The Mexican Flag Controversy
It happens every time.
There’s a pro-immigrant backlash to the anti-immigrant backlash and, what do you know, some Mexican flags come out of the closet and get waved on streets, plastered on newspapers and blown up on television.
Then, the very same people who have been pushing venomous, disingenuous anti-immigrant — and, often, anti-Mexican-American — rhetoric make hay out of the fact that “these people are waving Mexican flags around and disrespecting the American flag.”
Yawn.
How ____ing boring.
1) No ____ing Mexican would wave a ____ing Mexican flag in Mexico unless they were at a ____ing soccer game or in the army. It’s just not done. Patriotic Mexicans DO NOT WAVE MEXICAN FLAGS IN MEXICO. That’s a fact. Check it.
2) Why do immigrants wave Mexican flags in the U.S. then? Because that’s about all the ____ing Mexican they’ve got left in them, people. They are becoming Americans. They are Americans. But they are being told, to their face, over and over again, “You are not an American. You are an alien. Because you are Mexican.”
Guess what they’re going to do when they stand up and say “I am somebody.”
I’m Black and I’m proud. We’re queer, we’re here, get used to it. Same. ____ing. difference.
3) Am I the only person who remembers seeing, for months, all those threadbare, wilted, faded, torn, shredded, ripped, scratched, peeled, scuffed American flag stickers strips banners decals AIR FRESHNER DISPENSERS on every other gas guzzling vehicle parked on the freeway in SoCal back in 2003?
What happened to those flags? Who mourned their use as a band-aid for a wounded national pride?
Meanwhile, it’s 2006 and you still won’t see this in your newspaper or on your television set:
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:19 pm
[…] The Mexican Flag Controversy at Outis Good, if aggro, post on nativist critics attacking folks for waving the Mexican flag at pro-immigration rallies. (tags: globalization politics socialjustice) […]
May 1st, 2006 at 6:02 pm
IF MEXICO IS SO GOOD WHY DON’T YOU GO BACK….
GET THE FUCK OUT AND GO BACK TO YOUR WORTHLESS COUNTRY AND TAKE ALL OF YOUR GANG BANGING COUSINS WITH YOU.
May 1st, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Dear Brian,
I see you’ve discovered the caps lock key. Congratulations.
As your personal journey of discovery continues, I hope you’ll get a chance to read the About section of this web site. It will quickly disabuse you of the notion that I, Jose Marquez, the author of the above post, am from Mexico.
However, your assumption that I was not born in the U.S.A. is correct. I am a naturalized citizen. In fact, I state this plainly in the above cited “about” section:
The Constitution, as you likely know, lays out a series of rights and responsibilities for every American citizen. Among those is the freedom of speech.
That same freedom which surely protects your right to leave insults on a fellow citizen’s blog — some might say, in a dastardly fashion — also protects the right of others to fly any flag of their choosing: whether the flag be that of the secessionist and anti-American Confederate States or that of the breakaway Republic of Texas.
Others who enjoy America’s protection use this freedom of speech to fly the flag of the Klingon Empire while others, remarkably, proudly wave the flag of the Republic of Mexico — the nation from which many American citizens have come.
As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man.”
Some of us bear the burden of freedom with grace. For others, well, I suppose it can make a useful weight for holding down the shift key.
Best wishes,
Jose
May 4th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
i love blogs. i do. love the feeling i get from reading a truly ignorant post and then, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, watch its idiocy and venom unravel. on the sunny side, glad to read that topics other than Iraq are getting play. thanks for bringing your unique perspective to the flames jose…
May 4th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
I think every nationality busts out a flag when it feels either most proud or most vulnerable. I would think that in the case of the immigrant marches it’s a combination of the former and the latter. Some, in the case of the fabulous US of A, wave it, at times, to flex a drooping bicep. And I don’t quite agree with part 2, since I don’t believe that flag waving necessarily serves as a confirmation of how detached immigrants and naturalized Americans are from their homeland. There is significant proof to the fact that certain immigrant communities assimilate to the “American way of life” with much less zeal than others, and while some attribute it to “their laziness,” I think it’s up to the dominating society to accept newcomers. But this is another story. My point being - I am sure many Mexicans would never partake in flag-waving outside of a football stadium in Mexico, but are eager to do it here to make a point, not for the purpose of proving their national identity to themselves.
And hey, I am all pro flag-waving if it pains the administration for even a moment, or gives some angry republican a post Subway sandwich heartburn.
Thanks to JJ for introducing me to this blog.
Brian, perhaps, needs to shy away from FOX TV for a moment and exercise his rights as an American by using his brain.
May 4th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
hello, welcome!
dear marina,
you’re right to point out that i was sloppy in my initial generalization of who has been waving the mexican flag around. there are many who have done so who are first generation immigrants and thus have a political point to make.
in l.a., however, there have been many instances of second and third generation immigrants — mostly teens — who have waved the mexican flag with an abandon that, in my experience, has much more to do with their search for an identity within the U.S. than it does with their allegiance to a foreign power.
in any case, I should have been more specific — and should still. let me see if i can find some examples anon.
take care,
jose