Is this bake sale racist?

Campus Republicans at the University of California Berkeley will be selling cupcakes on Tuesday — a move some are calling racist.

At the “Diversity Bake Sale” white men will pay $2 per cupcake, Asians will pay $1.50, Latinos will pay $1, African Americans will pay 75 cents and Native Americans 25 cents per cupcake. Women will get a 25 per cent discount, said the original Facebook event invitation, which has since been changed according to student newspaper The Daily Californian.

Campus Republican president Shawn Lewis told KGO TV that the bake sale is meant “to cause people to get a little upset” and to draw attention to a proposed bill that would allow (but not require) universities to consider race, nationality and gender in admissions policies. Such affirmative action was outlawed in the state in 1997.

The Associated Students of the University of California, the school’s student union, has called a special senate meeting to decided whether to take away the club’s funding. The event may have violated the student senate’s anti-racism policy, says the ASUC, which condemns the event.

The planned protest has prompted ample discussion of Bill 185 on Facebook. Some students have shown their support on the Campus Republicans. Others have called them racist.

One recent poster says, “for full accuracy, make sure black students aren’t allowed to buy anything until 12:30, and then they have to let white students skip ahead of them in line until 1:15. Women can’t buy until 12:45, and they’re limited to two items per customer….”

Another recent poster writes: “We need a candid discussion on how Asians will be affected by the new policies.” Asian Americans made up 12 per cent of California’s population in 2008, but represent 43 per cent of UC Berkeley’s student body, reports USA Today.