But you're forgetting the fact that the students deliberately CHOSE that day out of the school year to "display their love for America." goldfarb1's assessment is right - although the vice-principal's decision to tell the students to remove their shirts was wrong, he was still correct in realizing that they wore them just to spite the other Mexican students.
Your argument would work if those white students wore their shirts on any other day and their intentions were out of genuine patriotism. On Cinco de Mayo this year, they were not.
The holiday was, although some of us disagree that it should even be sponsored in the US, still a Mexican holiday. Although you're arguing that since Mexican-American were celebrating it, they should have no problem with the representation of American flags during its celebration. I don't think thats being very respecful or understanding of the holiday. Just because they were Mexican-Americans doesn't make the holiday Mexican-American too! One of the posters before gave this example, switching the positions, and I'm not sure if you read it.
Say a school had been celebrating the American Independence Day. And the school happened to be very patriotic and enthusiastic - nearly everyone came to school that day wearing red, white, and blue. Imagine it as a school that is overwhelmingly white, just as the school in this news was overwhelmingly Hispanic. And four Mexicans came to school decked out in red, green, and white, waving little Mexican flags. It would be plainly antagonizing and disrespectful of a day that was focused on the celebration of an AMERICAN holiday.
NO ONE minds someone displaying his/her affection for his/her country. Just why choose to do it on that day?
None of that matters one bit.
You are absolutely correct that it was no accident that those students chose that day to show their pride in America. So what? Showing that pride is not disrespectful of those celebrating their own pride in their heritage. As I stated, being pro-something is not being necessarily anti-anything! Again, it is NOT antagonistic or inflammatory to say, "This is what
I am proud of," regardless of the day you choose to say it or the audience to whom that statement was intended.
If I were to guess at the subtext of their statement of patriotic pride, I suppose it to be, "while you are celebrating your foreign heritage, we would like to remind you that you are doing so in
America, which we are equally proud of (we sure hope you are too)." You can try to read your own statement of hate into their actions, but, like that vice principal, doing so says more about your own prejudices than any those students may have.
Your Independence Day analogy also is entirely wrong, not to mention moot. You are talking about an American national holiday being celebrated in America, not American's celebrating their holiday in a foreign land. We celebrated on the 4th of July every year that we lived in Germany. It would have been laughable to expect that Germans should be denied their right to display their national pride right back at us if they chose to do so...in fact, each year, several did. That display of their national pride on their part was not an affront to us as Americans; it was just them puffing up their own chests at the same time we were puffing up our own. Them [effectively] saying, "You American's are not the
only ones who love your country" is not the same as them saying, "We hate you Americans; go home."
That being said, as I stated above, the point is entirely moot, anyway. Even if, as you described in your scenario, someone in America were to choose Independence Day of all days to show their pride in their
foreign heritage, I would consider it an odd--even poor--choice, but it would still be every bit witin their rights (as stated in an amendment to that constitution I swore to uphold and defend a long time ago). I would wish that they were proud enough in their adopted country to join the rest of us in celebrating it, rather than choosing that particular day to show pride in their foreign heritage, but I would certainly NOT see anything about their display of pride as provocative. After all, their being pro-Mexican (or German or Sweedish or...) is
not being anti-American.