Desecration

Do you know what I find most outrageous about this? That a public “servant” tried to force a student to turn an American flag inside out.

[Update a few minutes later]

Thoughts from First-Amendment specialist Eugene Volokh. As a commenter notes there, if a school is at risk from disruption by students wearing an American flag, it has very deep-seated problems. This is multi-culturalism run amok. Also, as another commenter points out, if this was really about Cinco de Mayo, they should have been concerned about French flags. But this was more about Mexican nationalism in American schools than the celebration of a minor Mexican holiday.

[Update a few minutes later]

Zombie has further thoughts:

So here we have the Principal and the Vice-Principal of an American high school treating the Stars and Stripes as if it was a gang bandanna; even worse, the school administrators took sides in this imaginary US-vs.-Mexico gang fight by allowing the widespread display of Mexican flags on campus but banning (under threat of punishment) any display of the American flag.

NBC quotes a fellow student:

“I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day,” Annicia Nunez, a Live Oak High student, said. “We don’t deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.”

Disrespected? I’m confused. Aren’t all the students Americans? Who is being disrespected by the display of our shared national flag?

I thought that one of the purposes of the public school system, agree with it or not, was to instill a sense of common culture and national (not nationalistic) pride. It seems to be failing at that as well as everything else.

17 thoughts on “Desecration”

  1. Also, the idea that a holiday that recognizes one’s heritage is so exclusive that nobody can bear seeing the symbol of the host country, the USA? This is wrong on so many levels.

  2. This reminds me of the arguments made to the WWII Japanese-American internees that their rights were being violated “for their own protection”….

    BBB

  3. Just another example of our rotten public education administrators. Is quisling the first skill on the job description?

  4. Disrespected? I’m confused. Aren’t all the students Americans? Who is being disrespected by the display of our shared national flag?

    Good one! Nice and dry…

  5. Is the Volokh paragraph supposed to have a link to a post of his? Not that I couldn’t go to the VC and check for it myself, just curious, as it seemed to be worded as if there was supposed to be a link there.

  6. I grew up on the border speaking Spanish and English. I feel like I was fairly tuned into Mexican culture at the time. Yet, I had never heard of an observation of Cinco de Mayo anywhere until I moved to Houston in the early nineties.

  7. Jard, my legal Mexican immigrant neighbor during the last few years I lived in Sacramento always just shrugged and chuckled when anyone asked him about Cinco de Mayo.

    Where I live now in Georgia it seems mostly to represent an opportunity for Mexican restaurants to make more money than usual — seating and feeding people with names like Jason and Heather.

  8. In Texas we call it Cinco de Drinko, and nobody takes it seriously except for the Usual Suspects. If only we were allowed to round them up à la Capt. Louis Renault!

  9. Serves those bitter-clinger-teabaggers right!

    Titus, yer having way too much fun… go to your room.

    The other thread mentioned assimilation. We need to be that melting pot again. I appreciate other cultures, but we can’t afford balkanization here. Bring food… not a desire to overthrow us.

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