"Tit for tat..."

You may have read in the news this week that some school was yelling a chant, "USA! USA!" I read that too, but have been super busy so had not read any details. Today my daughter Alex called to say it was the school district in San Antonio that she and my son attended through 9th grade - Alamo Heights.

Alamo Heights is "old money" with the blue bloods of San Antonio including some of the most beautiful homes in town, along with some middle class homes that we lived in. We didn't really have the money to compete with these type of people who Spring Break and summer vacation in Europe and Vail, but it was the best public school district in the city and well respected. I could tell stories of exclusion all night long but here's what went down Saturday.

It was a basketball game of Alamo Heights vs. Edison High School (a predominantly Hispanic school) although most public high schools in San Antonio are predominantly Hispanic. Evidently the Edison kids were yelling, "Alamo Whites!" and the Heights kids were yelling, "USA! USA!"

The Edison kids only told half the story to the Express-News; the part about AH yelling USA. The AH kids said they were only responding to the Edison kids yelling Alamo Whites. But in this divisive country, anything that the is deemed as racism, they cry foul. Having worked at the Express-News for many years, I know that they HATE Alamo Heights out of jealousy, and refuse to print anything but negativity about them. This story fit their "template" that rich people are racist. While I worked there, I never admitted that I lived in AH's zip code 78209, as I would be ousted, even though my home was very middle class.

But I can tell you that Alamo Heights also plays the high school of the town I work in, and at one of the basketball games last year, all of the AH kids blacked out their teeth and wore overalls and gimme caps and yelled, "Hillbillies!" (and I'm told not in a funny way, but rude.) At the time I thought that was the height (pun intended) of arrogance, but the "hillbillies" turned it back on AH and exaggerated the hillbilly costume the next time they played, so the joke was turned around on them.

Only a few years ago, one of the southside schools of San Antonio (again, predominantly Hispanic) started throwing tortillas on the basketball court in an effort to show school spirit, but when northside schools starting doing it, it was hailed as racist. Everyone is just a little too sensitive.

Anyway.

Having been in San Antonio most of my life, I understand the angst on both sides. The Hispanics are now the majority in San Antonio and they want payback. And the whites have been there all along and feel like the Hispanics are pressuring them, thus are lashing out.

In light of the fact that this made national news and that the rich kids were deemed racist, the AH kids that chanted USA have been disciplined. But to my knowledge, nothing was said to the Edison kids.

But didn't they provoke it??