Last week was Foreign Language Week. But nationalistic fetishists were having none of it:
A school in upstate New York has apologized for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic after complaints from district residents who lost family members in the Afghanistan war.
The pledge was read in Arabic during Wednesday morning announcements at Pine Bush High School, 65 miles northwest of New York City.
Some students were angered and responded with catcalls. District Superintendent Joan Carbone told the Times Herald-Record of Middletown that she received complaints from residents who lost relatives in Afghanistan and from Jewish parents.
Never mind that they don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan. And how is the language of Arabic inherently offensive to Jews? I guess they would raise hell if it were read in German too. But no-it’s OK to discriminate against Arabs in this country. Their precious pledge must only be read in English because our union is too weak to accept that The Other exists in this country.
What a sad, sad commentary on the state of race relations in the US. God forbid we get exposed to something other than our lily white Judeo-Christian exceptionalist culture. English uber alles!!