Because there’s nothing more hateful and intolerant than reminding people what country they’re in. FOXNews:
A California school principal did not violate the freedom of speech of a group of students who wore American flags on their shirts on Cinco de Mayo when he told them to turn the shirts inside out or go home, a federal judge has ruled.
Citing past clashes between Mexican American and Anglo students over their clothing on the Mexican holiday, Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware of San Francisco said school officials “reasonably forecast that (the shirts) could cause a substantial disruption” and were entitled to take steps to prevent it, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The case arose in an ethnically charged atmosphere at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill. On the previous Cinco de Mayo, Ware said, a group of Mexican-American students walked around with a Mexican flag, and a group of Anglo students responded by hoisting a makeshift American flag up a tree, chanting “U-S-A” and exchanging profanities and threats with the Latino youths.
While the Supreme Court has ruled that public school students have the right to engage in nondisruptive free speech, that ruling “does not require that school officials wait until disruption occurs before they act,” Ware said in his ruling Tuesday dismissing the students’ lawsuit, according to the paper.
Mark Posard, a lawyer for the Morgan Hill Unified School District, said Friday that Ware’s decision “affirmed that school safety is paramount.”
Bill Becker, a lawyer for the youths and their parents, said they would appeal “this bizarre ruling.”
Essentially, the school followed the business template that overdetermines risk-aversion, at the expense of any kind of underlying principle. That is, they take the position that what’s right is what is easiest for the business. This is why companies pay nuisance suits rather than litigate them, or change their ice cream cone wrappers rather than risk upsetting people who, though off their rockers, belong to an identity group with some media or political clout. And yes, there’s a lesson in here about Herman Cain and the Gloria Allreds and Karen Kraushaars and Sharon Bialeks of the world.
But beyond the risk aversion of the schools, what we have here is a federal judge drawing up a blueprint for rule by victimization — a kind of identity politics-version of mob rule, without the ostensibly aggrieved minority party ever having to muster a majority. To wit, the argument being given precedence here is, in effect, this: if a particular group threatens to “protest” the actions of another group, no matter that those actions (wearing a shirt with your country’s symbol on it, in this case) are protected by free speech in nearly every other circumstance — and that promise of protest brings with it a potential for violence (which is of course illegal) — then the group following law and exercising a basic right can, in fact, be stripped of protections and made to change their behavior in order to appease a group who would view such an exercise of rights as offensive, and might therefore react unlawfully.
The slippery slope here is everywhere evident: will female students be forced to cover themselves more “appropriately” should a particular identity group on a high school campus threaten to react with violence at the school’s refusal to enforce that group’s demands? Can a group of black students call for the banning of Dukes of Hazard lunchboxes containing a depiction of the General Lee?
This is nonsensical, and it is indicative of how we’ve become a cowardly, risk-averse nation whose courts are no longer even willing to adhere to the principles of the country’s founding, if doing so means someone somewhere can claim offense, and threatens to throw a tantrum.
It’s dispiriting. It’s wrong. And it needs to change — beginning with the structural imperatives in our language and epistemology that lend these kinds of decisions intellectual credence. Such decisions lay the legal bedrock for court-sanctioned tyranny. And until we acknowledge the need to address the rot we’ve allowed into the foundation of this country — the rule of law — the rest of the edifice simply will not hold up over the long term.
We might as well drop our pants, bend over and post a “Welcome aboard” sign.
American = guilty.
Cinco de Mayo basically is the Mexican equivalent of St. Patrick’s day: an excuse to get ethnically drunk on ethnic beer.
So what’s next? Penalties for not wearing green on March 17th?
I don’t necesarily have a problem with schools banning certain clothes or accessories or establishing dress codes (full disclosure: daughter in Catholic school, and the pleats in those jumpers are a bitch to iron). That said, what a school chooses to ban or not ban and why tells us volumes about the thought processes of those doing the banning and permitting.
Ex-post facto bans are always going to be a problem, I hope.
El Cuatro de Cinco?
I thought it was Enero de Mayo
A day of celebrating victory over France? France?? Isn’t that as much a cause for celebrating as taking a poo-poo all by oneself like a big boy?
Only in Mexico… And, I guess, California.
Aw, c’mon – let the tykes re-stage the Battle of San Jacinto…
A day of celebrating victory over France? France??
It’s a gringo thing. “Cinco de mayo” is easy to say; “dieciséis de septiembre” is not.
<blockquoteFederal Judge: American Flag shirts can be banned in US schools on Cinco de Mayo (or “The Day of the Battle of Puebla”)
Or as I like to title it:
Reason #7,117 why to homeschool your children
Does the school take down the American flags in all the classrooms, lest they cause a riot?
Actually, I’m begging the question here. I should probably be asking whether the schools have American flags hanging in them at all.
I hope next Cinco de Mayo day there is much civil outlawery among the student body.
“The slippery slope here is everywhere evident: will female students be forced to cover themselves more “appropriately” should a particular identity group on a high school campus threaten to react with violence at the school’s refusal to enforce that group’s demands? Can a group of black students call for the banning of Dukes of Hazard lunchboxes containing a depiction of the General Lee?”
Blimey! I wouldn’t want to start giving them ideas…
It’s sad, because nearly every blog discussion of political correctness and the increasing terror of ‘giving offence’ over here harks back to the US freedom of speech, and how much better it would be if we had our own enshrined in some sort of constitution. It seems even that can be got round via the medium of judicial activism though.
di
Cinco de Mayo basically is the Mexican equivalent of St. Patrick’s day: an excuse to get ethnically drunk on ethnic beer
Maybe for youngish adults looking for the next excuse to party, but at the middle and high school level in SoCal, it has devolved into a nationalist celebration with all sort of chest-puffery and bantam-weight machismo from the chicanos. Not only do the gringos find it annoying, but the kids ethnically from places like Cuba, Guatemala, Peru, etc, hate being bullied by the Mexican kids to show “solidarity” with their “brown brothers.”
Some smart kids ought to wear t-shirts celebrating the Treaty of Hidalgo on May 30th to really screw with the chicanos heads.
[…] Federal Judge: American Flag shirts can be banned in US schools … A California school principal did not violate the freedom of speech of a group of students who wore American flags on their shirts on Cinco de Mayo when he told them to turn the shirts inside out or go home, a federal judge has ruled. Not only do the gringos find it annoying, but the kids ethnically from places like Cuba, Guatemala, Peru, etc, hate being bullied by the Mexican kids to show “solidarity” with their “brown brothers.” slogan for freshman class treasurer . […]