re: #738 Charles

Was that a flounce? I’ll be happy to block your account if that’s what you’re asking me to do.

Flounce? I think I have a Bingo now. Yes indeed, I’ve been called a racist, a bigot, a Republican, a Democrat now I’m gay. Great. And threatened with banning for saying what I believe to be the truth. Do whatever you want, it’s your fiefdom here. And you prove my point again, you’ve spent so much time dealing with skinheads, Islamists and the extremes of both sides that your reflexive answer to my points is that I’m either bigoted or gay.

I come here because you usually provide more light than smoke and I usually can agree with your analysis and conclusions or at least understand you point of view. In this case, getting back to what I think the issue is - the practical way to assimilate is to not have authority figures - the school administration, kowtow to what are in fact racist sentiments of the Hispanics who have taken Cinco de Mayo and turned it into a day not to celebrate Hispanic heritage but to separate and intimidate nonhispanics. Having experienced racism myself by white people who consider me too Hispanic and by Hispanics who consider me too white your viewpoint seems to me to be naive.

As long as the idea is to have people in this country act as “Americans” with the spectrum of American political and cultural viewpoints, then we should not condone things which tend to Balkanize us. Cinco de Mayo is as culturally relevant as St. Patrick’s Day and should be celebrated exactly that way. As it now, it’s a day of confrontation and kicking kids out of school for wearing clothing with American flag themes on them on this ‘special day’ and it only does exactly what has happened - making it a flashpoint and a confrontation. My grandmother, who was born in the US, spoke mostly Spanish and spoke spanish to me. Her children went to school and learned English and learned to be American and were successful in life. We didn’t lose any of the culture, we didn’t lose any of the food. If this particular nonsense was going on then I doubt very much that any of that family success would have happened. The well meaning liberal ideas of how to deal with these things does more harm than good. The same as calling people who disagree with you racist and gay does no good toward a civil discussion.