California School Bans American Flag?
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Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Now if God had thought of that one, he could have saved himself the 9 others.
You care for the people at the edge of the night, and then it changes your way of caring about yourself.
Farm Boy
run boy run
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- Sep 8, 2010
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Mr. B - A loving mind is not a mandatory step to acting with a loving hand, but it helps. Is my word choice too wishy washy for you? It really is a crappy word in the English language<mutters something about the English> We could probably use different words to capture the sentiment peacemeal if you'd prefer. Or even shorten it down to a negative: attempt not to be a gaping bunghole to people.
But no, you are undoubtedly right, it can't be universally done. But we should still probably universally encourage it.
Ziggs - Well, Moses would have looked pretty silly having spent all that time wandering around if all he came back with was one word. He probably thought he had to look busy to justify his flexible working hours arrangement as leader of the Jewish Exodus. Kinda like how people who work from home sometimes write a whole bunch of oddly timed emails with the basic message of "look how busy I am, aren't I workin' hard!"
But no, you are undoubtedly right, it can't be universally done. But we should still probably universally encourage it.
Ziggs - Well, Moses would have looked pretty silly having spent all that time wandering around if all he came back with was one word. He probably thought he had to look busy to justify his flexible working hours arrangement as leader of the Jewish Exodus. Kinda like how people who work from home sometimes write a whole bunch of oddly timed emails with the basic message of "look how busy I am, aren't I workin' hard!"
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
It's such an old-fashioned word.
Empathy
Empathy
Farm Boy
run boy run
- Joined
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- 26,677
It's such an old-fashioned word.
Empathy
Well, empathy is a word that meshes better with the facebook era so I think that's a good one to bring up, but it does lack a certain compulsion to action and vague servitude the even older-fashioned one implies.
Your word choice actually got me thinking about how much I dislike how often "respect" seems to get tossed around in place of better sentiments fairly often. "Respect" other cultures. "Respect" other people. Mind your "manners." Be "polite." They're great sentiments, sure, but they're inadequate. Respect and manners are what you get in a society where everybody is a hair's breadth away from bludgeoning you over the head with a rock. They're not indicative of a healthy society.
Mexico's independence day is sometime in September.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
16th Wiki tells me.
Freedom and democracy, independence, eating turkeys. Which celebration irritates people doesn't matter.
Freedom and democracy, independence, eating turkeys. Which celebration irritates people doesn't matter.
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
This. Although, it would appear that my commentary on Gang-related clothing may have led some people astray, so let's get some things cleared up.
1) The colors of the flag have nothing to do with the color-related gang affiliations. The kids' wearing of the flag clothing wasn't inciting gang-related violence. I was just using it as an example of how clothing censuring is used by this school to avoid violence.
2) That being said, the context of this event must be remembered. This was May, 2010, less than a month earlier Arizona had passed its infamous immigration law, and anti-Mexican, xenophobic rhetoric was escalating. Morgan Hill is a town with a large Mexican minority (in the 40% range). The white population is upper-middle to upper class, fairly conservative, and the Mexican population is largely poor. Although the actions taken by the AP weren't necessarily strictly gang-driven, there is certainly a gang-presence in Live Oak, and violence is not unheard of. Fights happen fairly regularly at the school, and there had been some more large-scale gang violence going on at the time.
3) The AP has said in interviews that he was aware of threats of violence which were being made against the kids in question.
In this context I think that a) it is quite obvious that the intent of the kids was to offend. Although the American Flag, of itself, is not an offensive thing, wearing American flags at a time where a lot of xenophobic rhetoric and legislation is being hurled at Latino minorities in this part of the country, I don't think you can very easily make a case that 5 kids just happened to show up in overtly "Patriotic" clothing on a day which is celebrated in this part of the country as a day of Mexican-American pride and heritage (seriously, this day is probably second only to Cesar Chávez Day in terms of Mexican pride holidays) cannot be written off as mere happenstance, and that this was an intentional act with the express intention of offending. And b) that in the light of recent violence, the escalating vitriol and racial tensions between Mexican and White Americans, particularly in the border states, and the fact that the Assistant Principal was aware of very real threats being made against the boys, that the environment in the school was becoming a very unsafe one (not just to the boys, but to the school at large), and even if not, the actions of those kids was proving a distraction to a healthy and focused learning environment.
And so, the AP took a very sober and unintrusive step to alleviate the situation, a step which the school takes on a fairly regular basis against all manner of kids. The AP wasn't suspending him, wasn't giving him detention, wasn't taking any punitive actions against the kids in any way. He was merely asking them to turn their shirts inside out or wear their gym shirts for the rest of the day. This was a nonissue, and it was only when the parents decided to make a stink about it and call the local Tea Party arm and FOX News that this became headline news.
Frankly these parents and their kids are an absolute embarrassment to this town. It is shameful that this is what Morgan Hill is going to be known for.
I'm sorry but were the people in question doing anything other that wearing an American Flag? Because if that's the extent of what they were doing, the reaction of the AP and the people he was afraid of are patently ridiculous on a scale that justifies my earlier question about them hating America or not.
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
You can continue to try to claim they weren't doing anything else, despite all the facts to the contrary. They decided together to dress that way to specifically try to create a disruption. And they succeeded:
Link to video.
But speaking of "patently ridiculous", the notion that the assistant principal must "hate America" for merely taking steps to try to defuse the situation is an excellent example.
Link to video.
But speaking of "patently ridiculous", the notion that the assistant principal must "hate America" for merely taking steps to try to defuse the situation is an excellent example.
Do you think it's possible that those people you're referring to instead miscalculated, or made some sort of mistake (rather than simply hating America)?
I'm sorry. Perhaps I was unclear about what I was asking. Did they shout "WETBACKS, GO HOME!" at random people or anything else besides wear a shirt? Should I bold and underline it as well for the meaning to come across next time?
The "patently ridiculous" reactions are two fold here. 1) If a school has a security situation so untenable that someone merely wearing an American Flag t-shirt will sow chaos and disorder, the AP has bigger and more long term issues to deal with and regulating the flags that can be worn on t-shirts should be the absolute least of his concerns. The school district seems to have agreed as they declined to defend the AP what with him being run out of town and all over this. 2) Americans being offended to the point of violence by the sight of an American flag shirt definitely seems to qualify as "patently ridiculous" in the view of most reasonable people.
'If school security is so bad that this incident would cause violence, the AP has better things to do than stopping any violence in this instance'.
It's been made clear that the offence would not supposedly have been caused at the sight of the American flag as thing in itself, but by the wearing of the shorts within a particular context. Do you understand that surrounding context may alter meaning?
Actual security should have been in place at the school long before this incident happened.
I'm seriously trying to understand why this would be the problem of the people wearing the shirts in question. Seriously, did they do anything other than wear a shirt? If not, the offense is the problem of the offended not the person wearing a shirt.
Perhaps, but you seem to be suggesting that the AP's actions in preventing violence were somehow incorrect. You seem to be suggesting that the AP should not have taken the particular action to prevent violence because security should've been in place; that because their possibly should've been security at the school, the AP should not have tried to defuse this situation.
It seems fairly clear that the answer to your question here is 'yes'.
I would agree though that those offended by the AP's actions can really only blame themselves for that.
Then what did they actually do other than wear a shirt.
If all the boys in question were doing was wearing a shirt (and no one has actually provided evidence that they did anything else), why not attack the actual source of the disruption to the school (the people threatening violence)?
I too was looking for the answer to this question. As in what did they do, as opposed to what they supposedly were thinking, given that i am not too much in favor of notions of a 'thought crime'.
Are you two being deliberately obtuse? Them wearing the shirts was creating a situation where violence was likely. Therefore, the AP requested that they leave or remove their shirts to defuse the situation. If a police officer asks me to go back inside a bar when there are two people outside it threatening to attack me, I may not be doing anything wrong, but the police still have a duty of care to keep me from getting stabbed. This is the exact same situation.
