A group of parents last week got up on stage at a Freeport, TX (just down the coast from Galveston) elementary school after handing out Mexican flags and recited — in Spanish — the pledge to the Mexican flag. Read about it here.
They said it was an exercise in cultural awareness. OK, I’m now [and yet again] aware that they don’t like our culture — so get the hell out of here, already!!! Go back to wherever it is that you came from if it’s so much better than here that you feel you have to get in our faces with where you came from. In case you’ve forgotten that you’re neither in Mexico nor in Aslan (however it’s spelled — I don’t really care) — this is the United States of America. We have our own flag — and we fly it and make our pledge to it — not Mexico’s, not Italy’s, not China’s — no one else’s flag but ours. Do we like Tacos, Pizza and Fried Rice? Yes, we do. They were brought to us by people who did not want to replace what they found here with what they left back in the Old Country, but by people who wanted to harmoniously add to what we already had here. These dishes are now part of Americana — just like Mom and apple pie — thanks to each of your cultures. Not only are they enjoyed by Americans of Mexican, Italian, and Chinese decent, but also by American mongrels of mixed decent like me.
However, when you come here to live, you become American first. You learn, speak, and read and write our language — American English — in your own house and in public, you learn and conform to our culture and obey our laws — and you fly our flag — or — you are free go back home and fly your own flag, speak your own language, and practice your own culture and follow your own laws there. Not here.
