I talked to my wife about this and she read the articles and this thread. She found it sad that some schools forbid the kilt and others allow the attendees to look like a piece of modern art(or straight off Mad Max in some cases). Being an educator she sees both sides of the equation more than most of us will.

Her explination, simplified, is that the person or people forbidding kilts at these events are most likely motivated by the very same ignorance and fear of the unknown they are supposed to combat every day as teachers. The ones allowing homespun garbage suits, duct tape apparel, etc. are motivated by a fear of having poor media coverage, bad PR, or even lawsuits filed by students who simply want to shake things up, make a statement, be different in an extreme way, or get a picture in the yearbook. Both are extreme situations, and both are unfortunate.

Then she shocked me with a newspaper article from Denver. Apparently several schools there have banned shirts with a variety of designs including celtic crosses because they think it is a white supremacy thing! The big fight inside the school is about the fact that minority students can wear Brown Pride, Black and Proud, etc, but a student whose ancestry is European isn't allowed to be openly proud of his heritage. The double standard is what really gets to me. Why can't this kid say "Irish and Proud" without being labeled a racist? I thought we had moved past that, but I was wrong.

Getting back to my point...she feels that that a lot of it stems from a very terrible thing--namely that a kilt, especially a traditional one, evokes a white heritage that SOME people feel we should be ashamed of.

My nephew was thinking about going to prom kilted but opted not to...he feared the possible backlash!

Sad.