Thursday, December 11, 2014

A College President Had to Apologize for Saying 'All Lives Matter'

A College President Had to Apologize for Saying 'All Lives Matter' - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
Smith College President Kathleen McCartney thought she was showing solidarity with students protesting racism and police brutality when she sent a campus-wide email with the subject line, "All Lives Matter." But the anti-racism slogan popular with students is actually the more selective "black lives matter."
Uh oh. Burn the heretic!
Students were furious and offended, according to Fox News:
The Daily Hampshire Gazette, which first covered the story, quoted one Smith sophomore, Cecelia Lim, as saying, “it felt like she was invalidating the experience of black lives.”
In response to student backlash, McCartney apologized in another campus-wide email Friday, saying she had made a mistake “despite my best intentions.” 
She wrote that the problem with the phrase lay in how others had used it.
“I regret that I was unaware the phrase/hashtag “all lives matter” has been used by some to draw attention away from the focus on institutional violence against Black people,” she wrote.

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