A tweet and a delete from former Fugees member Wyclef Jean has had Twitter awash with anger.

On Martin Luther King Day, Jean sent out a now deleted tweet that read, “Martin Luther King Jr. fought because all lives matter.”

The phrase “All Lives Matter” has become a counterpoint to the phrase, “Black Lives Matter.” Critics of the Black Lives Matter movement, such as members of the alt-right, argue that the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is exclusive; that it makes it seem as though black lives matter and that the lives of those of other ethnicities do not.

Black Lives Matter supporters often remind critics, as Bill Maher did on his television show in 2015, “’All Lives Matter’ implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they’re not.”

Jean has previously supported the Black Lives Matter movement, releasing Redemption Song at a Black Lives Matter event in July 2016. The song is built around the lyric, “Don’t you ask me again, ‘Why do black lives matter?’”

After the initial tweet, Jean released the song Life Matters, a more polished version of Redemption Song.

Jean says in the song that, “The universe would shatter/If we all didn’t matter.”

It is strange that Jean would pivot from being a Black Lives Matter supporter to rejecting the movement, and on Martin Luther King Day no less.

Life Matters does include the phrase, “black lives matter” several times, so maybe there is hope the alt-right hasn’t appropriated one of our favorite Fugees just yet. Let’s hope that, despite being a songwriter who deals in words for a living, in this case Jean misspoke.

And misspoke for real — not like when politicians say something racist and then are forced to apologize. Because Dr. King did fight for everyone from American blacks to the Vietnamese.

We celebrate Dr. King because he didn’t just tweet incendiary words — he spoke and acted powerfully to try to make our planet better. Though Martin Luther King Day is gone for 2017, let’s all try to emulate his words and deeds a bit better, Wyclef Jean included.

Life Matters

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