Last year, in the midst of the SB1070 hooplah, some teens wore American flag tshirts to school on cinco de May and were asked to take them off. In several reports Mexican teens were quoted saying that these kids were disrespecting their "Mexican Independence day."
First of all, these kid's ignorance is more disrespectful than anything those boys did. Secondly, we are in AMERICA! I don't think for a minute that these teens, in American flag shirts, were as innocent as they claimed, I think they wore their American flag shirts to get a rise out of their Hispanic classmates. Well, it worked! Not to mention the school officials really fed into it by making the boys go home.
Some of the Hispanic students were also quoted saying "we wouldn't do that to them on July 4th." Okay...well, I don't care if they did wear Mexican flags on American Independence day because despite what people may think Americans don't hate every other country out there, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, again, May 5th is NOT Mexican Independence day so it's comparing apples to oranges!
Just an FYI, Mexican Independence Day is actually September 16th. Now you know! ha!
What is cinco de Mayo? It's a memorial day for a battle of a little bitty town in Mexico against the French army and the Mexican army won. Worth remembering, definitely! Worth getting so bent out of shape over, me thinks not! It's great to celebrate our different heritages, I love St. Patty's day (I'm like one zillionth of a percent Irish!) and Oktoberfest is always fun (another teensy party of me is German!) In fact, I even like cinco de Mayo! I'm pretty sure I'm zero percent Hispanic but I'm all for good Mexican food and margaritas!
This year, let's enjoy cinco de Mayo for what it is and embrace our Mexican American citizens, and then when September 16th rolls around we can recognize THAT as Mexican Independence Day!
No comments:
Post a Comment