Don't wear the American Flag on your shirt in California schools, you might offend the Mexicans.

[Helmholtz Watson]

wow...
fuck that school, that judge and that whole state.

i do not care if my nations flag offends some one else, that more then likely(given the state) doesn't have the legal right to even be in the country to start with. i will wear should i choose to, and if they don't like it then to god damn bad

Let's see...assumption that the majority of Mexican-Americans are here illegally? Check.

Assumption that the previous assumption is somehow a license to crash ethnic holidays? Check.

Congratulations! You're a racist!

so are you, and everybody else to one degree or another. you gonna be going anywhere interesting or worth while with this or just clogging my inbox?

Really? You're complaining that nobody is making this "interesting or worth while" when all you gave us to work with was your belief that illegal immigrants deserve whatever they get because they're not allowed to be here in the first place?

Are you really defending criminals that illegally enter this country? Seriously? The only thing illegals deserve is to be deported back to their country of origin in the most humane way possible. If they don't like their country then come here LEGALLY or seek asylum, but nobody has the right to illegally come here.

 

[F-I-D-O]

Probably for at least one of those kids it was a coincidence.
And knowing, saying certain kids will start fights isn't a cop out. It's the nature of the beats. They shouldn't get away with it. Teachers should know who the problem kids are, and stop them. Little Bobby who just grabbed a flag shirt? Maybe not so much.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Oh don't panic mate, we've already had that shit here for years! Flying the St. George Cross or Union Flag is "uninclusive" and "opressive" at best and "fascism" and "racist" at worst. People are constantly told not to flap the flag around in case it offends the Muslim down the road...I would put good money on a bet that the offended minority in question either doesn't exist or couldn't give a flying fart.

I completely agree. If you're flying the St George's Cross (or wearing one on your clothing) and you don't have the "excuse" that the World Cup is going on, people look at you as if you're goose-stepping around with a Swastika banner. It's really quite unbelievable.

The Welsh are allowed to be proud of being Welsh. The Scottish are allowed to be proud of being Scottish. And the Irish would punch you in the face if you even implied they shouldn't celebrate Paddy's Day to avoid offending some guy who's just stepped off the boat and doesn't speak a word of English.

It seems like the English are the only nation who are expected to be constantly expressing humbleness and shame for their crime of being English. Heaven forbid we should be ok with being English. And if we dare to be proud to be English? "F***ing racist scum, go back to the BNP clubhouse, etc etc".

/sadface

Well I do sympathize with you on this, I can't help but feel like England had it coming. After all of the bullsh*t that England has done in the past (which makes my government look like a saint), if there is some shame to be English, I don't think its a bad thing, its karma. I realize this may sound insensitive, but when there are still places like North Ireland, I stop feeling sympathy for the lack of English pride.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

If displaying the flag of your own country can spark hatred and violence within that country that is a problem with the people being offended, not with the display of the flag.

Or maybe some people are so ridiculously stuck on "Omg my flag, I am patriot!" they don't stop to think about little things like blatantly obvious messages being sent with the flag that aren't that nice.

Understand that the fundemental issue here is a bunch of students wanting to celebrate a foreign holiday, that has anti-American undertones in it's current form, even if the actual holiday and it's meaning do not.

Anti-American undertones? Only if you're so xenophobic that you need to take some heart medication after seeing something awful like a foreign holiday.

They are upset because they identify as Mexican, and do not want to see the flag of the country they happen to be in, and are allegedly citizens of (or even worse are the guests off and receiving an education) displayed for that reason.

No, you're saying this because you are xenophobic and think you can read their minds. But you can't.

Therumancer can't read minds, but apparently you can because your convinced that this person is xenophobic without the person actually expressing xenophobia.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

Rather predictably when this story was reported on Fox News's website earlier in the year, the comments were full of much racism, anti-Obama slander and cries of "you try to take my flag away and I'll exercise my 2nd amendment rights on you!"

I always like to reverse the situation in these cases. Say you lived in Mexico, and a holiday came around that Mexican culture isn't big on... I dunno... say Easter. I don't know the Mexican relationship with Easter but we'll fucking roll with it. So you decide that you want to celebrate Easter because hey, it's a holiday you like. Then you get Mexican people walking around draped in their flag specifically on that one particular day.

Seriously, I find it hard to believe that these flag-wearing kids would wear that on any other day of the year. There's an incredibly high chance they just thought "it's that Mexican holiday, let's just fuck with them!"

It's like those kids a while back wearing "Straight pride" shirts on some big gay-related day (National Coming Out Day, I think. But I could be wrong). They didn't wear it because they're proud to be straight, they just wore it to try and fuck with the gay kids and their supporters.

Just like the Americans here in this story only wore the flag so prominently because it was a Mexican holiday and they wanted to be snide dicks about it.

 

[vento 231]

it's all well and good for immigrants to parade around the streets proclaiming their religious dominance, waving their flags and chanting death to the west.

wtf?
yeah, cuz every immigrant is a terrorist cell waiting to happen...

I don't think that's what he meant, more like some do, and some natives choose to wave their own countries flag and are looked down on because of it, that's more of what this is about.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

If displaying the flag of your own country can spark hatred and violence within that country that is a problem with the people being offended, not with the display of the flag.

Or maybe some people are so ridiculously stuck on "Omg my flag, I am patriot!" they don't stop to think about little things like blatantly obvious messages being sent with the flag that aren't that nice.

Understand that the fundemental issue here is a bunch of students wanting to celebrate a foreign holiday, that has anti-American undertones in it's current form, even if the actual holiday and it's meaning do not.

Anti-American undertones? Only if you're so xenophobic that you need to take some heart medication after seeing something awful like a foreign holiday.

They are upset because they identify as Mexican, and do not want to see the flag of the country they happen to be in, and are allegedly citizens of (or even worse are the guests off and receiving an education) displayed for that reason.

No, you're saying this because you are xenophobic and think you can read their minds. But you can't.

Therumancer can't read minds, but apparently you can because your convinced that this person is xenophobic without the person actually expressing xenophobia.

Someone's missing the point. Since you missed it already I might as well inform you quite explicitly that it's you.

Really? Didn't you criticize Therumancer for "reading minds"? Didn't you acusse them of trying to do that? And now when you do it, some how that's "missing the point"? Oh the hypocrisy. Why don't you go and troll somewhere else?

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

If displaying the flag of your own country can spark hatred and violence within that country that is a problem with the people being offended, not with the display of the flag.

Or maybe some people are so ridiculously stuck on "Omg my flag, I am patriot!" they don't stop to think about little things like blatantly obvious messages being sent with the flag that aren't that nice.

Understand that the fundemental issue here is a bunch of students wanting to celebrate a foreign holiday, that has anti-American undertones in it's current form, even if the actual holiday and it's meaning do not.

Anti-American undertones? Only if you're so xenophobic that you need to take some heart medication after seeing something awful like a foreign holiday.

They are upset because they identify as Mexican, and do not want to see the flag of the country they happen to be in, and are allegedly citizens of (or even worse are the guests off and receiving an education) displayed for that reason.

No, you're saying this because you are xenophobic and think you can read their minds. But you can't.

Therumancer can't read minds, but apparently you can because your convinced that this person is xenophobic without the person actually expressing xenophobia.

Someone's missing the point. Since you missed it already I might as well inform you quite explicitly that it's you.

Really? Didn't you criticize Therumancer for "reading minds"? Didn't you acusse them of trying to do that? And now when you do it, some how that's "missing the point"? Oh the hypocrisy. Why don't you go and troll somewhere else?

No, it's not missing the point when I do it. It's you missing the point when you can't notice something so basic as my sarcasm in using the exact same thing he did against him in that last sentence. It was a pretty blatant example of exactly what he's doing.

I'm not trolling. But do feel free to go elsewhere to fail to get little things like blatant sarcasm. It's not as if I'm even trying to be subtle with it.

Though I have a feeling you wouldn't understand the difference between that and the other part where I pointed out genuine reason to consider a motive of xenophobia. But I doubt you'd understand the difference between jumping to conclusions based off nothing except vodka commercials versus reasoning why people have a problem with people just displaying a bit of a different culture anyway.

The whole point of this issue isn't that people are displaying cultural differences, its that the a shirt with the American flag was deemed "offensive" IN the United States. This thread would not have nearly as many responses if it was just about an article about people showing Mexican pride. Having pride is fine, but when the school says that the Mexican students can have pride in Mexico, but the American students can't do the same thing IN America, then that is an issue.

 

[Furrama]

If I recall correctly these particular students were the cause of some trouble regarding... racism. They were wearing the flags to intimidate other students, not because they thought flags were cool or they wanted to be patriotic any particular day out of the year.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think it's adorable people have actually painted this as a free speech issue, when protections such as free speech and protection against search and seizure are not afforded in school in the first place.

It seems to me that in modern day "democracy" minorities have more power than the actual majority of the population.

In a country where basic rights for minorities can still be put to a vote by the majority, that's utterly ridiculous.

 

[Something Amyss]

If I recall correctly these particular students were the cause of some trouble regarding... racism. They were wearing the flags to intimidate other students, not because they thought flags were cool or they wanted to be patriotic any particular day out of the year.

There was a confrontation the prior year involving (among other things) threats. The school did this specifically to prevent problems from arising.

Not sure if the kids were bullying or not, but it seems like they were intentionally being dicks this time around.

 

[Batou667]

Well I do sympathize with you on this, I can't help but feel like England had it coming. After all of the bullsh*t that England has done in the past (which makes my government look like a saint), if there is some shame to be English, I don't think its a bad thing, its karma. I realize this may sound insensitive, but when there are still places like North Ireland, I stop feeling sympathy for the lack of English pride.

Karma for what, exactly? The slave trade, which was abolished far earlier in the UK than in the USA? Colonialism, which was also practiced by France, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Belgium? Or perhaps you mean karma for the billions of pounds of foreign aid and our reputation of being one of the most welcoming countries in Europe to asylum seekers and immigrants?

Northern Ireland is a complete clusterf*ck (I believe that's the accepted academic term), that's for sure. But really no moreso than, say, the Basque region in Spain... and sure as hell not as bad as Chechenya.

So why exactly has England "had it coming"? Other countries have done worse and still remain proud and patriotic. Is it REALLY all down to post-colonialism?

 

[Jadak]

Honestly, I don't really care what any of the "issues" here were, wearing an American flag in an American school simply should not be a problem, ever.