Quote Originally Posted by Bilbo View Post
Quote Originally Posted by miles View Post
Jesus, what happened to the site? I stayed away for a few days because this thread made me a little bit mad and I didn't understand why I was being labelled a racist. I tried quoting Bilbo's post but this new system is weird and I wasn't sure it would reply properly so I will just do it like this instead. I'm glad to see that he doesn't think I am a racist because I am not and never have been. It's not in my mindset to hate on people because of a skin tone. He says that my argument is petty and he is entitled to that view and I'm not so upset by that. I still don't think it should be a problem that the kids wore the shirts though, certainly not on on the theoretical level, after all a shirt is just a shirt and what is so offensive about the American flag on this particular day? I just don't see the offense in that.

I'm not a nationalist, but I do believe in the freedom to wear what you like. It's a simple argument and I am sticking with it. I just cannot get upset by someone else wearing their own flag colours. It's not something I would do myself, but I could never get upset by others doing it.

My deportation comment was perhaps a bit harsh in retrospect and rash too, but my point was that if you are going to live in another culture you need to try and respect that culture too. You can't be getting too upset by native kids wearing their own colours. If it is an act of provocation then you need to rise above it, it's only a flag.
I don't think you're a racist at all Miles I was just making a point of excercising my freedom of speech to call you names!

For me the issue is nothing to do with nationalism, patriotism, freedom of speech, liberties or anything else. It's simply a case of a school day being organised to celebrate something important to many people at the school and a small group of twats trying to be antagonistic about it. It's just like bullying really.

Forget about race and look at other similar scenarios and it makes more sense. Imagine the school had a lot of special needs students and they put on a sports day for them or something and a group of kids turned up with tshirts with pictures of mongs on the front, they would be told to remove them and stop being so mean.

Or if there was a 'Bring a parent to school day' where they come in and talk about their jobs and some kids put some t-shirts with slogans making jokes about certain jobs that many dads in the school do, or comments about those whose parent's left them or something, again it would just be a disruptive, mean, nasty thing to do.

Dizaster's own exmple was great, wearing a tshirt with a Vietnames woman with a machine gun to her head when the Japanese exchange students came to his school. Again just a cuntish thing to do.

I don't see why people are making this a patriotic or nationalistic issue when it's nothing to do with that. It was just a group of kids being twats and wanting to show another group of kids they weren't accepted.

Schools HAVE to outlaw bullying, and if the principle thought this could be construed as such (and it's not hard to see why) then he took the appropriate steps to stamp it out.

All he did was tell them if they didn't take them off they would be sent home for the afternoon. And these dickish kids were clearly just looking for trouble as they chose to go home.

Now their parents are planning to sue the school? For what?

It's fucking ridiculous and and it just makes me angry that these kinds of asshole people are out there, just trying to make a petty point and arguing for the sake of arguing, and of course clearly hoping to make a nice tidy sum of money in damages from it.

If they do sue I hope it gets rejected and they have to pay costs.
Yeah, the racist thing got under my skin at that point in time and I kind of sat back and thought "woah, I've been called a racist when I had no idea we were even talking about racism". Of course, I can see that racism might have been a point festering underneath it all in the actual story, but that is not how I looked at it when arguing my points. I took it as an oddball story where ethnic minorities were trying to dictate to natives whether they can wear their own colours or not and in it's own way it is. I mean, can you honestly tell me where the offense is in wearing US flag colours on this particular holiday? From what I can gather this had nothing to do with American domination. Therefore, I struggle to see the issue with America in this instance. I find it strange that these students were so affronted by this behaviour. Now if it were Afghan students or Iraqi students I could really empathise, because I think American colonialism and brutality has been quite blatant, but to the Mexicans in this particular instance? I really struggle to see it.

I see your arguments and you put them across well. I can understand that it is a school and the peace needs to be kept, but I struggle to see why these Mexican kids couldn't contain themselves enough to just get through their schoolday and go home. It's just a day of the year and they are being allowed to celebrate their day. I find it hard to believe that these US shirts in the USA were really that big a deal to these immigrant kids who have been provided with decent lives in the very same country. And as I said why is America so wrong on this particular day, I struggle to see it.

If the American kids were trying to beat up the Mexican kids then it is bullying, but as it stands it's no more to me than a crowd of Everton shirt wearers having to walk down a street passing a handful of people in Liverpool shirts. Rise up and move beyond, it isn't so hard. It all seems so silly to me.