Dude, Where's My Flag?
- Details
- Category: Bryan Vinson
- Published on Tuesday, 23 November 2010 19:43
- Written by Bryan Vinson
A disturbing trend is developing. We all have different ideas about how our government should work, but shouldn't we all agree that the American flag is a good thing, or at least not a symbol of offense?
A disturbing trend is developing. We all have different ideas about how our government should work, but shouldn't we all agree that the American flag is a good thing, or at least not a symbo of offense? Here lately there have been a couple of big stories where kids have been told that they can't display the American flag at school because it might offend other students and cause trouble. The latest case involved a boy who rode to school on his bike with the American flag on the back. The education professionals were perhaps looking at the lowest common denominator. Keeping trouble at bay on school grounds is the overall goal even at the expense of freedom of speech and self expression. Schools can, and do, enforce dress codes and keep objectionable material and fashion trends from entering school grounds that have no business being there. The American flag though? The flag of our country?
Partly to blame is political correctness. The last high profile case of this was when a student was asked to change his shirt sporting an American flag that he was wearing on "Cinco De Mayo." The school system did not wish to offend any Latino students on that Mexican holiday, and thus avoid any trouble. Isn't that political correctness? The art of being non offensive? Political correctness came into being during the nineties. Society began a self monitored crackdown of objectionable language directed at specific people groups. Your freedom of speech was still intact, but the power of public opinion was working to silence certain forms of it. Political correctness can help in some instances, but you wonder if sometimes it goes too far. These educational professionals, who have no doubt been heavily influenced by political correctness just in the natural course of their job keeping impulsive and impressionable students in line, have deemed even items that are not really that offensive, to be offensive. The American flag itself is no longer the American flag, but an item that could cause trouble on a school campus. Yet the American flag is the symbol of our country. It's not a slang term, or an insult. The question everyone is asking is how would the American flag offend somebody who is in America? Are they unaware that they are in America? Do they hate the flag simply because their immediate heritage isn't American? Is it just easier for educational professionals to quell the symbol instead of teaching these so called trouble making kids in their school system to at least respect the flag of the country they live in?
The "Cinco De Mayo" incident was interesting. A precedent was nearly set that it is okay to hide the fact that this is America so that holidays of other counties can be celebrated on specific days. Meanwhile, we know good and well that other countries don't pretend that they are not that country every July fourth so as not to offend any American residents that might be living there. The education professionals didn't think things all the way through. The solution to defrost your ice-frosted windshield is not to throw hot water on it. If the intention was to keep racial and ethnic tensions from boiling over by hiding the American flag from view, you'll usually end up with a large group of people carrying American flags all over campus. In these instances, the schools have explained themselves and have offered apologies to the students. Despite national news coverage of the first incident, another school went ahead with the same policies as if the media wouldn't pick up on the heartbreaking story of a young patriotic boy who just wanted to pay tribute to his country. Can it happen again? Is it far fetched to think that the flag could eventually be pulled down from places so as not to offend those that are not originally from this nation? In the age of political correctness, it seems almost any form of censorship of speech or expression, either legally or socially enforced is possible. Maybe the idea that the American flag could become so politically incorrect that it is taken out of view in certain instances all over the nation is far fetched. If you had told me that kids would not be allowed to display the American flag in school a couple of years ago, I would have told you that you that it wouldn't be possible. It's the American flag.
