ideas, not to make publicity a goal in itself - that's something the left does.

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http://www.thefire.org/pdfs/4049_2396.pdf

Here's an account of the consequences.

Out of curiosity, why do those of you who are opposed to it, think that it is an incorrect approach? From the article, it seemed to me that the approach was effective in that it showed the culturally relativistic, school administrators to be the hypocritical whores opposed to actual diversity of thought that they are.

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Have an affirmitive action bake sale charging different prices to different students based on ethnicity. If you want a cookie and are white you pay $2.00. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics pay $1.00.

Actually Asians would probably pay something closer to $2.50 for getting none of the benefits of affirmative action as far as jobs or college admissions goes (in fact held to a higher standard than whites in some cases due to a lopsided over-representation) yet still suffering from many of prejudices and discriminations that comes with being a racial minority.

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Out of curiosity, why do those of you who are opposed to it, think that it is an incorrect approach?

Because of the emotional response it will get, which is a bad thing given our particular culture. Emotionalism is by far the most dominant (intellectual) problem in the world today, ranging from people who won't let go of their beliefs, no matter how much they recognize them to be false, because of how much time they've invested into them (thus becoming very "attached"), to people who literally won't listen to any arguments period if they're at all angry. Such a sale as this will certainly provoke that anger that will lead to the shutting off of ears.

Going through with the sale won't do so much damage as to set anyone back per say, but overall it is still a futile gesture, like Sisyphus pushing that boulder. Appeal to minds not emotions. Publishing some essays or blogs would be a much better idea I think.

[Edit: Minor rewording]

Edited by Benpercent
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Appeal to minds not emotions. Publishing some essays or blogs would be a much better idea I think.

The idea of such campaigns is to spark conversations and discussions on the topic, much as we are doing now.

Emotions is a powerful tool. Certainly you cannot deny that at least on campus, the bake sale in all likelihood generated far more attention and discussion on the topic than any essay would.

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Just thinking about this a bit, if you're going to do an "affirmative action" bake sale, but don't want to upset people quite as much as has happened in the past, make a principled point with it.

Don't specify which minorities are entitled to the lower price: "Cookies: $2 (only $1 for minority persons)." When you get complaints, educate people on "the smallest minority." In this way, you don't sell *any* cookies for $2, and make a good point.

~Q

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Because of the emotional response it will get, which is a bad thing given our particular culture. Emotionalism is by far the most dominant (intellectual) problem in the world today, ranging from people who won't let go of their beliefs, no matter how much they recognize them to be false, because of how much time they've invested into them (thus becoming very "attached"), to people who literally won't listen to any arguments period if they're at all angry. Such a sale as this will certainly provoke that anger that will lead to the shutting off of ears.

Going through with the sale won't do so much damage as to set anyone back per say, but overall it is still a futile gesture, like Sisyphus pushing that boulder. Appeal to minds not emotions. Publishing some essays or blogs would be a much better idea I think.

[Edit: Minor rewording]

While I agree that emotionalism is a problem I disagree as to the sales effectiveness in light of it. The value I see in this is that the idiocy of the system is immediately apparent to anyone who is either sitting on the fence or hasn't given serious consideration to the issue.

The image of someone explaining an issue like this in concrete essentials is immediately contrasted with the emotionalist, frothing at the mouth, who, offering no intellectual counter or justification, shuts it down by force.

I do not, and have never held, that it was possible to change the views of someone as far gone as this middle aged administrator, so to attempt something like this with that goal in mind would be folly, but so would any attempt at conversion to reason. A 17 year old freshman walking by the sale, is another thing entirely. That should(and I would guess, is) the intended target audience of this action.

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By doing an "Affirmative Action Bakesale", you're only going to raise Hell among the students, professors, and maybe even press. And, of course, they're just going to portray you as the 'bigots' and 'bad guys'. You're just going to screw yourselves over.

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I like the idea. I would play coy through the whole thing. I would tell the school that I thought it was unfair for “minority” students to have to pay full price because of their disadvantages. "Any one that disagrees is being racist and doesn’t care about minorities". Make the liberals and the schools swallow and choke on their own ideas. The funny thing is that the school has to condemn their own admissions practice in order to criticize them. Once they’ve done so I would later point out the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the schools decisions. It really paints them in a corner so to speak.

Sure a lot of liberals are going to get all huffy about it, but the message isn’t for them. It’s for the people who could actually think and judge for themselves. I do agree with GC though, in that you have to know the ideas and philosophy behind what your doing.

In the words of Oscar Wilde “The only thing worse then being talked about is not being talked about”

Edited by Rearden_Steel
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Have an affirmitive action bake sale charging different prices to different students based on ethnicity. If you want a cookie and are white you pay $2.00. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics pay $1.00.
You would still run into the problem of whites gobbling up more than their fair share of cookies. To properly run the quota system, whites would be unable to buy a cookie--regardless of price--until the minority cookie quota has been filled. You may, in fact, have to give cookies away to people who fall into certain groups if not enough members of that group are willing to buy them.
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