alot of folks who don't know history, think that the Florida flag is racist... 
Hint, the top flag is the spanish fag that flew over St. Augustine...)
Posted on 02/03/2006 4:55:22 PM PST by paltz
Two Hickman High School students disrupted a multicultural assembly yesterday in the school’s auditorium by unfurling a Confederate flag from the balcony.
Ryan Lanman, 17, who is white, and a friend enacted their plan while another student was singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" to commemorate the Spanish-American War and honor Texas.
After the disruption, the students involved were told to leave, and the assembly continued, Principal Mike Jeffers said, adding that he couldn’t talk about whether the students would be disciplined.
Lanman, reached by phone after the assembly yesterday afternoon, said he and fellow student Kevin Meyers meant to "show Southern pride" and didn’t intend the flag to be racist.
"Me and Kevin, we don’t believe in slavery or anything else that goes along with the symbol," Lanman said.
The assembly included celebrations of Irish, Spanish, Bosnian, Indian, Middle Eastern, black, American, Japanese and Chinese cultures, among others, Jeffers said.
Lanman said he and his friend waited until "The Yellow Rose of Texas" to unfurl the flag out of respect for the other cultures being celebrated at the assembly.
Jeffers said he questions Lanman’s argument that his actions were about cultural support for the South.
"Ryan’s interpretation of things well, there’s information I can’t share with you," Jeffers said. "Ryan is not telling you the whole story."
Collin Kemble, 16, who is white, said he is sure the unfurling of the flag was intended as a racist action. He and a group of football players sitting outside Hickman yesterday discussed what Lanman and his friend did.
None of the students said he believes there will be any retaliation against Lanman or anyone else.
"No, there ain’t going to be no riot," Vaughan said.
One thing that bothered those in the group was something they saw as a double standard. "Students wear Confederate stuff all the time," said Michael Tufts, 16, a sophomore. The school "doesn’t do anything about it."
"If I came to school in a ‘I hate crackers’ T-shirt, I’d be sent home," said Xavier Bagby, 16, who is black.
Jeffers said Confederate flag clothes are not prohibited unless they cause disruptions, adding that Lanman’s use of the flag did cause a disruption.
"It’s one thing to wear something and another to stand up in a multicultural assembly with a Confederate flag," Jeffers said. "You don’t have the right to run into a movie theater and yell, ‘Fire,’ and you don’t have the right to do something disruptive in school."
Jeffers said school officials planned to meet with students’ parents today or Monday.
"I think if you see kids this age who are racist, you have to look at their parents," said Evan Conrad, 14, a white student at West Junior High School. "They’re not going to just develop racism. They learn it from somewhere."
Tom Lanman, Ryan Lanman’s father, said he disagrees with his son’s behavior and actions.
"However, a lot of students have grumbled about how the multicultural assemblies don’t represent" the Southern point of view, said Tom Lanman, adding that nobody in his family is a racist. "Ryan is a student that steps up to the plate and makes a statement. He’s a leader in that sense."
I see what you are saying. Don't get me wrong, as I said, I am a strong supporter of the right for the individual and the state to display the Rebel Flag. My issue is that the media will take an incident like this and use it to fuel the fire over the larger issue. Things like this just give ammunition to people who want to ban the Flag.
"I have no problem with the Southern rationality of states rights as the primary motivating factor for the Civil War."
I also agree with that.
I have to agree with you there. I've learned that most northerners are extremely miseducated about that period of history. (I'm from Florida- I'm SURROUNDED by northerners.)
I don't know about the Pittsburgh accent, but my sophomore year in college at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA (up in the Shenendoah Valley), we had a guy on my hall from somewhere around Happy Valley, PA. His Appalachian drawl was so thick, you'd think he was from down in the Virginia/Kentucky coal country, but he was born and raised up around Happy Valley. I have no idea where that accent came from.
Fascinating place, Pennsylvania. I had friends from all over PA in college and a few years afterward living in DC. Great folks, mostly, except for the two hardcore bodybuilding third-generation Polish-American racists from Johnstown that I roomed with for half a year. Those guys' attitudes and vocabularies about anybody non-white would've made an Alabama Klansman blanch.
}:-)4
I feel your pain. Especially the liberal North Easterners.
Did they like Polack jokes? I would have ragged on those boys non stop!
This only way that the Rebel flag will be displayed is in this manner. The liberals have already managed to corrupt this chapter in our history and the only way to take it back is by this kind of in your face protest. I salute these brave kids.
I will burn my Stars and Bars just as soon as we have racial diversity in the NBA.
However, out in the Western Panhandle, they don't consider the ol'boys in Eastern Maryland to be real Marylanders.
Sadly this is already happening in Kookifornia.
"...Patriotism was what prompted Ryan Lanman, a senior at Hickman High School, to enlist in the Marines in July. By joining nearly a year before his high school graduation, he can participate in weekly training sessions at the recruiting station in Columbia to help him prepare physically and mentally for the rigors of boot camp.
“I was raised this way,” says Lanman, who was dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt and a camouflaged ball cap as he ate a bowl soup at Panera. “My parents never wanted me to take my freedom for granted.”
Lanman recalls how as a senior patrol leader for his Boy Scout troop, he made everyone slow down as they recited the Scout’s oath, which pledges allegiance to God and country. The ritual had become a rote formality, and Lanman’s troop recited the lines quickly, almost thoughtlessly.
“It had bothered me a little bit,” Lanman says. “But my assistant patrol leader and I began to say the oath louder and slower. Slowing it down made the words stay there, sink in more, so they actually heard each word separately.”
Lanman’s father was accepted to West Point before breaking his leg in a skydiving accident. His mother, who immigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad as a child, tried to enlist with the Air Force but was disqualified because of a spinal curvature. One grandfather served in Korea, and an uncle fought in World War II.
His other grandfather, a paratrooper, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He rarely discussed the war with Lanman but did tell him one story. He was manning a machine gun while his squad was passing through a town. Instinctively he swiveled the gun around and started shooting at a window. Later, the battalion found a sniper, lying dead next to the window.
“I know the risks,” Lanman says of military duty. “There’s going to be stuff like that everyday if I get sent to Iraq. But that doesn’t stop me from doing it. It’s part of the job.”
The branch of service he joined mattered little to Lanman.
“I had already made up my mind to join,” he recalls, “and didn’t care about money issues or where I’d be stationed.”
A month passed between his first meeting with a recruiter and the day Lanman and his parents signed the waiver required of recruits younger than 18. Although his father left the decision to join the Marines to his son, Lanman’s mother made sure he understood the risks.
“We talked a lot before he signed,” says Lorraine Lanman. “No matter how proud of him I was, I had to play devil’s advocate. But he told me, ‘Mom, if I don’t do this, I will always feel like I should have served...’ ”
alot of folks who don't know history, think that the Florida flag is racist...
Hint, the top flag is the spanish fag that flew over St. Augustine...)
As well they should. I consider Maryland not much more than an occupied state during the Tariff War. The same could be said of Missouri
Dixie bump
Huh? "Yunz"? Southern? I think not.
And I don't think they have "City Chicken" down south.
You'uns is not southern, that's true. I'm referring mostly to their vowels, not their vocabulary.
No doubt! Because it's a 'noble faith, hijacked by a few'... *retch*
Nope. The midwest starts one mile west of Zanesville, Ohio. All of Ohio east of there and Western Pennsylvania is Appalachia. Big time.
Interesting. Always thought that Columbia is a liberal college town.
Why is one culture not accepted in the multicultural assembly?
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