This past June, the Supreme Court handed down a couple of decisions that were widely seen as lending aid and comfort to those who support the practice of “affirmative action,” i.e., discrimination on the basis of race or some other token of alleged victimhood. At issue were two lawsuits challenging admissions policies at the University of Michigan. The decisions were mixed—the court ruled (by a margin of 5–4) in favor of letting stand the law school’s policy of discriminating on the basis of race, while it partially reversed (6–3) a similar scheme in undergraduate admissions. Mixed or not, the university hailed the rulings as “a major victory.” Quoth Mary Sue Coleman, the university’s president:

This is a tremendous victory for the University of Michigan, for all of higher education, and for the hundreds of groups and individuals who supported us. A majority of the court has firmly endorsed the principle of diversity… . This is a resounding affirmation that will be heard across the land—from our college classrooms to our corporate boardrooms.

Whether the Supreme Court’s endorsement of discrimination was a victory for anything other than the forces of political correctness may be doubted. But President Coleman was surely right that the Court’s decisions “will be heard across the land.” Even now, we imagine, squads of lawyers and ACLU activists are honing their grievances in preparation for another assault on the principles of color-blind justice and equality of opportunity.

But when, we wonder, will news of Mary Sue’s “tremendous victory” reach Texas? The University of Michigan had a system whereby an applicant’s race—provided it was the right race, i.e., not the white race—earned him 20 points out of a possible 150 points. (To put the 20 points in perspective, note that “an outstanding essay, leadership or personal achievement” garnered a mere 3 points each.) In late September, some enterprising students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, endeavored to apply the Michigan principle to community fund-raising. According to a story carried by the Associated Press, a group called Young Conservatives of Texas—following the example of some students at other campuses—organized a bake sale in which cookies were priced according to the buyer’s race or gender. White males could get their confections for a buck each, white women got the same thing for 75 cents. Hispanics did even better: they could get their cookies for only 50 cents a piece, while blacks were luckiest of all: for them, cookies were on sale for two bits a pop.

What if you were only part black? Or one-third Hispanic? Did Asians have to pay a surcharge?

We’ll never know. Southern Methodist University promptly shut down the sale after only forty-five minutes because, the AP story reported, “it created a potentially unsafe situation.” What, undercooked cookies? Salmonella in the baking pan? No, the threat was not biological but ideological—a condition the university apparently considers far more toxic. No sooner had the sale gotten under way than a black student filed a complaint charging that the sale was “offensive.” More offensive than the racism of “affirmative action”?

According to Tim Moore, director of the SMU student center, shutting down the bake sale was “not an issue about free speech.” Really? You might think it was precisely a matter of free speech; so might we. But for Mr. Moore, this effort on the part of conservative students to dramatize the absurdity of “affirmative action” was “really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created.”

A hostile environment?” Puh-leeze. A hostile environment is what you encounter in Antarctica, in the streets of Tikrit, or in university classrooms if you are imprudent enough to espouse conservative opinions. A bake sale with a sliding scale of prices doesn’t create a hostile environment: it creates an embarrassing environment for politically correct academic administrators too squeamish to acknowledge their own hypocrisy. A racially or sexually determined scale of perquisites is just dandy when it comes to college admissions, academic advancement, employment at The New York Times, etc. A twenty-point bonus, redeemable—if you are black—at one of America’s great universities: no problem! That’s making education “more equitable” and “increasing diversity.” But poke a bit of fun at this system of organized hypocrisy and you find you are creating a “hostile environment.” It’s enough to make one toss one’s cookies.