The University of Texas hosted an bake sale that would sell things based on the race and sex of the buyer to address affirmative action. The bakes sale was hosted by the Young Conservatives of Texas group on campus.
A cookie cost $1.50 for Asian males, $1.25 for Asian women, a dollar for a white man and a $0.75 for a white woman, $0.50 for both African-American men and Hispanic men, $0.25 for both African-American women and Hispanic women and no charge for Native Americans.
In a press release, chairman of the group Vidal Castañeda said that their “protest was designed to highlight the insanity of assigning our lives value based on our race and ethnicity, rather than our talents, work ethic, and intelligence.” The group tried to explain that affirmative action is a racist institution and that we should work to shy away from systems that define us in race and gender.
Students of color at the university counter-protested the bake sale trying to explain to the group why affirmative action was implemented int he first place: to battle the systematic racism that had kept minority groups out of education and the work place.
The irony of a conservative group saying that affirmative action is racist is the perfect example to the racist social narrative that is being pushed in the years election.
If the group were to use this bake sale to address income inequality, it would have had a deeper meaning in addresses true systematic discrimination.