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There is a difference between being patriotic and being a jerk. Violating the flag code for the sole purpose of pissing people off doesn't qualify as patriotism to me, so no love lost there.

It's a bad spot for the school though. They basically have two options:

1) Let the kids be antagonistic and wear the flag and then get sued by the parents when their precious jerk kids get jumped by the Latino students all while playing the victim on TV even though their kids are the ones that instigated it.

2) Protect these idiot kids from their own stupidity and protect the school from a lawsuit by the parents of these stupid kids because they didn't protect them from getting their butts kicked.

Either options would result in a giant headache. It's a stupid situation because a couple of kids decided to go "feth you and your heritage celebrating holiday that only really exists here to begin with USA USA USA"...

 Ahtman wrote:

Generally speaking, no one gives a gak if you wear a flag on Cinco De Mayo either. This isn't some broad banning of the flag or sweeping change, this is a fairly isolated incident in a specific area dealing with a problem in their community. It also isn't a banning of the shirt at all times, but that one day, and only to avoid having to call ambulances and police to the school. I can't imagine that the school is happy about this, and as I stated earlier it sounds like this is indicative of a larger problem the entire community is dealing with. I would venture that the vast majority of the students couldn't care less and just want to go to be students, but a handful of donkey-caves on both sides are creating issues. You have one set purposefully being antagonistic to the other and the other side being idiots about something that isn't even celebrated in the heritage they speak of. Is it stupid? Yes, but people often are.

That's reasonable, believable, and not funny at all. :(

 Ahtman wrote:
Generally speaking, no one gives a gak if you wear a flag on Cinco De Mayo either. This isn't some broad banning of the flag or sweeping change, this is a fairly isolated incident in a specific area dealing with a problem in their community. It also isn't a banning of the shirt at all times, but that one day, and only to avoid having to call ambulances and police to the school. I can't imagine that the school is happy about this, and as I stated earlier it sounds like this is indicative of a larger problem the entire community is dealing with. I would venture that the vast majority of the students couldn't care less and just want to go to be students, but a handful of donkey-caves on both sides are creating issues. You have one set purposefully being antagonistic to the other and the other side being idiots about something that isn't even celebrated in the heritage they speak of. Is it stupid? Yes, but people often are.

It would probably be more like an Orangeman trying to provoke people on St. Patrick's Day, I would think.

It is not exactly equivalent but the answer to that problem is that we deal with the offenders in an appropriate manner. We do not start to ban articles of clothing. That does not address the issue, that merely shifts it along.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:
If you simply wore an American flag shirt on St. Patricks day then nobody would care. If you were making a point of wearing an American flag shirt on St. Patricks day to imply that the Irish aren't American then people would care.

How would you know that it's implied?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
There is a difference between being patriotic and being a jerk. Violating the flag code for the sole purpose of pissing people off doesn't qualify as patriotism to me, so no love lost there.

It's a bad spot for the school though. They basically have two options:

1) Let the kids be antagonistic and wear the flag and then get sued by the parents when their precious jerk kids get jumped by the Latino students all while playing the victim on TV even though their kids are the ones that instigated it.

2) Protect these idiot kids from their own stupidity and protect the school from a lawsuit by the parents of these stupid kids because they didn't protect them from getting their butts kicked.

Either options would result in a giant headache. It's a stupid situation because a couple of kids decided to go "feth you and your heritage celebrating holiday that only really exists here to begin with USA USA USA"...

Yeah... this. ^^^

The distinction needs to be made that the schools isn't being "anti-patriot" or whatever... they will almost always take the path of least resistance.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
It is not exactly equivalent but the answer to that problem is that we deal with the offenders in an appropriate manner. We do not start to ban articles of clothing. That does not address the issue, that merely shifts it along.

How exactly is the school administration going to stop gang members from being violent about this? How will they even know who they are supposed to be dealing with as offenders before they have offended? Should they post a politely worded letter online in the hopes they listen? Or should they try and protect their students while the police and community try and deal with the problem at hand? It is a crappy situation, no doubt, but we don't get to pick our realities, and the school board has to deal with the hand they are dealt, and within the powers they have, not some utopian, omniscient ideal of what should happen.

 Da Boss wrote:
I know they have issues with ghettos in Sweden, but they have those problems in every wealthy nation - Germany for example has issues with Turkish immigrants not integrating well. They also have some of the happiest people in the world and by and large a very healthy, functioning country.

It's worth noting, though, that Germany has a very poor track record of bringing immigrants in to its society. Before 2000 a child born in Germany to non-citizens was not considered a German citizen... even if the parents had permanent legal residence. That's been reformed, but you don't get to spend generations restricting citizenship to blood, and then complain when immigrants don't assimilate very well.

Not saying that's the whole of the issue, but it's something that doesn't get commented on often enough. It isn't just about how the migrants changes, but how well greater society welcomes them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
It is not exactly equivalent but the answer to that problem is that we deal with the offenders in an appropriate manner. We do not start to ban articles of clothing. That does not address the issue, that merely shifts it along.

Your insistance that a highschool solve an issue rather than just shift it along to just maintain the peace is weird. Did you ever go to highschool? If so, did you observe your highschool spending large amounts of time and resources attempting to solve the greater social ills of society, or did you observe your highschool doing whatever it could to just keep things more or less under control from 9 until 3 each day?