.
Central School 8th Graders on 1905 included students from a variety of backgrounds, all attending school together. Photo courtesy Anaheim Public Library
Gustavo Arellano and I go way back. He covered my first trip to the podium during a City Council meeting, as a terrified housewife, voice quivering. I was just angry enough at the reverse discrimination of a company playing the race card to get their own way in a neighborhood full of working class apartments to let that anger overcome the fear, and speak out. Gustavo was a cub reporter just starting out, impressed enough at the one individual standing alone against Council Chambers packed to overflow capacity with angry residents (from other cities) riled up with half truths, that he happened to remember my name the next time we ran into each other. And then we kept running into each other. Our good-natured banter masks a mutual respect, we agree to disagree and we like each other when the shouting match is done. It works for us. And there is nothing that will set us off faster than history, or the two versions of it that we each hold dear.
Gustavo’s view of Orange County history – specifically Anaheim history – is all fear and hatred and Mexican kids getting beat up just for being Mexican. My viewpoint is softly filtered through the lens of Mildred Yorba MacArthur’s interviews of early pioneer families of another era, looking through their Grandmothers’ attics, reading her diaries, taking her hand-stitched dresses from cedar chests. But admittedly that is a white woman’s history, slanted toward the German Colonists here to make wine. The only Latinos in that history book are named Ontiveros and Yorba, the old Californio families, not Miguel who mows my lawn (and works harder than any middle class white guy I know.) I love the drawings of Diann Marsh, capturing the old Victorian gingerbread cottages-just before RDA ‘s Project Alpha tore them down. Don’t get me started. When I finally got to meet Jim Sleeper my husband confiscated my Sharpie for fear I would have the older, dying-from-cancer historian autograph a breast for tattooing later. (Yes, I am sorry I didn’t do it, thanks for asking.) I like my history folksy and whimsical, Gustavo prefers his with a dash of chili pepper. And together we enjoy the shared meal at the same (antique) table, reveling in each other’s company. Like I said, it works for us. It doesn’t work for everyone.
Rose Veyna’s birthday party in 1945 includes friends from all over the neighborhood. Photo courtesy Anaheim Public Library.
The recent blog dust-up over the KKK in Anaheim, and the very different views of what happened, and why, lit some fuses, including the ire of one courtly gentleman who couldn’t hurt a fly – unless the fly is giving Anaheim a bad name, then all bets are off. He forwarded me this piece for rebuttal to Gustavo, with permission to share.
Now let me say I was not there. The Anaheim of Danny’s post-war recollection triggers for me only a nostalgic daydream, fuzzy around the edges, not a concrete memory. The Glamour Shots version of Anaheim. I was born into mid-60s Anaheim, when one of my earliest childhood memories was the haunting scent of orange blossoms and overhearing the neighborhood adults mention it was the last time we would catch it because the grove across the street was being bulldozed. Sure enough apartments went up within months. While I do not have first hand memory of Danny’s Anaheim, I believe it happened the way he recalls it. I had the pleasure of proofing Danny’s recent book, a collection of stories about growing up in Post-War agricultural Anaheim. You know, back when Walt realized he needed a place for guests to say overnight and talked the Granvilles into building the Disneyland Hotel-with their own money! This was back before anyone expected government to do it. Yeah, that long ago.
When I proofed Danny’s book for him, written from memory banks several decades old, I could not find a single factual error. He correctly recalled every detail, right down to who lived in which house, his memory matched up to City records without a mistake. His description of the tiny bungalow he grew up in across from what was then City Park (now Pearson Park) was spot on when I found a photo-sadly taken just before it was torn down to make way for apartments. So I tend to believe him when he tells me what he remembers, and I pass this along to readers to offer what I think is a credible version of one man’s very accurate memory of an Anaheim that never will be again.
La Palma School, built in 1928 as a segregated school for Mexican children was later used as the La Palma Recreation Center. Located at 317 East La Palma, between Patt and Olive Streets. While the school was an example of segregated education, most Anaheim residents did not object to children attending the school of their choice. La Palma school was largely thought of as easily accessible for the children in the Patt Street barrio whose parents worked the agricultural fields. The school was demolished spring of 1970 and replaced with 62-unit apartment building. Photo credit Anaheim Public Library.
Yes things like deed restrictions were written into title in just about any housing tract subdivided in the teens and twenties, dictating the minimum cost of the dwelling that could be built on the lot, minimum setback, and which races of residents may and may not buy, rent, lease, or even reside in the dwelling-servants exempted of course. My career in historic preservation also taught me that the vast majority of homeowners had no idea the restrictions were on their deeds. Naïve? Perhaps, but when was the last time you read your Title docs? Our neighbors looked just like us because that is the way it was, nobody thought much about it, and since nobody raised a stink or tried to sue over it until the age of civil rights marches it wasn’t brought to the attention of most. Folks were not racist so much as inattentive.
Which leaves the truth of what our communities once were somewhere in the middle between Danny’s Anaheim and Gustavo’s. Of the two I prefer Danny’s. Frankly I just plain like the way the guy writes and I am flattered that he would trust me to share his views on a blog where he is likely to get his head taken off by readers. Danny has never blogged before, so be gentle with him. Especially you, Gustavo.
Ladies and gentleman, I give you another view of Anaheim:
A Sticky Subject
One subject I need to touch on briefly about those childhood days is the idea that we Anglos practiced rigidly enforced segregation of the Mexican population. While I admit that discrimination seems to be an extremely important issue in the Orange County of today, it has to have become a “major social problem” after I left Anaheim in 1960.
Several Hispanic Rights militants have made the generalized statement that all Mexicans in agricultural Southern California — citing Anaheim in particular — were never more than crop pickers, caretakers or maids. Some were. That is very true. Not many of our Depression Era parents had had the education needed to work in a bank. Few of us had fathers who went to college and became doctors or lawyers. So the majority of Anglos also were janitors, laborers, street sweepers, or waitresses. My own mother had worked side by side with Mexican mothers in that WPA packinghouse, and my father worked beside their husbands on construction sites every day. Unless one was a merchant, the majority of available jobs in those days were unskilled or semi-skilled. After all, we still lived in a non-technological, mostly blue-collar world!
The Corria familiy plays in Pearson Park. Photo courtesy Anaheim Public Library.
Anaheim did have one small barrio where several Spanish-speaking families lived together — La Fabrica north of La Palma Park. And yes, they were mostly farm workers, but then, they had come from Mexico with little or no education at all. They were really doing the best they could, and much better than they had done in Mexico. Their children; however, went to Horace Mann School the same as me, receiving exactly the same education that was given to me.
I didn’t play with the children who lived in La Fabrica, but not because I had something against Mexican children. La Fabrica was eight blocks north of Cypress Street. I didn’t dare wander eight blocks in any direction when I was that young. Most small children were confined to within a block or two radius of their own homes. I was at least fortunate enough to get to play with any La Fabrica child who was brought to the park.
There were just as many well-known, well-educated, and well-respected Mexican families as there were Anglo families — right from the town’s beginning, even though they might have been included in some official census minority. Anaheim was founded by a minority — German-speaking pioneers — and if you categorized the rest of us by ancestry, we were all members of one minority or another.
When I was a child, the Yorba and Ontiveros families who originally sold the Los Angeles Vineyard Society the Anaheim land were still extremely prominent in northern Orange County. Dozens of local Mexican families like the Hinojosas, the Veynas (who owned a downtown restaurant), the Acostas or the Canos (who owned the famous “Bean Hut” drive-in), lived in the same neighborhoods we did and sent their children to the same schools. We were all in the same classes. The first birthday party I ever attended — during second grade — was for a little Mexican girl who lived on the same block near Horace Mann School as my best Anglo buddy. Many of my closest friends all through school years were Mexican-American: Lopez, Peña, Cruz, Filadelfia, Estrada, Navarette, Acevedo, Olvera. It never crossed my mind that there might be social differences between us.
Dolly Frazie, Tilly Sanchez, and Joyce Lindell enjoy starring roles in a play celebrating Anaheim’s Centennial anniversary in 1957. Census records show all three of the girls lived in working class neighborhoods throughout central Anaheim, all of their neighborhoods reflect multi-cultural families in the nearby homes. They certainly have no problem sharing a stage despite their diverse backgrounds. Photo Credit Courtesy Anaheim Public Library
One recent, very angry Mexican-American author—who wasn’t even born in the 1940s — has gone so far as to accuse Rudy Boysen of being so rabidly anti-Mexican that he created a fenced area in City Park to “corral” Mexican children and forcibly deny them full access to the park. This is obviously a tale he heard from another generation; a tale I would like to see tangible proof of. The same writer shocks his readers with the fact that the largest gathering of the Klu Klux Klan in Southern California took place in Anaheim’s City Park. What he doesn’t bother to add is that the entire populace rose up in rebellion and drove the Klan out of town shortly after that meeting! Hardly unbiased journalism.
I grew up in City Park and played with every child I came across, Mexican, Anglo, Japanese — even one Mission Indian. My friends and I roamed every corner of both parks until 1951. Rudy Boysen died in 1950. If he kept children penned up like cattle, it must have been in some secret underground bunker. It certainly wasn’t in any town park on our watch!
Of course there were instances where someone was discriminated against because of her or his nationality, and I’m sure there are those who remain bitter because such a thing happened to them. Petty people live everywhere, but their pettiness wasn’t limited to Anglo versus Mexican. Some narrow-minded people couldn’t tolerate the Irish. Some Protestants didn’t trust Catholics. Some Catholics wouldn’t let their children play with Protestants.
I can’t speak for the nationality of every friend my parents had, or for the friends of other adults of the time, but I remember how it was for me. To my knowledge no one I knew was ever forced to segregate her or himself from any other child just because of its parents’ nationality. In fact, the president of my high school senior class was American-born Japanese, and a major star of the football team was African American. Both were very popular boys. Our social blending was so innate that when I saw blatant social/racial intolerance for the first time in Army basic training, I was flabbergasted. Generalized discrimination really offends me.
I haven’t lived in Anaheim or Orange County for half a century. I have no vested interest whatsoever in arguing this issue other than the desire to protect the reality of my own childhood by pitting true experiences of Anaheim’s past against obvious distortions that are being used to propagate a racially-biased political agenda.
Reverse discrimination is as equally offensive and destructive as discrimination itself!”
Danny Dunton
Discrimination is ugly no matter who wears it!
Interesting piece, having spent Jr and Sr High (Lin-Brook area, Brookhurst, Savanna) as well as working and living in Brookhurst Gardens area before moving to Santa Ana in ’79.
I grew up in a color blind home, I learned my colors and to count in both Japanese and English as a child. My moms best friend across the street was Japanese and father worked at Richfield Refinery in Torrance, I think. Most of his crew mates were Hispanic or Black and once a week would play darts out in our garage. They were just friends, as far as I ever knew. I was lucky, I guess to have such enlightened parents for the day, but it didn’t seem like I unique or that my parents were either.
Since I can’t edit the statement above, I would like to restate it to be more inclusive.
Prejudice is ugly no matter who wears it!
Wow, the lengths people will go to distort basic, uncomfortable facts they can’t agree with is laughable.
Vern and Bloviator: I find it so laughable as so-called progressives that you have to recruit people to say that OC wasn’t racist back in the days of segregation, and that the Klan was A-OK. Typical of your shit-filled minds and even-worse lack of historical knowledge.
Cynthia: That Veyna photo you pulled from the archives? Ever talked to Angelina Veyna? Of course not, even though I made the introduction long ago. She’s a professor at Santa Ana College, and she will tell you tales of housing discrimination going into the 1960s and beyond that’ll make you scream righteous anger.
Danny: It is a verified fact that the Pearson Park swimming pool was segregated through the 1940s, if not later, which appears to be before your time. The activists who desegregated it also remember when your beloved Boysen had a section for Mexicans, and a section for everyone else.
Cynthia: In the late 1950s, the Magnolia School district built a new school for kids in West Anaheim that would eliminate the previous whites-only and Mexican-only schools. White parents responded by moving out of Anaheim. This was reported in newspapers at the times and dissertations on the Joel Dvorman case, not the orange-crate fantasias you prefer. Even better, in the history of the Anaheim Union High School District written in the 1980s by a sympathetic author to your orange-scented Anaheim, the author wrote of how white parents were scared because Mexican students from “East Los Angeles” were going to Western High School in the late 1950s. Again, all verified.
My grandfather was a bracero in Anaheim in the 1950s and used to pick in the orange groves near what’s now Thomas Jefferson. White children (maybe Danny’s friends?) would throw rocks at said braceros for being Mexican.
My Anaheim is a real Anaheim, not one wrapped in little fantasies. When Anaheim exploded last year, every damn fool was surprised except those who actually can connect dots.
It’s really funny, Piel de Cebolla, how what you said in your notorious story differs from what you’re defending now.
You said that Orange County deserves to be called “Ku Klux Kounty” because some of its founders almost a century ago were supposedly KKK racists (along with others who were definitely part of it) still have public building and spaces named after them — though you would not push for any renaming of those spaces.
Now what you’re defending is the proposition that there was racism in Anaheim in the 1940s and 1950s — as if that is what people were criticizing you for saying.
Well, I believe that there was racism in Anaheim back then and that there is now — but that anyone who serious tries to tie that back to the brief 1920s of the Klan in Anaheim is just trying to get people to pick up their magazines or maybe stake out territory for their next book. Either way, it’s chickenshit to piss people off by saying A and then fall back and pretend that they are attacking you for saying B. You need to learn not to be a chickenshit.
As for you, Carl, there is bigotry and prejudice on all sides, and there is discrimination too. Some discrimination matters more than other kinds, though, because some people and groups have more power to put discrimination in place that suits their bigotry. Yeah, you may have trouble going into a bar in parts of Anaheim because you’re white — though some other white guy may not — but that discrimination does not negatively affect your life nearly as much as if the bigotry that some salt-of-the-earth homeowner has towards Mexicans leads him to call the cops to roust a Latino kid who’s just trying to walk down the street on his way home from work. What’s in one’s heart may be bad, but it is not a significant problem if one has little power to hurt others’ lives as a result of it.
Hey Diamond, remember writing this?:
– ¡Oye, Gustavo! “Four” IS ”at least three”! And furthermore, having had four councilmembers who were Klan rather than three once again strengthens the ACLU’s case! –
LOL!
This current flurry of apologists gone wild from all angles is truly revealing – well, not really! Sadly, all this is to be expected.
Sometimes diamond has diarrhea of the mouth – how would something that happened 90 years ago affect any case now? – ridiculous …..
I hope that, in the end, your faithful devotion to Gustavo will be rewarded, GSR.
Yep, I wrote that, based on assertions made in Gustavo’s article — which turned out to leave out all sorts of significant facts, such as that when the KKK affiliation became known the city puked them out of office immediately. But, again, that is a distraction from the issue at hand, which in his own odd way skally does get at in his comment above: “What does what happened briefly in 1924 have to do with the case”?
As I recall, paraphrasing from memory, Onion Skin Arellano was pointing out a supposed inaccuracy by one of his critics: they said that Anaheim had elected “at least three” secret-KKK-ish Councilman and Gustavo triumphantly said “wrong, it was four!” Well, not to put to fine a point on it, that’s pretty stupid — and Our County’s Cultural Treasure Gustavo clearly needs some people around him who will tell him when he’s being an idiot. I would have expected you to be among them; apparently, that hope may have been misplaced.
By the way, if memory serves, Gustavo was at that time arguing AGAINST the legitimacy of the ACLU suit by saying that race was the inappropriate basis on which to bring it — because, essentially, he had only a dim understanding of how civil rights law operates. He was arguing that there being four rather than three KKK Councilmen weakens the ACLU’s case. That’s why I pointed out that however strong the ACLU’s case was — whether it was already extremely strong or whether it was extremely weak — to the extent that Anaheim having had KKK Councilmen was relevant, having had four such Councilman rather than three of them would strengthen the case.
I don’t know whether you feel that Gustavo’s putting a photo of a comic Klansman on the cover of the Weekly in order to get passers-by to pick up the issue — not as a prod to some relevant political action (which I could have respected) but just because tweaking like that helps to pay the bills. I realize that your affiliation with the Weekly is good for you and I’m glad for an intelligent and committed leftist like you to have it. But I will suggest to you that part of your political responsibility in that position is not just to be a hired gun defending whatever Gustavo does, but to be willing to point out, like the kid in the children’s story, when The Editor Has No Clothes.
*Since we have read all of your great books….we can say…we totally understand where you are coming from. Having graduated from Fullerton High School in 1959….we can say that even though I had several hispanic friends my mom wanted to know if I had any white friends that lived by us, above the railroad tracks. Ronnie Rivera and Cal Garnica were both our dear friends….not because they were hispanic, but because they were smart, cool people that we happened to get along with well.
OK, this in fact does not oblique our initial comments: Sub-Commandante
Marcos…..from Chiapis you are not. Bringing a more rational viewpoint to those without an understanding of the hispanic commumity….you do.
And one other quick thing, Cynthia: I think it’s beneath you and frankly vile that you make excuses for the La Palma school (parental choice!), while Stephen Faessel in his own book on Anaheim rightfully condemned the same school as the disgusting memory it is. And you accuse me of distorting the past…pathetic.
OK let’s see…. I admit I goaded Cynthia into writing this because: 1. Gustavo and Moxley are meanies and I wanna yank their chain; 2. Gustavo probably exaggerates a bit to sell his paper; 3. I love Cynthia’s writing; 4. It’s good to have a variety of opinion expressed and the truth is probably somewhere between; 5. uh… I forget what 5 was.
Then on the OTHER hand. I’m really more ideologically close to Gustavo, in fact when I hear the phrase “reverse discrimination” I wince. I mean, discrimination is discrimination, right? And I suppose it sometimes happens to the historically favored white folks, but… really not enough for it to be a major concern. (Remember, I’m the writer of “Boundless White Self-Pity” http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2011/07/boundless-white-self-pity/ )
And most importantly, I think Gustavo should forget some of his old grudges and look at the present – he should be helping more to help the districting reform happen in his town which will help hispanics and other dispossessed there much more than any 90-year old anecdotes – rather than bitching about the people who brought the lawsuit and quibbling over the way THEY tell the history.
Let’s get serious.
Vern,
– No. 5 was GA and Mox are meanies and you want to yank their chain …. again.
That reminds me that I should add: despite Gustavo’s customarily careless assertion about my getting Cynthia to write this, I had nothing to do with drumming up this story other than my initial criticism of Gustavo’s “Ku Klux Kounty” cover photo and “story” (to the extent it was even a story). I didn’t even know that it was coming out; whatever interaction I’ve had with Cynthia about it was here in comments.
For the record, I too expect that there has been ample past racism in Anaheim (I think that it’s obvious from the events of last summer that there is now) but that neither a white-washed version of it being a land of equality nor a version suggesting that it was a land of pervasive and unyielding racist oppression would tell the complete story. In Anaheim, like pretty much everywhere else, sometimes bigotry dramatically intrudes into people’s lives, sometimes is just constrains them at a low level without them much feeling it, and sometimes it is transcended.
Danny’s article (for which I thank him, I enjoyed reading it) would be a fair target for criticism if it were a whitewash of racism in the city. So, was it a whitewash? No, I don’t think so. I think that it was just saying that some of the worst racist aspects that Gustavo mentions may not have been widely held, may have been relatively uncommon, and that people may not have liked them but more or less accepted them as among life’s givens. That level of commentary simply doesn’t warrant the abuse Gustavo offers and it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend that it does.
Thanks for the understanding comments, Greg. However, they are a bit patronizing. The situation wasn’t all simply “accepted as life’s givens.”
Of course there were incidents. There have always been incidents. Sometimes I fear there always will be. But I played with at least half a dozen Latino children throughout my years at the two parks; some from working class neighborhoods like mine, others who lived in La Fabrica. I went to school with many more from first grade right through high school. Never did one of them share a hateful story of persecution like the ones Arellano singles out to quote as the overall truth of a generation. It wasn’t acceptance so much as it may have been lack of knowledge.
Both Steve and Cynthia are correct about La Palma School. (I’m surprised he quotes Steve since the Faessels were among my friends at City Park. Did they also throw rocks at his grandfather?) It was originally a horrible place, but by the time I entered Anaheim schools (1946) the in-town schools were integrated. We were told BY OUR MEXICAN CLASSMATE FRIENDS that newly immigrated bracero families were encouraged to send their children to La Palma to learn English before sending them to the regular schools where they wouldn’t understand the teachers. Whether or not that was true, La Palma was closed down completely the summer before I entered 3rd grade.
The Japanese school on Juliana Street was never reopened after WWII.
Tell me this, my parents were “discriminated” against for lack of a high school education and their rural Midwest background (called back-country hicks by the educated class). Am I supposed to want to destroy all 21st Century high school and college graduates to get even for it?
The problem with today’s equality politics (yes, including so-called Gay Rights) is that incitement to violence changes nothing. The big blowup in Anaheim was referenced twice in these comments. Does anyone in Southern California understand that to outsiders that blowup looked like nothing more than two groups of bullies (provincial cops and doper gangs) having at each other and threatening the ordinary citizens of a neighborhood with their stupid power struggle?
Everyone vying to be “right” only results in no one trying to dialog. No solutions. No changes.
Thankfully I’m 2,000 miles east of Anaheim’s horse pucky. My community has enough pucky of it’s own.
The Orange Park (now Hart Park) swimming pool was segregated in the 50’s and very early 60’s – I was there. But what can an 8 year old kid do about it? It didn’t seem right to me, especially since I attended catholic school and we did not have discrimination there. I recall thinking at that time that maybe it was ok since “they” apparently wanted “their” time and “we” wanted “our” time. Things started to change during the civil rights era – they closed the pool down.
I wasn’t going to bother responding to all this clap-trap, but wholesale, vicious, filthy name-calling, slanderous accusations, and gross politicizing? How typical.
You want discrimination? I left Anaheim 50 years ago because my innate nature, my sexuality, would have landed me in jail for the rest of my life. I’ve been fighting for the basic right to personally exist for half a century and have come to believe that the human animal is incapable of true equality. It’s always who has the power, you or me!
Mr. A, you are a truly vicious human being. It is so obvious in everything you say that what you really seek is to get even with whitey. “Take back California! String up all gringos from the nearest eucalyptus tree!” I’ve never been anywhere near your obviously miserable life so I take no person responsibility for your silly politics.
I have no desire to return to Anaheim so you guys just keep on bending things to reinforce whatever political half-truths you want local folks to buy into. How full of 21st Century integrity it all is. In the meantime, my memories remain my memories. My knowledge of people I actually knew stands. Nothing any of you has to say today can change what you didn’t experience. (I.e., Boysen was in charge of flowers and grass, not swimming pools. That was the “recreation director”, a City Council appointee, backed by a park hostess and two foot patrolmen from the police department. Arellano said penned up like cattle by Rudy Boysen and not allowed full access to the park. Untrue.
No matter. I’ll not be bothering again.
Oh yes, and Vernon Nelson, you may have “intentionally goaded” Cynthia Ward, but you blatantly USED a 72 year old senior citizen with no local axe to grind just to get a rise out of your own political enemies.
Go to hell.
Hey there! I just like to stir things up, and hear different angles to a story.
Thanks for the contribution sir, the Weekly ain’t my political enemies, they’re just meanies, and I ain’t going to hell.
Mr Dunton
I would like to thank you for sharing your memories and experience living in Anaheim in the early years. I have been a resident only for the last twenty five, and got involved in learning about the city issues and changing the negative ones, since the riots that took place last year.
The main unresolved issues are a breeding ground for a repeat of potentially explosive outbursts. It is our responsibility to address them: an electoral system that needs urgent modifications to allow a diversified representation; a police department with a pattern of fatally shooting young Latinos and with a police chief who does not take responsibilty for his department’s actions during the riots; and an political and economic elite that keeps its grasp on the city financial resources.
Mr Arellano has correctly described these problems in his newspaper. He is a very talented writer and social observer, and a role model for my daughters and many young Latinos. I have my reservations on how he interprets the past, and most importantly, on what needs to be done to change the current status in our city.
Gustavo, I am not saying there was no racism in Anaheim, there still is, and as long as there are humans walking the planet there will be. We are at heart selfish ugly people, afraid of what is not familiar. What I am saying is that not everyone was like that. You want to paint every white person in Anaheim as buying into the evils of segregation, and I am saying that the vast majority of people I interviewed who grew up in the time period had no clue it was happening, and would have changed it had they known.
I have told you repeatedly I would love to hear Anaheim’s history as told from another perspective. But I will also tell you that I have spent untold hours interviewing the people who lived in that period-born in the 20s and 30s, went to school in 30s, 40s, into the 50s. They honestly believed kids went to La Palma school because it was close to their homes, and were horrified to learn that anyone was forced to go there, The Latino and Japanese kids who lived in the neighborhoods near schools like Horace Mann did attend those schools, so there was no reason for most of the middle class and working class families to think any child was restricted from participating. You want to lump all of Anaheim into the same racist mold, and that is patently unfair. People failed to change racist policies not because they condoned them but because they were ignorant of them, and there is a huge difference.
I see no positive in keeping the hate worked up over policies that have been killed. Yes we need to remember in order to keep it from ever happening again, but guarding what we have gained is not the same as stoking the fires. I would prefer to see that passion funneled into gaining more ground, like making sure that today’s kids who do attend fully integrated schools have the power and means to vote and participate in their government on a level their grandparents have never imagined. So how about we all work together so that the people who attended La Palma school can watch their grandsons elected to office? Can we do that instead of rehashing two views of history? I am not saying it didn’t happen, I am saying those who were ignorant of it were not necessarily condoning it. Quit with the hate.
Wow, we’re all up early this morning!
Just visit the old cemeteries in Santa Ana. They are full of confederate graves. Gustavo has spent years connecting the racist dots and he has done a lot of research in the process. I have no reason to doubt him.
I also have no doubt that some of you grew up looking through rose colored glasses or orange scented Anaheim. But let’s just call that what it is. Denial.
And here’s another person conflating the existence of Confederate sympathizers and supporters in Orange County and its history of racism with some specific charges – that OC warrants being called “Ku Klux Kounty” because, primarily
– a cabal of four Councilman
– who were secretly part of a KKK chapter
– that was apparently devoted mostly to enforcing Prohibition rather than what we think of as racist and violent KKK activities
– were elected in Anaheim in 1924
– and tossed out of office as quickly as possible as soon as their affiliation became known
– and public buildings and spaces in OC are named after them and those like them
– who also may or may not in some cases have been involved in what we think of as KKK-style activities
– but who very well might have been racists
– as might many public figures with things named after them who weren’t involved with the KKK
– and by the way the public seems to have little or no idea of this history
– and they remain so
– in part because the publication bringing this to light doesn’t suggest that anything be done about it
– except that people should read that publication
– because it put a comic picture of a robed Klansman on its cover
– and wants credit for bravery
– and anyone who thinks that that publication is wack must be denying that racism ever existed in Orange County at all
I’m sure that Gustavo will appreciate your support, Art. I know that having allies is very important to you.
Denial is a function of white privilege (which in turn will be denied!)
Meanwhile, let’s deal with the present?
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2013/02/the-brandman-majority-forces-out-anaheims-latina-city-attorney-for-honestly-doing-her-job/
Hey, who goaded this trip down memory lane here in the first place? The notion of digging up old bones at the expense of matters of the present is wholly without merit — and predictable!
Um….. Gustavo, that’s who! 🙂
You open column space, in comes comments critical of what’s been written and then you link to the city attorney story wanting to switch lanes. C’mon Vern.
??? Just thinkin we can discuss both, no? They both relate to Latinos in Anaheim, but one is a little timelier.
Art, you’ve got no room to talk…you gleefully had a racist (Terry Crowley) writing for this blog when you owned it.
Hey, if it gets lots of hits, no problem, right?
And now he’s got some anonymous fella (“John Fields”) on his new blog who thinks San Bernardino Minuteman leader Tim Donnelly would make a fine California governor. Although, strangely, THAT story didn’t seem to get any hits except from me.
Interesting. After his mission to bring down Benavides in “Hatergate,” he’s willing to have a former Minuteman write for him…describing him as a “great writer.”
Like I said, anything for hits…including being a hypocrite.
I stand corrected…this “John Fields” isn’t a Minuteman (as far as we know)…he’s someone writing for Art that thinks a Minuteman would make a good Governor.
Mmmm, that comes pretty damn close to being a distinction without a difference.
Not only that, a Republican who thinks that a Minuteman would make a fine standard bearer for the California GOP. What an important voice, for Art to give a platform to.
(But how did he get the name of the great but obscure early-19th century Irish pianist/composer who invented “Nocturnes” and was a great inspiration for Chopin? But I digress…)
You are correct Greg about Gustavo defending Anaheim & OC against accusations of racism – Gustavo’s words follow:
“Mentioning that the Klan controlled Anaheim, even staged a 10,000-strong rally in the city, is the easy jab people always employ against Anaheim specifically and Orange County in general whenever they want to describe us as fundamentally racist. But, … the Klan’s rise in Anaheim and other cities during the 1920s is well-documented–as a stand by good people against racist terror, an easy narrative to write and honor. Besides, the Klan’s time in Anaheim had little to do with suppressing minorities–especially Mexicans.”
OK, I really do have to go now, but that’s for sending me off with a good laugh.
The funny thing is the only Anaheim shoot from the cover story was Higenfeld Mortuary. And yet the jaw flappers have hyper-compartmentalized the city within this supposed ‘critique’ opening up a larger discussion that’s already been deconstructed. The title read ‘Welcome to Ku Klux Kounty’ not ‘Welcome to Klanaheim.’ I think you all got off the 5 freeway a little too early! (The subtitle is pretty self-explanatory)
Orange crate memories sure die hard don’t they. All the more reason to continually challenge them.
Your conflating two separate issues: (1) the general OC=KKK County shock cover (which was bogus and is right now sapping your cache of credibility every moment you continue to defend it) and (2) the specific history of Anaheim as “Klanaheim,” which it turns out it was for a short time, due to subterfuge, which was promptly rooted out as soon as discovered.
This is, in turn, separate from the issue of whether OC has a history of racism (yes it does) and whether that persists in some form or forms today (yes it does) — an issue that Gustavo chose not to defend, perhaps because taking swipes and 90-year-old ghosts is safer than taking swipes at contemporary skinheads and neo-Birchers.
And you’re defending that. Sad.
You’re a moron. Google ‘Slater Slums Smackdown’
And you’re desperately trying to change the subject while thinking that you’re getting anywhere with puerile insults. Also sad.
Did Gustavo’s article address the “Slater Slums Smackdown”? No. The thesis of the article was not “racism exists in OC” — which is always a valid complaint to investigate — but:
Find me the term “Slater Slums Smackdown” in Gustavo’s article and I’ll apologize. Google seems to think that the Weekly’s coverage began on Nov. 30, 2009 — and ended on Nov. 30, 2009. Had Gustave actually invoked it, he’d have had a better article and a more legitimate basis to critique racism in contemporary OC. But, and you’ll have to pardon me for being an apparent moron here, that really wasn’t the point of what he wrote, was it? Did I miss something essential?
Gustavo did a bunch of research and found out Orange County has a racist past, and that there are racists in our midst now?
Wow! Any historian worth their salt could do the same with every other county in America. And that is NOT unimportant work.
We should always remember the past, as accurately as possible, not whitewashed, so that we avoid the ugly racism of those days. But I’m far, FAR more concerned about the racists in our midst TODAY.
I appreciate Gustavo’s historical perspective. But there is serious work to be done TODAY! Let’s not let any of that slip through the cracks at the expense of highlighting the past.
Yes, yes, “any historian worth their salt could do the same with every other county in America” — but only WE, apparently, get to call ourselves “Ku Klux Kounty.” Tragic sites of former lynchings elsewhere, you lose out to OC again!
That doesn’t bother me as much as Gustavo now pretending that this was some kind of blow for racial justice instead of a ham-handed attempt to get people to pick up the Weekly for anything other than weed and hookers. I’d give him credit if he had tried to whip up some activism re renaming things — something, anything. But he avoided that. Might hurt the brand, I suppose.
thanks guys, now i know why the lettuce at bristol farms costs so much