Robert Pratt
It is vile to declare someone a bigot or racist short of overt evidence of the fact. It is the unjust placing of a scarlet-letter upon the person and yet, a school chief in Slaton, Texas is being defended for doing similar.
Students at a neighboring district have been chanting “USA!” at basketball games most of the season. It seems to have started as a fun play on town names with a game against Canadian according to what locals have explained. But when the chant was delivered with her team present suddenly it was “racist” according to Julee Becker of Slaton ISD. Bigoted would have been the correct word but Becker chose to indict, through the press, the students at the other school as practitioners of racism.
Most of those jumping to her defense with me have done so in a tribal-manner with little to no intellectual argument refuting the idea I put forth that it was Becker imputing into the minds of others bigotry for chanting USA! They, like her, just seem to know it was bigotry.
To find the chant of “USA!” bigoted is to subtly suggest that Hispanics, or other non-whites present, are somehow less American – otherwise how could offense be taken?
Here is the root of the matter: George W. Bush once called lower standards for non-Anglos in public schools a form of “soft bigotry” and here we have another example.
Nationality in the USA has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. One is either an American or one is not. To find the chant of “USA!” bigoted is to subtly suggest that Hispanics, or other non-whites present, are somehow less American – otherwise how could offense be taken?
Bigotry exists but it is empowered most by those who see it in every shadow and then use “racism” as a sword to swing at others even when no real evidence exits. It is Slaton ISD’s Becker who owes the letter of apology to the students of Idalou ISD.
You have dug yourself into a hole here PRATT, and now you are swinging the sword every which way on this discussion. Idalou ISD officials (grown ups) saw it as it was. They were present. That is why they responsibly sent the apology to the Slaton ISD (predominately Hispanic) team. The Canada chant defense of a year past is lame. The argument is over. They admit the wrong and you continue to defend it from your white ethnocentric viewpoint. Take it from someone that grew up hearing the EXACT SAME bigoted comment from other KIDS, PRATT. How can you ever understand? Your imperialistic ethnocentricity that you teach your kids is the problem.
Mrs Rodriguez, for the record, you are wrong about the “grown ups” sending apologies. I’m a parent of one of the students that have been labeled by Mrs Becker a racist. Idalou ISD did send an apology, but not with parents consent. As a matter of fact, the superintendent has been swamped with furious parents sending messages of disappointment in his handling of the matter. The USA chant has been used at many games against teams of all races. If we chant USA against a team of primarily white players, NO PROBLEM, RIGHT??? But all of a sudden Slaton claims we are chanting racist chants. Can you not see how stupid that is? Not to mention insulting. My kids go to idalou, one of my sons best friends is from Slaton. By the way , he is Black. It literally makes my gut hurt , that people are so lost that they can’t see how far of a reach this accusation is. During the game one of the Slaton parents were calling one of the Idalou players a Big Fat B___h. Has the Noble Mrs Becker called to apologize for that?? No.. Instead she doesn’t even except the apology from Idalou, for something they have been doing for over a year without any complaints. What a backwards world we live in.
It was not rascist. How is it racist when Hispanics chant it too? No one seems to be able to explain that. Hispanic Idalou parents have defended it, because they know the truth. ONE Idalou official apologized-after a huge issue was made. I honestly believe he feels like it was the right thing to do, to protect the school. He didn’t apologize immediately. He heard the chants, and nothing was said until the Slaton superintendent made it an issue. The argument from the parents standpoint is far from over. As a defender of this country, I refuse to cow down and apologize for kids chanting USA as a fun tradition. It doesn’t really matter if you believe the truth or not. The town knows, the kids know, and many people in Slaton even know and have acknowledged that our kids are innocent.
Anyone who takes offense at the chant USA is out of their mind. We are all Americans and should chant it with pride. The ones that feel it is racist to chant USA need to get the hell out of this fine country!
And finally, stop acting like Slaton is the only predominantly Hispanic town around here. Idalou is 46% hispanic. Many many of the schools we compete against are predominantly Hispanics. No one has ever complained about our chant until this past Tuesday. When Slaton came to Idalou last year and Idalou won, I’m pretty sure the chant was said then. Why no complaint that time?
Your desire to not be offended does not override our right to chant USA! You can continue to be bitter and steadfast in your wrongness, but you could try thinking that maybe, this really was just a fun tradition and some in Slaton have overreacted and gotten this whole deal very wrong. Our kids aren’t perfect but they are good. And they are KIDS! They deserve the benefit of the doubt. If you keep demanding that freedoms be removed, you will one day wake up without any left.
Mr Pratt, I applaud You. Thank You for being a “Light” of reason, in an increasingly “Dim” world. And I do mean Dim.
@ Shark, Maybe what we need is a call for a UIL investigation. because if I am to understand this adolescent linguistic term (as told to me by a Idalou student) USA also means U Suck A&%. Which is worse with in your school culture and in UIL competition? In this case I think it was also used as cultural slur.
So more government investigating our speech and assigning meaning. I wonder if the speech trials will have grand jury indictments or, like in Europe just allow any gov’t official to accuse one of such.
I want to agree with you Mr. Pratt. I really do. So I will hypothetically attempt to process a scenario in which I could… Keeping in mind that you are defending only a few adolencants in your argument. Here is how I could concur. Two High school teams are competing, from the same region, with the same demographic makup – ie., all caucacians. A very small group (10-20) on one side chants USA USA USA throughout the game. You acuse as Anti-American, those that rolled their eyes at this group and that said I dont get it, we are all Americans here. With this scenario I would be in your corner.
But here is the problem Mr. Pratt. Through my five decades of high school scholastic and colegiate sports, I have never experienced – either as a competitor, a referee, sportscaster or student body and with the same scenario as above – American patriotic ferver trump Almar mata commitment in any sporting event.
So why chant USA?
The only rational explanation is that the other team was predominately of Hispanic origan and the side chanting was predominately caucasian. At least here, due to responsible supertendants, the school district of Idalou was spared an embarrising UIL investigation.
Now, as to your rational of labeling me stupid… please enlighten me with out making a full time foe out of me.
You all can’t seem to understand that I’m NOT defending any students at Idalou – I don’t know what was in their minds and their actions were not overt. I do believe it silly to assume a chant of USA! is bigoted. I AM arguing that no government authority should be able to simply declare others racist (or anything else) by simply declaring what they meant without evidence. Free speech and expression is not possible in an environment where authority declares the intent of other people.
Exactly Mr Pratt, free speech is the whole point. It’s just more frustrating when the accusations are so bogus. It’s getting to where people are scared to even speak because of fear of offending someone. Some of you keep trying to make since of the USA chant in relation to who it’s being chanted at. They are just kids chanting at a sporting event, most times it’s just to be loud and silly. But you guys are acting like they are young Nazi’s. The very next game Idalou played , was a home game, the boys team we were playing was primarily black boys , before the game started they (the other team) were chanting, ” what’s up !!what’s up!!, what’s up!! Negros,Negros,Negros. Now should we have a UIL Investigation to interpret what they meant by that? Since they were about to play a primarily white team. NO!! They have the right in my presence to say whatever they want, I might think it’s rude , insulting,or even racist. But the last thing a strong American should do is run crying to the nearest government agency to get their butt ache kissed by the government. When ALL these kids grow up and graduate they are going to have things said to them that they don’t like or interprete as wrong. Do we need to elect a speech policeman that Adults can run to when they get their feelings hurt??? you democrats won’t be happy until we are all a bunch of robots, programmed by the government .