Some lives matter more than others. Smith College president Kathleen McCartney learned this lesson the hard way after sending an e-mail last December that declared “All Lives Matter.” The e-mail was designed to help Smith students process and protest the decision of grand juries not to indict the officers involved in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. McCartney of course apologized almost immediately, realizing that declaring that every person’s life matters could “minimize the anti-blackness of this the current situation.” A Smith sophomore said that McCartney’s original e-mail “felt like she was invalidating the experience of black lives.”
As with so many incidents in this new resurgence of political correctness, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Does one just chuckle and shake one’s head at a movement so hyper-sensitive that it reacts angrily even at its friends and allies when they don’t use exactly the right language at exactly the right time (as defined by the most sensitive and angry campus activists)? Or does one lament the trajectory of a culture that is narrowing the range of acceptable discourse so dramatically? Do both. Now is the time for laughter and lamentations.
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