Nationalism

It's been a few days since the whole Cinco De Mayo debacle and I just read in the paper about protesters in Morgan Hill celebrating their nationalism. This makes me wonder what is going on here.

If you don't know, a few students decided to wear American Flag shirts to school in Morgan Hill on Cinco De Mayo to "celebrate being an American." The school officials told them to either wear their shirts inside out or go home and change because they felt it was disrespectful to those that are celebrating Cinco De Mayo. Protesters say that students should be proud to be an American and show off that patriotism.

Now, before I get into sides and all that, stop and think about the situation a little bit. Form an opinion for yourself on the whole matter. Come back when you're done!

Done? Good. Here's what I think. I bet if you counted the number of times these students wore something patriotic during the whole school year, you would find that it would be zero or close to zero. I bet that these students decided to wear American clothing in direct opposition to Cinco De Mayo. It's not that they had some burning desire to show their American pride. They wanted to go up against a culture that wasn't their own.

It's one thing to be proud of the country you live in, but it's a whole other problem if you want to be proud of your country in the face of someone else. So this thing is growing - especially with what's going on in Arizona. Maybe there is something to take pride in. We hate immigrants no matter where they're from. We hated on the Irish, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, Canadians and Mexicans at one point or another in our history. Did we have valid reasons for doing so in the past? Maybe or maybe not. Do we have valid reasons today? Again, maybe or maybe not.

So now we have a bunch of yahoos out there that have latched onto this cause. Not because they want to show American pride, but because they hate Mexicans. They're using this event as an excuse to vent the hatred. This scares me. Throw some intolerance in the mix and instead of a real protest you have a mob.

I have more to say, but I just had to sit down and type after reading the article. I'll read it again and finish my thoughts later. For now, I'm pissed.

San Jose Mercury News Story