As CNN
reports, and as Kathleen
covered yesterday, the Berkeley campus is up in arms over the Berkeley College Republicans' Increase Diversity Bake Sale. The publicity stunt, scheduled for today, is intended to show the discrimination inherent in affirmative action by selling cupcakes at different prices based on one's level of "minorityness."
While Affirmative Action Bake Sales are old hat, the response by the left provides a perfect opportunity to explain the University of California (UC) left's racial playbook. The UC left has a consistent strategy for converting real or imagined racist incidents into political gain, particularly in the pursuit of censorship or policies that favor specific identity groups.
They portray such incidents as symptoms of a dangerous campus climate, thus requiring policies to repair a community that is guilty of the crime of being the sort of place where such vicious psychic injuries can be inflicted. Of course, the left only seems to care about hostile campus climates when the identities of the victims and perpetrators fit their narrative of "powerful" groups oppressing weaker ones. As I will show below the fold, these leftists' defense of the often anti-Semitic, terrorist-supporting, and/or illegal activities of the Muslim Student Association puts the lie to any claims that they are pursuing universalistic anti-prejudice goals or are truly concerned about the dangers of a campus climate where hate of any sort flows freely.
