You've Got to be Carefully Taught

I work but a block from Fifth Avenue and so can observe close up most of the various ethnic parades that take place on New York City's Main Street. You see lots of flag waving, of course, the flags of the celebrants' (or their ancestors') native countries as well as of their their adopted country, the United States. This holds true regardless the parade: the St. Patrick's Day, the Columbus Day, the Greek Independence Day, the Steuben Day, the Dominican Day Parade and the host of others I have surely left out.

The national day of Mexico, Cinco de Mayo, is not celebrated to any great extent in New York but is, as you might expect, in California. Yesterday, May 5th, five high school students in Morgan Hill, California, a suburb of San Jose, were suspended when they refused an order from an educrat to turn the t-shirts they were wearing inside out because he considered them "incendiary." The shirts were adorned with American flags.

"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.

The boys really had no choice, and went home to avoid suspension. They say they're angry they were not allowed to express their American pride. Their parents are just as upset, calling what happened to their children, "total nonsense."

"I think it's absolutely ridiculous," Julie Fagerstrom, Maciel's mom, said. "All they were doing was displaying their patriotic nature. They're expressing their individuality."

But to many Mexican-American students at Live Oak, this was a big deal. They say they were offended by the five boys and others for wearing American colors on a Mexican holiday.

"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."

Miss Nunez speaks the truth, in a way. We can be sure she and her friends will never be seen waving an American flag, on the Fourth of July or any other day. That would be contrary to the narrative so carefully taught in the public schools that for ethnic victims like herself, the United States of America is a racist and oppressive nation, not to be celebrated but condemned. Miss Nunez has learned her lesson well and owes a debt of gratitude to that racist and oppressive nation providing her schooling.