WARREN, Mich. – Warren Mott High School officials believe student Ryan Delicato’s Confederate flag is a distraction, so they suspended the 17-year-old when he defied orders to leave it at home.

School officials suspended Delicato Thursday after he was warned the day before not to bring his Confederate flag to school, and he did it anyway, WDIV reports.

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“A child who takes one thing the wrong way and it blows up into this,” the boy’s father, Gary Delicato, told the news site. “I understand that people have some issues with the flag, I understand that, but we can’t all stop doing things just because somebody doesn’t like it.”

“It’s kind of bull crap,” Ryan Delicato said.

“They said I was harming other kids’ education and everything because it was a distraction to them,” he said, adding that his intentions are not racist, but rather to honor his family’s southern heritage.

“It’s for our southern heritage,” he said. “Not for race. Nothing like that.”

Black parent Ben Gillery, whose son attends Warren Mott, told WDIV the flag is racist and should be banned from school.

“He mind as well ride around here with a white sheet on his head,” the man said, adding that his son “felt like it was a slap in the face that a kid could come to his school with that flag and nothing is done about it.”

School officials told the news site they suspended Delicato after the third time he brought the flag to school because it made some students uncomfortable, but the Mott High senior believes the flag ban violates his rights.

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“They are saying I have no freedom of speech in school, and I think that’s wrong,” Delicato said.

District officials told the news site that school policy prohibits students from bringing things to school that are distracting, and contend the Confederate flag fits the criteria. They also warned that Delicato will face “progressive” disciplinary measures if he continues to fly the flag on school property.

Delicato said he doesn’t plan to bring the flag back because it could put his upcoming graduation in jeopardy.

Delicato was among at least two students who were suspended this week for flying a Confederate flag on school property.

Kentucky 16-year-old Joseph Garrett was also suspended from Collins High School in Shelby County after he drove to school with Confederate and American flags flying from his pickup on Tuesday.

“I decided to put my Confederate flag with my American flag on my truck for my uncle,” Garett told WHAS. “The first day there were complaints and they told me to take it down. They told me take it down, or they were going to have to.”

When Garett refused, he was suspended and prohibited from driving his truck to school for a year.

“It’s my right to have it up, and for it to stay up,” he said.

Garett’s mother, Crystal Garrett, supports her son’s defiance.

“If I felt like he did something purposefully to hurt somebody else he wouldn’t be driving,” she told the news site. “He wouldn’t have a cell phone. He would have an 8 o’clock bed time, and the only thing he would have to do is read a book.”

Crystal Garrett said that ever since a controversy erupted over the Confederate Memorial near the University of Louisville, school officials have cracked down on similar symbols.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the monument coming down,” she said. “I feel like before it wasn’t an issue with him flying his flag.”

Garett’s father, Joseph Garrett, agrees.

“They’re drawing more attention to the flag than it should be,” he told WHAS. “It’s not a big deal, but they’re making it out that it is.”