The media, bewildered bloggers, and even their own school have demonized the Berkley Republican Club for their satirical ‘Racist’ Bake Sale, an event on campus meant to show the illogic of affirmative action.  However, perhaps Berkley administrators should ask their history department about America’s long past of political theater before rebuking it.
Political theater has been a decorated concept in America, even before its founding. The Boston Tea Party in 1773 is the prime example. Three years before the Revolution, American colonists overtook British ships and dumped the tea that they were caring into the harbor to protest the Tea Act. This act was so celebrated that nearly a quarter of a millennium later, an upcoming political party took its name. Surely, this act, if committed today, would be called a domestic act of terror, however we celebrate it, but inexplicably, by in large remain critical of subjectively priced baked goods.
The bake sale is neither as disruptive nor outlandish as people dressing as Native Americans and disrupting commerce either. It raises a valid point: any system in which people are categorized by ethnic background, such as Affirmative Action is by definition discriminatory. Some may see it as a necessary evil, but that does not change the programs faults. As long as we segregate ourselves by race, we fall prey to ever increasing bigotry.
Why must race even be an issue when one looks for a place of higher education? In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Yet even today we still are trying to justify laws that will allow us to see someone by the color of their skin sooner than the content of their character through Affirmative Action.
He said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” However, Affirmative Action gives a deafening blow to this idea of equality, proposing a governmental distinction saying that people of this ethnic background are created equal, but people of this one are created just a little more equal.
Yet again he said, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.” How can we ever come together if we make such arbitrary distinctions that drive us apart? When we categorize ourselves by race, an act that Affirmative Action promises to accomplish, we no longer can sit at that table of brotherhood as family, but only as a white man, a black man, and a Mexican, with no room for us to be mutually American.
There is no such thing as white America, or black America, or Mexican America, or any other racial distinction one would have you put on it. There is only America. It has no color, it has no religion, and therefore enables the individual to have the freedom to choose who they want to be. Now surely, there are people in America that will try to define someone by their ethnic background, and the vast majority of Americans are correct to believe that those people should be punished. Now, perhaps, some of that vast majority should ask themselves why they are trying to define someone by their ethnic background, through Affirmative Action.