Students Object to MLK Quote on Campus Building. Blame Intersectionality.
Political correctness comes to the University of Oregon... with a vengeance.
Yes, even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. offends some college students. The University of Oregon student union recently contemplated removing MLK's "I have a dream" quote from its place of honor on the wall of a campus building because, well, the famous anti-racist statement isn't super-duper inclusive. I mean, come on: it doesn't even mention gender!
This isn't even the first time that UO students have turned on a famous phrase. In the 1970s, students successfully petitioned administrators to replace a quote that used "men" as a stand-in for all people. MLK was the compromise decision.
As Reason's Nick Gillespie wrote in response to the controversy, the revolution not only eats its own, but "vomits it all up and gives it another go."
Indeed, as I observed in a recent column for The Daily Beast, "the modern campus left is an intersectionality ouroboros—the snake from Greek mythology that eats its own tail." Intersectionality is the idea—popular among campus leftists—that all oppression is linked, and that it's not enough to stand against one kind of "ism" without also condemning all other kinds. This kind of thinking led gay anti-Israel activists to shut down an event at a pro-gay conference because the organizers were affiliated with a Jewish group. As I wrote for The Daily Beast:
It does not tolerate dissent, and it considers differences of opinion to be unbridgeable. Agreeing with Dr. King that racism is bad is insufficient. Standing with pro-LGBT+ group that includes Jews is unacceptable. And even adopting all the correct liberal views is no guarantee of avoiding the angry mob, because these views must always be expressed in hypersensitive, politically-correct language. A student could support equal rights for illegal immigrants, for example, but still be accused of committing a microaggression for neglecting to use the proper PC terminology: undocumented person.
Inclusivity doesn't leave room for sanity on college campuses. And that's a trend we should all find dispiriting.
Full thing here.