Monday, May 10, 2010

Off-color in Morgan Hill

The four boys at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California who wore American flag T-shirts on 'Cinco de Mayo', may have showed poor judgment, chose bad timing, and displayed insensitivity toward their Latino classmates. 
 However, unless they were flaunting this patriotic gesture with physical threats or verbal insults in order to start a riot....nobody (school officials included) had the right to tell them to turn the shirts inside-out or go home!  It wasn't like they were yelling "fire" in some crowded theater
All that did was violate their rights of freedom of speech and expression, and, in the process...fuel a media frenzy that catapulted a small California town into the national spotlight.  Maybe that's IT!  This is all some public relations brainstorm used to boost local economy!  No, I'm kidding--although it DID!
Seriously though, just as free speech rights protected flag burners 40-years ago, those same rights protect our wearing the national colors(on T-shirts)...the same way they should protect others who wear colors of their own ancestral flag.
Therefore, if four Mexican-American students wear red, white, and green T-shirts next 4th of July, no one should tell them to take them off either! The entire incident was blown out of proportion, and should never have happened.
 What I'm saying is, America is a land of immigrants(other than the Native Indians), all of us proud of our heritage, culture, language,origins and flag colors! While we should always hold tight to them, we're also Americans now--required to adapt, embrace, love, honor, and strive to become positive, contributing citizens who are proud of the red-white-and blue among other colors.(gang colors excluded)
If we actually lived by the above color-code in national harmony, incidents like the one in Morgan Hill, which ignited protest rally's and patriotic arguments on both sides, would never have blown up like they did!
Unfortunately, we don't, and it's bound to happen again because...although we are all in this together, we haven't yet learned to deal with it!
Thanks, stay cool
Sincerely, PeteCam4
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