Arab-American student recited pledge in Arabic after gaining approval.
Instantly faced with cat-calls and backlash from members who lost family in Afghanistan. (Arabic is not spoken in Afghanistan)
School backtracks and issues apology across the entire building later in the afternoon.
Students who supported the pledge get even more mad saying an opportunity was there to clear misinformation.
You would think as Arab immigrants in the USA you would head to the more diverse parts of the country instead of settling in a predominately White and insular reigon and putting your kid through that.
I’ll take this on from a Canadian perspective as I think most Americans would be on the same page. In Canada we speak English or French depending on the institution. When it comes to pledges, it must be in one of those two languages. Recently we’ve banned covering one’s face during pledges of citizenship. Some fundamental aspects of our culture aren’t negotiable. There is no Arabic version of our national anthem (though interestingly the English and French versions are not translations, they are materially different). Life isn’t about cultures bending to you. You come to America, there is an expectation that you follow American ways when it comes to things like that. That said, the Afghanistan comments are typical American ignorance. And I do wonder what would have been the outcome had this been Spanish in a SoCal school… there is some xenophobia present in the response.
A ‘Canadian perspective’ is mostly irrelevent here. Canada has 2 designated official languages (which is stupid) and I suppose that ends the discussion if this had happened in Canada.
America has no official language designated at the Federal level (rightly so) and i’m not sure how translating a pledge into the language of a minority group changes ‘fundamental aspects of our culture’. What culture are you talking about?
Why can’t he say it in English? And the Canadian experience is completely relevant, as we are two countries with similar values and have an issue with outsiders imposing their backwards nonsense on us. But backwards culture or not, English is the language spoken in this situation. German or Dutch would be equally as inappropriate as Arabic. The Pledge of Allegiance is in English.
The student in question is American of Arab descent not an ‘outsider’ unless you are implying that every non-caucasian person is an ‘outsider’. You still haven’t answered the question as to how translating it into another language is affecting ‘fundamental aspects of our culture’ or ‘imposing their backwards nonsense on us’.
mfin word! If you won’t abide by our customs and culture, then gtf out! Do you think any other country would accept and allow American customs which are converse to their existing culture?!
Shouldn’t have read his trolling cliff notes. Read the article, now I have no issue with the school. Don’t bite on this one folks, the cliff notes don’t represent the story.
“The district said the school’s foreign language department arranged to have the pledge recited in different languages for National Foreign Language Week, which was last week."
Arabic wasn’t forced down anyone’s throat here. The school arranged for the child to recite the pledge in Arabic. Aka it wasn’t some “foreigner” forcing his/her values down the throats of Americans. I’m also going to infer from the quote that during the week other languages were also used for the pledge. If it’s the case that no outrage was caused by the other non-Arabic languages, that’s obviously a problem. That would lead me to believe that the problem wasn’t caused by the recitation being “Non-English” but was actually caused by the use of Arabic, which is absurd.
“The intention was to promote the fact that those who speak a language other than English still pledge to salute this great country” – actually seems like a great idea to me, too bad people are overly sensitive
Heh , it is obvious that the student in question is ‘American’ yet you’ve gone on some bizarre , illogical and xenophobic rant about ‘outsiders’ eroding ‘fundamental aspects of our culture’ and imposing their ‘backwards culture on us’. Instead of clarifying your jibberish nonsense you’re blaming your atrocious comprehension skills on something else.
I think even you would have a problem logically following the absurd stupidity and bile coming out of your mouth.
My wife threw a fit a couple of years ago when their school said the pledge in Spanish for Mexican-American Heritage month, or something. I told her, “They’re pledging allegiance…to America, which is their home country. Why is that a problem again?”
And it reminds me of Coke’s Super Bowl commercial in 2014 (I think), when they sang some patriotic song (maybe America the Beautiful) in several different languages. The next day, the internet was ablaze with people saying, “How dare they sing that song in a terrorist language? Learn English, motherf----ers!!!” I was like…“They’re singing a patriotic song…in a different language. Not much different than us singing Silent Night in English. (It was written in German.)”
One important aspect was the student didn’t request approval to recite in Arabic (as zidhai implied), it was part of a school program to raise awareness of other languages. This is completely different. I took the bait without reading the details. Zidhai got me with his trolling, he wins. Perhaps Americans are more tolerant of others refusing integration in their society than we are. That’s fine, my mistake. I have no problem with folks celebrating their language and culture but in institutional aspects of society it is important we retain our core identity. That’s my two cents.
Hey zidhai, why do you even care what happens in a school in upstate NY? Do you live in upstate NY? Do you plan to move to upstate NY? Do you have friends in upstate NY? Do you have any connection at all to upstate NY? Of all the injustices in the world, or even just the US, this is what gets your panties in a bunch?
Many of these states cultures coincide with the language spoken there. I’ve always found the above graph interesting after seeing it on Twitter a while back. I’m not so sure if USA has a core identity that’s homogeneous like other countries, given the way we were formed.
