Affirmative action bake sales have been taking place in America for the past decade or so. They became more frequent following a ruling by the US Supreme Court in 2003 that allowed colleges to use race as a factor in admissions policy (though not, one would assume, for the purpose of excluding Black or Hispanic students).In case you haven’t heard of these events, they work like this: white students set up a stall on campus selling cookies (or donuts, or whatever) at different prices depending on the racial origins or gender (or both) of the buyer. A typical price list for a single cookie might look like this:
White and Asian males: $1
White and Asian females: $.75
Latino, black and Native American males: $.50
Latino, black and Native American females: $.25
The aim, obviously, is to highlight what is actually happening when a college accepts certain students with lowers grades than others on the basis of gender or ethnicity – Asians don’t tend to benefit from affirmative action programmes, because they’re academically more successful than any other groups: in fact, some American colleges restrict the number of Asians they allow in (welcome to the whacky, racist world of the modern liberal).
Affirmative action bake sales drives liberals mad, naturally, and are therefore to be applauded. I have no idea whether undergraduates from private schools have organized similar events here in the UK – but I expect they’d be rusticated or imprisoned for hate crime (or both) if they did.
Every time I hear of some outrageous piece of social engineering based on sex or race, I’m reminded of the bake sales (which are often banned or physically broken up by the campus authorities or physically attacked by outraged students).
Earlier this week, Michael White, who blogs on music for the Telegraph, had this to say about the setting up a new entity called the Commonwealth Youth Orchestra:
“Making such an orchestra truly representational will be an even greater problem. There are 54 countries in the Commonwealth, and most of them have no tradition of western classical music. The universe of cellists, flautists, timpanists emerging from Lesotho, Kiribati and Namibia isn’t going to be great. And the strong possibility will be that this orchestra ends up essentially a group of Brits with some Australians and Canadians who happen to be studying in London.”
Well, so bloody what?
Why the hell does it need to be “truly representational?” And why should it reflect the racial make-up of Commonwealth countries? In fact – what’s the point of the whole damn thing in the first place?
Our bleeding-heart blogger ends up with these reflections: “…the ongoing rarity of black and brown faces in the world’s symphony orchestras is an issue that needs to be addressed. But the people behind the Commonwealth Youth Orchestra will have to come up with some seriously out-of-the-box thinking if the result of their efforts is going to be worthwhile.”
I should have thought that a “worthwhile” result for a music expert might be a decent orchestra!
Why, precisely, does this issue need to be addressed? Next, he’ll be complaining about the under-representation of whites in world-class reggae bands or that there are too many Irish jockeys or too few Scandinavian 100m runners.
There’s a truly obnoxious assumption underlying these inanities: that people from different backgrounds or sporting different skin pigmentations are no longer allowed to have different aptitudes or enthusiasms.
And just as I was recovering from this outrage, a regular correspondent emailed me this piece of news from last October, which they found on Wikipedia:
"Channel 4 News on 10 August 2010 reported that O'Donnell will leave his post before the end of the current parliament, with David Cameron planning to appoint a female or ethnic minority candidate in his place."
O’Donnell (first name, Augustine!) is the current Cabinet Secretary, which makes him the head of the Civil Service. And the Prime Minister of Britain - a Conservative, no less – is apparently intending to throw the principle of appointment on merit out the window to satisfy some weird urge to feel all warm and cuddly and inclusive.
And this from an extremely posh male Prime Minister who reached the top of British politics via Eton and Oxford - that most traditional and privileged of routes. It is beyond parody!
Of course, Dave and his Libtard chums may recently have been given pause for thought by that wonderful example of successful affirmative action by the Tory Party – step forward Lord Taylor of Warwick, the first black Tory peer, recently convicted of swindling the tax-payer out of £11,000. Worked well, didn’t it! Wonder if he’ll be out of jail in time to take over from Gus as Cabinet Secretary?
Fancy a cookie, anyone?
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