Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Fox news has an article about Conservatives doing bake sales at American universities. The catch is that if you're a white male you pay one price, if you're female you get it cheaper, and non-white cheaper still. The message being that affirmative action campaigns are unfair. Sadly it seems this humourous demonstration tactic has been met with po-faced anger and violence from the left, when the most obvious tactic would be to out-weird them. Get a load of coloured students, buy out the stock and sell them on cheaper than the original price. I don't know any figures but I would have hoped that the white male proportion of students were outnumbered by the female and/or non-white students. Maybe the universities chosen for this are bastions of white male power or something. But these types of demonstrations always sound to me like people screaming at white (and often straight too) men "Look out! The barbarians are coming to strip you of your unearned priviledges!".
Having said that, AA is quite a dangerous tool to use at times. All women shortlists are often used with blunt force trauma to increase the numbers of female MPs in Parliament. I'm not sure that saying "Who is the best woman to represent our party?" instead of "who is the best person?" is a good thing. It can spiral off into "does a disabled Asian woman get more points than a Black lesbian?" type imaginings.
Having said that, AA is quite a dangerous tool to use at times. All women shortlists are often used with blunt force trauma to increase the numbers of female MPs in Parliament. I'm not sure that saying "Who is the best woman to represent our party?" instead of "who is the best person?" is a good thing. It can spiral off into "does a disabled Asian woman get more points than a Black lesbian?" type imaginings.
