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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Tempest over a student's T-shirt STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Last fall, 12-year-old Shaun Hines started wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt to classes at the diverse Markham Intermediate School in Graniteville. What happened next wasn't a suspension from school, though, or an order from the principal to wear a different shirt. In fact, as Hines and his mother tell it, school administrators didn't even seem to notice the shirt. But Hines's classmates did. Some of them started calling out "KKK" whenever he passed, and at the end of March, he found the letters written in three separate sets of handwriting on one of his folders when he wasn't looking. Hines says he wears the shirt because he's a Civil War history buff, not because he's trying to send a message of racism or rebellion to his classmates. "I just wear it because it's my favorite era in the war, and I always go to Gettysburg, and I love it," the Grant City seventh-grader says. "I just think it's a flag. I know what it stands for, but it's just a flag that the Southerners use .... The South and what they did is wrong, but you can't take it out on a kid because they wear it." The "KKK" nickname stuck, much to Hines and his parents' chagrin -- students now yell out the letters behind his back as he passes by, sometimes as often as three times a day. Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Education, said the school can prohibit students from wearing disruptive garments such as gang colors. But so far, no administrators have admonished him for wearing the flag. KKK refers to the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society founded in the South after the Civil War that used cross-burnings and lynchings to spread its white supremacist message. Hines says the people who call him KKK know nothing about him -- he's Jewish, he explains, and the hate group is anti-Semitic as well. "If I was KKK, I'd have to kill myself," he says. About a quarter of Markham's population is African-American, according to the school's 2006 demographic data. White children make up a little less than a third of the student body, while Hispanic or Latino students make up slightly more than a third. Although he can't identify the individual students who call him "KKK," Hines says the comment most often comes from groups of his black classmates. The flag is reviled by many as a symbol of slavery and racism in the Civil War South, and its presence in government buildings has sparked controversy and protest in recent years Ed Josey, who heads the local chapter of the NAACP, says that even if Hines has no bad motives when he dons the T-shirt, he should pay serious heed to what the flag symbolizes for so many people. "The Confederate flag represents a very sad part of American history," Josey said. "Consider the effects on other people. It might not be against the law, but consider the effect .... If the boy is being harassed because of the symbol of the T-shirt, maybe the wise thing may be, don't wear the thing to school." Josey says that if he sees a Confederate flag on somebody's vehicle when he's traveling in the South, he'll think twice before talking to the driver. "It might be a nice person, but I might be in harm's way, so I'll get up and go," he says. Despite his Jewish background, Hines says he wouldn't be offended if a student came in wearing a swastika on a T-shirt. "It wouldn't bother me. It's a T-shirt. It doesn't matter," Hines says. "It depends on who the child is. If he is like that, you stay away from him." The Confederate flag's presence in public schools has been a subject of debate, controversy and litigation since at least as far back as 1970, when a high school in Chattanooga, Tenn., barred the use of the flag and the playing of "Dixie" as the school's pep song. When a student showed up with a Confederate flag emblem on his jacket, the school suspended him, sparking a lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit sided with the school, citing the "need to maintain decorum in our public schools so that the learning process may be carried out in an orderly manner." Other lawsuits over the years ended with similar results. In one case, which stemmed from a 1995 incident in which a Florida high school student was suspended showed a group of friends a Confederate flag during a conversation about the Civil War, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately sided with the school. "The undoubted freedom to advocate unpopular and controversial views in schools and classrooms must be balanced against society's countervailing interest in teaching students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior," the court ruled. The courts haven't always sided with the schools, though. In 2001, the 6th Circuit ruled in favor of two students who wore Hank Williams Jr. concert T-shirts that bore the flag in a Kentucky high school, stating that the school allowed other potentially disruptive symbols. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 8.
#8. To: X-15 (#0)
Compared to the North, the South was in the right.
There are no replies to Comment # 8. End Trace Mode for Comment # 8.
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