The only way to pledge allegiance in the land of the free
Post written by: beagooddad
Some grade school in Freeport, TX was celebrating Hispanic Heritage month. The kids gathered in the gym. The bilingual students sang some Spanish songs, some little Mexican flags were handed out and everybody stood up while some teachers said the Pledge of Allegiance…to Mexico.
A ton of people seem extremely angry about this. And quotations like this are being floated around:
Where is the sensitivity to the country and to the troops and the men and women that have fought and died for this country?
Why is this important to a little parenting blog like this? This is our kids’ education that is being discussed. What kind of special politcally correct filtering do you require for your kids’ school assemblies? Remember this is not an everyday occurance, this was a special celebration during Hispanic Heritage month at a school where 65% of the students are Hispanic.
Where do we take this from here? Will people start complaining when they play the Australian national anthem after an Australian swimmer wins gold in the next Olympics in America? Will people start complaining that Spanish, German, and Latin should not be taught in school because they are not official languages of the United States. If so, don’t we have to stop teaching English, too?
If my kids’ school is trying to give a special presentation to celebrate some ethnic group, I hope they do not crumple under political correctness and water it down until the presentation does not mean anything. A grade school Hispanic Heritage assembly should be able to be more exciting then showing Dora the Explorer and eating some tacos.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:06 am
Hi Mike,
I think it’s a sad reminder of how many insecure people there are in the world. The theory that there just isn’t enough to go around resounds in such folks. Freedom isn’t free, but it’s not in limited quantities. Everyone can (and I think should) partake. Now if we’re talking about changing our national anthem I’d have a different view, but as you pointed out isn’t this the land of the free?
Hugs,
Holly
September 21st, 2006 at 11:28 am
People always amaze me at the things they get all riled up about. The only thing that got me riled up today is finding out that the only free pops at work are Dr. Pepper and Diet drinks. What are these people trying to do to me?
September 21st, 2006 at 3:26 pm
I also can’t believe that there are so many Minuteman-ish (more like Minutebrain-ish) people who get so riled up when a school assembly in Texas celebrates Hispanic Heritage Day and sings a few songs in Spanish. My gosh, people celebrating ethnic diversity and moving away from homogeneous US consumer monoculture– how dare they? Especially when we have troops mired in Iraq, a national debt of $10 trillion, a broken health care system and a host of other problems– how can anybody get so worked up about such a trivial issue?
FWIW, I’ve had bar arguments with nativist bigoted folks like this, and I’ve always manage to shut them up by asking them why they aren’t speaking in, say, Apache, Navajo or Pueblo languages to me? Those are the true native languages of this place, aren’t they? In point of fact, there are indeed a handful of languages that were *native* to the current contiguous territory of the USA and have legal recognition as official languages for public discourse. American Indian languages are one group, indeed. English is another. Spanish is still another– it was the official language of what’s now about 1/3 of US territory, i.e. in the Floridas panhandle and also in what’s now the US Southwest, which was annexed from Mexico in the bloody and nasty Mexican War in the 1840’s.
It’s especially comical that these whiners are in Texas, which is one of the heartlands of the longstanding Latino presence in current US territory, and in fact, is one of the places where Spanish has the strongest protections and legal standing due to the many legal provisions in place when it was annexed by the US, at Mexico’s expense. My message to these crybabies: Aprende el espanol, no es muy dificil! Spanish is not really hard to learn– for goodness’ sakes, it could be something like Bulgarian or Russian for example.
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:50 am
It doesn’t particularly bother me, except that I think it’s a tad patronizing to Mexico to turn its Pledge of Allegiance into a novelty act.
But I also don’t much like America’s Pledge, either. Why do we pledge allegiance to a flag?