AASU's Response to the Bake Sale

The Asian American Student Union would like to respectfully address some issues regarding last week’s controversial “affirmative action” bake sale. The Asian American civil rights community, locally and nationally, supports affirmative action because we believe it benefits everyone, not simply Asian Americans or other racial minorities. The “cookie price” analogy trivializes what affirmative action is, and was specifically designed to mislead uninformed students. The cookies at last week’s sale were priced at 95 cents for Asian Americans, not much lower than the $1 price for Caucasians. That seemingly makes us look like we are ALSO victims of affirmative action policies (but we get in just a little bit easier, 5 cents on their scale to be exact). That was a sly attempt to create a divide between Asians and other minorities, and it was exactly their hope that such a scale would foster hostilities between Asian Americans and other groups.

Amid all the hype by conservatives to elevate Asian Americans to be the “model minority” in America, we still earn significantly less than Whites with similar levels of education. They speak of us as if we are a homogeneous group, but from Silicon Valley millionaire executives to recent immigrants struggling to make a living, we are a diverse group of people with a great variety of income levels and social statuses. The apparent success of Asians in America is indeed something to celebrated, because it is a testament to the collective hard work of our people. However, let us not be mistaken, Asians in America cannot have come such a long way – economically, socially, and culturally, without the collective effort with other underrepresented communities (including economically disadvantaged Whites) to break down the barriers to equal opportunities.

Despite our obvious disagreements, we at AASU are strong believers in the First Amendment, and we are going to respect the rights of the student group to express their opinions. At AASU, we're disappointed that last week’s situation became confrontational, and we do not condone the alleged threatening responses. However, the organizers knew exactly what they were getting into. These bake sales have been organized at campuses around the country as a coordinated effort by conservative student groups, and they have been met with the same emotional response from concerned students all over the country. They knew exactly what they were doing, and the group launched this campaign to gain publicity through controversy. Unfortunately we are giving them further publicity through these letters, but we simply cannot watch in passivity and implicitly allow them to blatantly humiliate and degrade us (and yes that is also their right, if they so choose). Furthermore, our state has already banned affirmative action with the passage of Initiative 200 in November 1998. To bring the issue up five years later in such a fashion is simply adding insult to injury.

The affirmative action bake sale was a failed attempt to create responsible social commentary. When the organizers of the bake sale were planning to go out there and create this divisive ideological firestorm, we were working to host an Affirmative Action Community Forum on November 15 at the Ethnic Cultural Theatre, where we would provide a SAFE and CIVILIZED environment to discuss these important social issues, where even if both sides may not come to agreement with one another, they will disagree respectfully.

Now that the issue has become an imminent focus in our community, there are coordinated efforts to form discussion forums immediately. AASU stands in unity with other student organizations to organize responses to the bake sale. In the coming weeks, we encourage students to attend these events to educate themselves about the truths and misconceptions of affirmative action.

AASU Co-Directors:
Anthony Wu & Nien Liu