Black People Prefer “All Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter”

The “Black Lives Matter” movement has arisen to protest supposed unjustified police shootings of black suspects. Never mind that in the majority (and probably a lopsided majority) of cases the shootings have been justified. The narrative of racial oppression demands that the activists insist that cops undervalue black lives.

Bizarrely, when well-intentioned but muddle-headed liberals have said that “all lives matter,” the activists have gone ballistic.

First case, the president of Smith College:

The president of prestigious Smith College is red-faced and apologetic Tuesday for telling students on the Northampton, Mass., campus that “all lives matter.”

Kathleen McCartney wrote the phrase in the subject line of an e-mail to students at the school, whose alumni include feminists Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, former First Lady Nancy Reagan and celebrity chef Julia Child. McCartney was attempting to show support for students protesting racially charged grand jury decisions in which police in Missouri and New York were not charged in the deaths of unarmed black men.

Protesters have adopted several slogans in connection with the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, including “Black Lives Matter.” McCartney’s more inclusive version of the refrain was seen as an affront that diminished the focus on black lives and racism, according to emails obtained by FoxNews.com.

“We are united in our insistence that all lives matter,” read the e-mail,in which she made clear she was strongly behind the protests, writing that the grand jury decisions had “led to a shared fury… We gather in vigil, we raise our voices in protest.”

But she soon received backlash from students for her phrasing. They were offended that she did not stick with the slogan “black lives matter.”

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.

Next case, Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley. We won’t go into the details, which are equally bizarre.

But now comes a Rasmussen Poll which asks likely voters (including black Americans) whether “black lives matter” or “all lives matter” is closest to their view.

Among blacks, 31% say “black lives matter” is closest to their view, but 64% say that “all lives matter” is closest to their view.

Thus, by more that two to one, black people in America side with the humane notion that all lives matter, and not with the activists’ race hustling.

Thus McCartney and O’Malley look like typical muddle-headed liberals. They cave to the radical activists, and take a position at odds with the majority of black people.

Liberal campus bureaucrats like McCartney talk a lot about “inclusion.” But in fact “inclusion” is just an Orwellian term for an exclusive concern for politically correct victim groups.