Wearing T-shirts with the American flag is now “incendiary,” “disrespectful,” and of course racist … in America.

On Cinco de Mayo, five students at a California public school were reprimanded and ordered to remove American-flag inspired apparel … in America.

During a lunch break, four students claim that the vice principal asked two students to remove their stars-and-stripes bandannas and for the other two to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out.

“They said we could wear it on any other day,” student Daniel Galli told NBC Bay Area. “But today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today.”

Galli and his friends also say school administrators at Live Oak High School – a school with a predominant Mexican-American student-body – called their apparel “incendiary.”

“They said if we tried to go back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended,” Dominic Maciel, also involved in the incident said.

Although Maciel’s mother defended her son – calling the entire situation “absolutely ridiculous” – Annica Nunez, a fellow student at Live Oak High, argued the boys should be the ones apologizing.

“I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day,” Nunez said. “We don’t deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.”

In the aftermath of the incident, film critic Roger Ebert tweeted:

“Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July”

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