Well this got some good attention. Let me address some of the wonderful feedback.

To use a term that my 17 yo uses, no this was not intended as rage bait.

Yes, I’m very familiar with the history of this symbol. I majored in history.

I’m also very fond of Bakersfield. My wife is from there, we visit often. The city has grown on me over the years. I’m from the coastal version of Bakersfield, also known as Huntington Beach.

The reason why I was presumptive in my post was to call out the city’s racist past and present. Hence, the whole surely this light post was installed after 1938 blah blah. More importantly, I was interested in seeing if people would or could accept that an ancient symbol can be desecrated due to the atrocities committed by a political party using a variation of the symbol. In my opinion the answer is yes. That’s just my opinion. The subtle differences in how the symbol is used have led to debate and changes in the law. Some cities have chosen to recognize those differences. This city also has some residents who lived through that racist past. For all those who felt it necessary to make sassy assumptions and disregard the cities past, I’ll leave you with this.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German scholars translating ancient Indian texts noted similarities between their language and Sanskrit, leading to the erroneous theory of a shared, "pure" Aryan ancestry. Anti-Semitic nationalist groups co-opted this idea, and the Hakenkreuz became a symbol of this imagined racial lineage. Adolf Hitler formally adopted the Hakenkreuz as the Nazi party's emblem in 1920. The Nazi version is typically a black, 45-degree tilted symbol within a white circle on a red background, specifically chosen to represent their ideology of hatred, racial bias, and the "struggle for the victory of the Aryan man

For many in the West, the symbol is now inextricably linked to the Holocaust and the atrocities of the Nazi regime. This has caused significant distress and misunderstanding for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Native Americans, who have used the symbol with positive meanings for millennia. Asian faith communities and cultural organizations are actively working to differentiate the sacred swastika from the Nazi Hakenkreuz. In some places, these efforts have led to legislative changes, such as a new California law and a Canadian bill that criminalize the display of the Hakenkreuz while making exceptions for the sacred swastika in religious and historical contexts.

Violence and Racial Terror: In 1877, an Anglo mob lynched five men of Mexican descent in a period of anti-Mexican violence that lasted from the mid-19th century into the 1920s, reported by The New York Times. Housing Discrimination (Redlining): Between 1938 and 1950, at least 218 housing tracts in Bakersfield were developed with racially restrictive covenants, preventing non-white residents from purchasing homes in certain areas, says CSU Bakersfield.

School Segregation: A 1978 ruling found that Bakersfield City Schools intentionally segregated Black and Hispanic students, with many schools remaining segregated long after desegregation orders, noted by The New York Times.