Ja: Swastika on the school flag

The principal thinks that ain't nuttin'. Here's the Observer's editorial. I don't buy into the story about the boys' ignorance. By the time I was 13, I had read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and other books on Nazi Germany. History is still taught in Caribbean schools; moreover, who in this world doesn't know what the swastika stands for? If the boys were ignorant, should the school's staff not have educated them instead of letting them demonstrate that ignorance? Take note of the editorialist's care to toe the liberal party line on the Israel-"Palestinian" issue.

We are, indeed, disturbed and offended at the seeming nonchalance with which officials at Kingston College responded to the fact that at the recent school athletics championships KC boys displayed the school colours with the swastika adorning its centre.

Never mind the rationalisation by some of the intellectuals, who snaked their way through arguments to find nothing wrong with what was perhaps, at least for some of the boys, an ignorant display of the symbol of Hitler's Germany.

The point is, that never mind its pre-Nazi origins, the swastika has come to represent a most odious period of modern human history, when, as a matter of policy, millions of people were killed because of ethnicity and race.

Lest we be misunderstood, ours is not pro-Jewish postulation and neither does it represent support for Israeli policy in general or towards the Palestinians in particular, which we believe is terribly flawed. Our concern is with issues of humanity, in all its colours and shapes, and for its preservation.

In today's context such public and nonchalant and ignorant display of symbols such as the swastika is dangerous on several counts.

The systematic murder of Jews and other people was of itself bad. But what was particularly vile was the effort to justify those killings on the strength of an ideology which sought to define morality and intellect on the basis of race.

Or more importantly, there was no shame to the killings.
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We understand, as Mr Ivan Johnson, the KC principal says, that the boys may have been ignorant of the swastika. But he shouldn't take it in stride. Having it displayed on the school flag was not just another event.

According to the editorialist, it was bad to kill Jews, worse to do it in the name of race, and worst of all that there was no shame in the killing. So, I guess, if the Nazi killers had shown a bit of shame, or had killed millions of Jews for a reason other than race, then the murder of Jews would have been all right. Houston, Jamaica has a serious problem!