So leave it to me to choose a controversial topic for my first blog…
Today I was sitting in the waiting room of Larry Bush’s Riverside Tire in Macon, waiting to get two new tires on my car, when a news story came on about five high schoolers who got in trouble for wearing American Flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
Here is the gist of the story (taken from an NBC article):
Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal's office.
"They said we could wear it on any other day," Daniel Galli said, "but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today."
The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts "incendiary" that would lead to fights on campus.
"They said if we tried to go back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended," Dominic Maciel, Galli's friend, said.
*Note: There may be more sides to this story. I'm not saying that the 5 students didn't provoke at all, but based on this article and a couple of others I've read, I haven't heard that. If that's true it can be considered. But whether that's true or not, this sounds like it was handled very poorly.
I won’t go off on this very long and I really won’t even go off as far on this as I could. I just want to comment and say that this is absolutely ridiculous. Let’s look at the core of this story:
Students living in America wear an American Flag shirt to school. Cinco de Mayo comes around—an unofficial Mexican Holiday (Yes, unofficial. It is not even an official holiday IN Mexico)—and all of a sudden it is unacceptable for these students to wear shirts heralding the country in which they live and go to school.
Does this not strike anyone else as absolutely absurd?! Can you imagine this story happening in any other country? Imagine a French or Mexican school. Say on the 4th of July, a French or Mexican student were to wear a shirt sporting their flag. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that ANYTHING would be said or done about it.
Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying—I’m not saying that we should squelch out the celebration of diversity or other cultures or that Cinco de Mayo shouldn’t be celebrated. I’m just pointing out the absolute absurdity and hypocrisy of squelching American patriotism in order to allow for Mexican pride to dominate it for a day. Why can’t one exist alongside the other?
I’ll end with my opinion on how this needs to be handled. The vice-principal who took the action should issue a PUBLIC APOLOGY to the students whom HE OFFENDED by telling them their patriotism was unacceptable. I would love to see him removed from his position, but I seriously doubt that would actually happen.
I’m sure I could come up with more to say on this subject, but it would be at the risk of rambling on. Hope to hear your comments on this matter.
Here is the link to the full NBC article on the story:
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/Students-Wearing-American-Flag-Shirts-Sent-Home-92945969.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment