Prof Ramos Strokes His Goatee, Shows His Flag

We see the Houston Chronicle (and perhaps other local news media) finally noticed all the Mexican flags those heroic teen truants have been waving about during their class-cutting “walkouts” from the free public education a good number of them persist in squandering.

“Opinions split over read, white and green: Mexican flags divisive topic as principal shows his support for student protests,” read the headline over the page one Chronicle story, referring to the clueless Reagan High principal who ran the Mexican standard up the school flagpole after being asked to do so by students (why not just turn the entire asylum over to the inmates?).

Standing up in opposition to the Mexican flag-flaunting was one Bruce R. Wing, identified by the Chronicle only as a “52-year-old Missouri City resident.” Mr. Wing, bless ’im, was no doubt offered up as a representative of the Angry White Man, Potential Minuteman Recruit Division (although being from Missouri City he could easily be an Angry Black Man), who either e-mailed or called the newspaper (our guess) with the following observation: "The whole thing just makes my blood boil. I want them all out of here." Mr. Wing went to say the Reagan High principal should be fired, then was quickly dispatched to the Dustbin of History, where he’ll be forever immortalized as a 52-year-old Missouri City resident.

Trotted out to defend the flag displays was Raul Ramos, the professor of Texas history at the University of Houston whose op-ed piece in the Chronicle galvanized opposition---let’s give blame or credit where it’s due---to naming the city’s new Major League Soccer Franchise “Houston 1836.” In addition to teaching history, the professor apparently dabbles in cultural psychoanalysis:

Calling HISD's decision [ordering the flag removed at Reagan High] a reaction to cultural anxiety, he said, "it's important for the school to make efforts to identify with the student body," not vice versa. "The school, after all, reflects the ethnic identity of the students sitting in its classrooms."

Well, that’s the first we’ve heard of that---that schools should reflect the ethnic identity of their students. We thought this was still America---E pluribus unum and so forth---where the schools traditionally have served as an assimilating agent for all comers. That’s all that’s part of our culture hereabouts (or “culture,” as the Chronicle once put it, in quotation marks as if such didn't exist, in an editorial previous to this fanciful bullshit.)

We’ll turn the tables on Prof Ramos and offer this armchair analysis: He’s consumed by self-loathing because he’s drawing his taxpayer-funded check from a university named after a city named after the villain of 1836 …