Patriotic Tee-Shirts Deemed “Incendiary” On Cinco De Mayo At CA High School

This is just so, sooo wrong…Five students, one of them Hispanic,   were forced to leave a California school and then face disciplinary action yesterday for the crime of wearing clothing printed with American flag designs.

Zombie has the story:

According to local TV stations KTVU and NBC Bay Area, this bewildering and deeply unsettling incident happened at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, a suburban town south of San Jose. As KTVU reported,

Five students at a South Bay high school stirred up some controversy Wednesday for wearing t-shirts depicting red, white and blue American flags on Cinco de Mayo.

School officials at Live Oak High in Morgan Hill told the students they had to go home if they wouldn’t turn the shirts inside out.

One of the students said it appeared school administrators were worried the patriotic shirts could trigger fights.

Some students at Live Oak High in Morgan Hill said others were planning to come to school Thursday wearing red, white and blue.

Four of the five students who wore American flags or patriotic colors on campus walked into a meeting with the superintendent of the Morgan Hill unified school district Wednesday night.

They were facing unexcused absences because they chose to go home early rather than take off what they were wearing.

“We knew it was Cinco de Mayo. But we just came to show our flag,” said student Dominic Maciel. “We didn’t mean anything by it. We didn’t want to start anything. Nothing like that.”

Student Anthony Caravalho was also sent home for not turning his shirt inside out.

“They said we had to wear our t-shirts inside out and then we could go back to class and we said no,” said Caravalho. “It would be disrespectful to the flag by hiding it.”

Daniel Galli, another student who was reprimanded for wearing a US flag, described what he was told by school administration.

“He said ‘If you wear it on any other day, it’s fine; but just because it’s today you can’t wear it,’” Galli said.

Aren’t we all Americans? Why would anyone, especially immigrants to our country, object to fellow citizens wearing patriotic clothing? I don’t understand the mindset… and why would the school enable such wrong headed thinking? The American flag shouldn’t be objectionable on any day of the year.

Zombie analyzes the situation:

Let’s pause for a moment and peel back the layers. It seems that many of the Hispanic students at Live Oak High (and probably innumerable other high schools across the country) have been so inculcated with an “identity politics” curriculum that, under the rubric of instilling pride and self-esteem, they have been convinced that they are somehow distinct from and separate from the other American students; that “we” feel disrespected when forced to perceive an American flag.

The school administration then stirs in their own toxic contribution: An assumption (typical of the “soft racism” of leftist ideology) that Hispanic students will respond with violence when they feel disrespected (“the patriotic shirts could trigger fights” is the euphemism they used). Even worse, fearing violence from Hispanic students, the adminstrators solve the crisis by banishing the “offensive” items, rather than warning students that any violence will be severely punished. In other words, the racist administrators insultingly assumed that their Hispanic students would erupt in violence at the sight of an American flag, and the only way to prevent this is to cower at the presumptive violence and preemptively cave in to the mob’s demands that American flags be banned from campus.

Are the United States and Mexico at war? Is May 5 some kind of “Hate America Day”? What the hell is going on here? Aren’t the U.S. and Mexico allies? Aren’t we friendly neighbors? What is the source of the friction? Isn’t the United States a melting pot where people of every ethnic heritage all live together in harmony as Americans — rather than being a collection of self-segregated ethnic enclaves seething with mutual hostility?

But this is what the left has specialized in for the past fifty years: identity politics, pitting whole segments of society against each other on the basis of race, color, and creed under the guise of multiculturalism. Somehow, it always seems to benefit Democrats when a group can be made to feel victimized, and in need of government intervention.

When I was in school, we learned about our “melting pot”,  where people from many different ethnicities and cultures could come and eventually blend into this wonderful stew known as America. And this was taught as something we should be proud of. It was a good thing.

But not anymore. People are no longer encouraged to become proud Americans and adopt our culture and traditions, (while hanging on to their own). That’s considered insensitive and bigoted.

And what has this lead to? It’s a crime to wear patriotic clothing, now,  in some  schools on a minor Mexican holiday.

SEE ALSO:

Hot Air: Video: “Cinco de Mayo not the day for patriotism”; Update: Laura Ingraham interviews the parents

Hat tip: Hot Air Headlines

Linked by Michelle Malkin, in Buzzworthy, Pirates Cove, and Bent Notes,   thanks!