An affirmative action bake sale is a type of campus protest event used by student groups to performatively criticize affirmative action policies by charging students different prices depending on which social or racial group they belong to. It has also been used to raise awareness of racial or sexual wage gaps.
Methodology
The bake sales offer to sell cookies at different prices depending on the customer's race and sex, imitating racial and sexual orientation practices of affirmative action. For example, one such bake sale at the University of New Mexico charged $1.50 for Asian customers, $1 for whites, and 50 cents for African-Americans and Hispanics.
According to one bake sale student leader, the goal of the technique is to "bring the issue of affirmative action down to everyday terms."
These bake sales have been organized at many schools across the U.S., sometimes annually. Affirmative action bake sales have also taken place at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, the latest (in 2008) having been forcibly broken up by campus security.
Reception
The bake sales have met opposition, drawing crowds of students, sometimes facing opposition or restriction from campus administrations, often being accused of racism, and sometimes even being attacked. Additionally, some administrators have been accused of censorship and inappropriately advocating a political position.
At the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the Graduate and Professional Students of Color student organization responded to a bake sale held by the Students for Individual Liberty by holding a White Privilege popcorn giveaway where white males received a full bag of popcorn, while women and non-whites received 1/3 of a bag.
See also
- Affirmative action in the United States
- Reverse discrimination
- Whites Only Scholarship
- White privilege
- White backlash