The Cinco de Mayo incident, at Live Oak High School in California, when a Vice Principal of the school walked over to four kids wearing 'American Flag', emblazoned shirts and head wear ordered them to turn their shirts inside-out and remove the head wear, lest they offend the Mexican kids on "their day" - is, again...to use a cliche of our times, "political correctness run amok". It's also a few other things but, we'll touch on those later.
High school, as we all can remember, is basically an oligarchy. From the Principal, Vice Principal to even a few teachers who wielded a certain authority, either through bestowment of such authority from above or by simply being a teacher who commanded respect and whose authority was generally respected by most of the students at the school. The Vice Principal, in many cases is also the security chief. There isn't an rambunctious, unruly classroom full of kids, whose substitute teacher is out of the room, leaving chaos to reign, that wouldn't dive back into their seats and immediately become quiet and behaved, should the Vice Principal happen to walk into the class.
A day after at the school, Seis de Mayo, the Mexican-American students were now out of the school, skipping class and protesting and demanding respect. Some reported incidents then occured, where other schools in the Bay area with a similar name to Live Oak, were receiving threats. It's also believed that Live Oak itself has received threats of violence and to "shoot up" the school, over the incident. This doesn't seem to be helpful in attaining respect, for these protesting kids, as much as a blatant show of intolerance of someone Else's beliefs or pride in something.
But, these kids and others, were enabled, to think and act as they did at that moment. I understand one definition of enabling to be, where you are guilty of assisting someone to engage in behavior, detrimental to their own well being. They were also empowered to openly and collectively assemble publicly to not only display their pride but also to gather en masse to shout for their due respect. But, I submit, the foundation that was built for them, by which they were empowered and enabled to display this pride for all to see and command the respect from all who could hear...was based on and at the exclusion of, other's sense of pride and same right of simple respect.
And, this can be traced directly back to the Vice Principal's initial response, when seeing a group of kids with American flags on their clothes, in the cafeteria of the school, during lunch. It should be noted that this was a moment when no waves of discord were at all present, among any of the kids, due to the sartorial choices made by any of the students. If something had clicked, in the V.P.'s brain, at the first sight of these kids with American flags, on Cinco de Mayo - the proper course would have been the stealth monitoring of the situation, which at that point in time, was not a situation at all.
For a moment, let's float back, to a place in our minds, many years before our ages in High School, to an age where we can play a little game of "Let's Pretend". For the sake of argument... Let's have one of the kids with the American flag on display, walking with his lunch tray to his table. Now let's have another kid, with a like display of a Mexican flag on his clothing, walking the other way. As the two cross paths, let's have first kid toss a little glare at the second one and point to the flag on his shirt and say something like, "America's number one." Now, they stop and face-off and let's escalate tensions even further and have them both slam their food trays to the floor, standing in defiance of one another, which also gets the attention of the Vice Principal, whose duty at lunchtime is patrolling the cafeteria and providing a presence. He sees what's happening and injects himself into the situation. His evident authority and calming influence eases tensions of the two and of others, who are now focused on the scene and in that moment, takes the opportunity to speak to the two, at a stand-off and to all the other kids in the lunch room and says something like, (and remember, it's pretend so we can dream can't we?) "Now listen. It's Cinco de mayo and it's a special day in the lives of our Mexican American students. And, pride in their heritage is something that's supported and encouraged in this school and in this country. Pride in one's heritage is a good thing and it's encouraged here but, never at the expense of anyone Else's. It's just one of the things that makes, where we live great and one of the many things that makes us all want to live here." In conclusion he asks, "So how about, we all take pride in our patriotism and heritage, in however we choose and respect everyone's right to do just that, in honor of where we live and of who we are?"
A bit altruistic, yes but...what if pretend could have been closer to reality in that school, on that fifth day of May? A lot is made of "teaching moments", lately, and earlier this week, in a town, at a school in California, a big one was missed. Enabling young people and a situation to spin off into further events that don't do a whole lot to foster understanding and tolerance and, in this case empowered some to intolerance of others -I can't help but think, if something like what happened in our game of "Let's Pretend" was allowed to take hold, in those kids' minds on that day and they weren't permitted to take away the actual images they saw - that of one group of kids rights excluded, to promote the inclusion of the rights of another group of kids. Subsequent events would have unfolded, differently and to the betterment of all the kids involved.
Instead, they were misguidedly empowered to a point where one young Latina girl, when interviewed that day stated, “I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day,”...“We don’t deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.” An argument not easily provable in the school setting, since no kids are attending on that date. But it is done.
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