New York: Haitian flag fury unfurls in John Dewey High School
Haitian-American students at a Brooklyn high school were in an uproar yesterday after an assistant principal tossed a student's bandanna - emblazoned with Haiti's flag - in the garbage.
"He said: 'I'm putting the flag where it belongs,'" said stunned ninth-grader Ralph Compere, 14, who was observing Haitian Flag Day yesterday. "I said, 'What are you doing?' I was angry, I was mad."
John Dewey High School Principal Barry Fried said the incident was a misunderstanding. Ralph's scarf, he said, was retrieved from the trash and will be returned to the teen's mother.
In previous years, a Haitian student club sponsored a Haitian Flag Day celebration. The holiday marks the day in 1803 when an African slave tore the white off the red, white and blue French flag to create Haiti's own banner.
Yet, Reynaldo Morales, 53, who oversees security at the Coney Island high school of 3,200, told close to a dozen kids - adorned in the Haitian flag colors - to ditch their paraphernalia. The gear is banned when it is not preapproved as a school sanctioned event.
Ralph, who had the scarf tied to his front jeans pocket, refused to remove it until he was threatened with suspension. That's when he handed it to Morales, who tossed it in the trash.
"Sometimes, we are blind to certain things in the heat of a given moment, especially when there is defiance," Fried said.
Elsie St. Louis Accilien, executive director of Haitian Americans United for Progress, said, "There seems to be a lack of respect for these children's culture."
The group helped organize angry parents at Public School 34 in Queens Village, where an assistant principal allegedly made Haitian-American fourth-graders eat on the floor "like animals" as a punishment. "This is absolutely unacceptable."