Coronado is known for being one of the most ideal communities in the nation, let alone San Diego. It’s my wife’s and my favorite place to get away and relax. Beautiful homes. Green lawns. Clean streets and a world renowned beach. One would be hard pressed to believe that the values of Coronado’s school board would be anything other than bright and thoughtful as well.
Then this. Last Saturday night, Luke Serna, a half-Mexican alum of Coronado High and University of California Santa Barbara, brought tortillas to Coronado’s championship basketball game. Following the tradition of UCSB sporting events where tortillas are thrown into the air in celebration:
Serna, who is active in the Democratic Party and an officer for SEIU 1000 Union, wrote in a letter, “There was not a shred of ill-intent or racial animus in carrying out this celebratory action. “Those who have enflamed this issue into a racially charged issue should be utterly ASHAMED of themselves.”
Never mind the facts.
The Coronado school board, in a 5-0 vote, has now fired the white basketball coach, who at no time encouraged, touched or threw any celebratory tortillas.
What?
Do the player’s parents support this action?
What’s strange is Serna’s own Democratic peers are the ones attempting to turn the incident (in which no rights were infringed) into a divisive and racist one. “This intentional act was designed to be racist and should not now, nor ever, be tolerated,” Sen. Ben Hueso, D-Chula Vista, wrote in a letter to the sports federation’s executive director and the leaders of its San Diego chapter. “Failure to impose swift and appropriate justice will become a tacit endorsement of the act itself by the CIF and violate CIF’s own principles of ethical character-building for student athletes.”
To what ethic or judicial standard is Senator Hueso referring? How is justice served by swiftly firing an individual for the misunderstood behavior of another? What law system places a politician’s opinion above the parents of the students?
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez tweeted, “Parents in SD County know that racist taunts against latino athletes are too common place. It’s time to stop it.”
Does Gonzalez have a tweet for the Orange Glen student who called the Coronado player a “N@%#!$”?
Coronado Board Trustee Esther Valdes-Clayton said, “The racial tones, the classism, that was displayed as well as the colorist that was displayed is evident to every Latino…”
Esther Valdes-Clayton… Attorney? Republican? Christian?
Ms. Valdes-Clayton, are you familiar with Serna’s intention? What precept of your theology or principle of limited government allows you to reframe the intention of Mr. Serna, let alone frame Coach JD Laaperi? Where in your law books do we find the right not to be offended? Where is it codified? What principle are you conserving in your governance? This should have been a 4-1 vote at minimum, with you upholding parental rights and being an obstacle against the left’s rush to judgment. You repeated and are fomenting the left’s racism chorus.
Coach Laaperi tweeted, “I do not condone this behavior…”
Yet, Ms. Valdes-Clayton and the school board bowed to the “ethics” of those who hold less of an admiration for principle than feelings.
The school board and Valdes-Clayton have become a conduit for injustice, division and lack of ethics by submitting to the divisive political tactics of Hueso and Gonzalez. The school board’s rush to judgement reveals an immaturity and a leaning toward the philosophy of Hobbes and away from Locke and our framers.
What kind of world will this be if Coronado students grow up making hasty and unprincipled decisions affecting their peers as Valdes-Clayton and the Coronado Unified School Board have done?
If Americans and those in Coronado desire to enjoy peace and prosperity they must conserve the great ideas constituted in our founding documents. They most oppose the left’s attempt to use race to divide us. They must uphold principles that precede government-parental rights. They must uphold the First Amendment and freedom of speech. There is no right not to be offended. Free speech helps us identify those whose ideas may undermine that which created the most prosperous civilization in 5,000 years of human history.
***
Eric Andersen is a former member of the San Diego County Republican Central Committee, former Chair of the 71st Caucus (County GOP Executive Committee), Co-Founder of the San Diego County Republican Liberty Caucus and im2moro.com. He is a former Rock church Citizen of the Year.