UC Berkeley GOP student bake sale is mean-spirited

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 9/27/11 | Chip Johnson

[aruanan]

I'd have to see more evidence to be convinced of that. The Psanish and Portuguese internarried with Indians to such a great extent that the mixed-race population now makes up the substantial majority of Latin American societies. There was a substantial cultural as well as genetic fusion.

Think of Cortez and Pizarro. It's true that Fray Bartolome de las Casas made a case for not enslaving the American Indians because it was immoral. Instead he proposed importing African slaves. The Indians of the Indies were wiped out. And both the Portuguese and Spanish were extremely hard on slaves. They were responsible for the major portion of the slave trade, mostly to replace slaves they killed off. American slaves, by contrast, did much better. Although America had a huge slave population, they were descendants of slaves. Things were so rough in the Caribbean and elsewhere outside the United States that the number of children born to slaves was not enough to sustain and increase the slave population.

[Mrs. Don-o]

It's true that Cortez and Pizarro annihilated Mesoamericans in the period of invasion and conquest; likewise the indigenous Caribbeans were wiped out. Many died by European infections, as explained in "The Arrow of Disease" (a really interesting read, by the way).

The main brunt of slavery in the Caribbean and S.A. (after the infectious diseases took their toll) was borne by Africans. At the same time, indigenous Americans very frequently intermarried with Iberians. Thus a cultural and genetic fusion, as I mentioned. A hundred million mestizos, eventually, in New Spain. You won't find that in New England.

[Crucial]

I believe that the groups opposing these college Republicans are saying that differential pricing has no resemblance to affirmative action. Actually their both preferences. One is an economic preference and the other is a preference in educational access, both preferences based solely or significantly on race.