Kids Asked To Remove American Flag Shirts

Posted by Lorren on May 7, 2010

A story hit the news a couple of days ago that was fairly bothersome to me: students were kicked out of school for wearing American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. Really?

I don’t have a problem with Mexicans, or any other race for that matter. I have friends that are from Mexico. However, I do have a problem with Americans kowtowing to Mexico. What makes their country so much more important than say… Russia… or Germany… or Zimbabwe?

I don’t celebrate Canada Day, or Bastille Day; why should I care about Cinco de Mayo? Actually, I do care about Cinco de Mayo, it’s my brother’s birthday. So I have to make sure I give him a phone call or something. Other than that, who cares? I thought about making tacos that night, but we already had them earlier in the week, so we had chicken instead.

I’m American, not Mexican. If people want to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, that’s fine; I just don’t think that it should be a national holiday in America, any more than St. Patrick’s Day or Valentine’s Day are. We don’t celebrate every country in the world’s Independence Day, and as far as I am concerned, Mexico is no more (and no less) important than any other country on the planet. Well, that’s not true. I’m a big fan of Australia. I spent five weeks there once, and it’s like a home away from home. I love it there. But I don’t expect other Americans to share my love for Australia. Any more than I expect Americans to share my daughter’s love for Italia (she was born in Italy, so she happens to have feelings for that country).

Another way that Americans often tend to kowtow to Mexico is by what language they learn. “Bilingual” seems to be code for speaking both English and Spanish. That’s not the definition of bilingual, bilingual is speaking two languages. Parents will say “I want my kids to be bilingual so they can get along in this country.” In some places, it’s absolutely essential that you speak Spanish if you want to get a job at McDonald’s or Taco Bell. If you really want the big bucks though, you’ll be bilingual… in something like Arabic. Don’t get me wrong, I love languages. My daughter is on her way to being bilingual… in Chinese. They’re going to own our country anyway. I have studied several languages myself. My second language was German. I then studied Russian. Spanish was the fourth language that I worked on (I don’t use it much though). Right now, I think that Chinese and Arabic are more useful.

I like America. I love the Constitution and what it stands for. I just think, if we’re all going to be Americans here, that’s what we need to be. It’s great to have your favorite country outside of America, but I don’t necessarily think that it has to be Mexico… and I don’t think that everyone should be forced to give any non-American country any more prominence than any other non-American country.