The Snowflakes Aren't Melting

Commentators and culture warriors have popularized the term “snowflake” in recent years to describe the people, mostly younger Americans, who demand “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” to protect them from the harm of “microaggressions” and “cultural appropriation.” Just last week, a controversy erupted at Yale Law School because a Native American student who belongs to the conservative Federalist Society sent a house party invitation that referred to the dwelling as a “trap house.” Other law students suspected this might be racist somehow, partly because the source was a Federalist Society student and partly because the party would feature fried chicken. They turned to the administration for help, and the administration attempted to extract an apology from the “offending” party host.

At first glance, the injured students appear to be classic snowflakes and the incident a consequence of what psychologist Jonathan Haidt and civil rights attorney Gregory Lukianoff have termed “safetyism.” America’s shift toward a culture in which the sacred value of safety trumps other practical and moral considerations, they say, has led to child-rearing practices that “prepare the road for the child” rather than “preparing the child for the road.” Instead of building character we build massive bureaucracies to deal with all the complaints that we’ve taught young people to emit at the first sign of discomfort, which they conflate with peril.

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