I was speaking with a local GOP operative recently when he said something that shocked me. The topic was my recent cover story on the Candy-Ass Gang, the trio of pendejos and one pendeja who prosecutors say
drove into Huntington Beach's Slater Slum neighborhood with the
expressed purpose of beating up a Mexican, only to have their
asses cracked at the hands of wabs. We agreed Surf City is the most racist city in the county, a title few would disagree with. But then, the operative claimed Fullerton was our second-most racist city. Fullerton? That nice college town with great food, a buzzing downtown, and two women on the city council? “Yeah, it doesn't seem to click,” he admitted. “But the old guard there is baaad.”
Hmm. Well, there was that whitewashed mural at Fullerton High's Plummer Auditorium that dared show Mexicans as something other than bandidos, and the dumb comments by current councilmember Shawn Nelson about the Chicano murals on Lemon Street. And there was that dumb bro who beat up two girls because he thought they were lesbians. And there was a historic incident in the past I'm not prepared to write about just yet. But, even those incidents wouldn't place Fullerton in my top 10 list of la naranja's most racist 'burbs. The winners? Here's five, based on current trends and each city's history and psyche:
1. Huntington Beach: Undisputed. From burning down buildings to keep African-Americans away from the beach to naming a barrio the Slater Slums just because Mexicans lived there to its many skinheads, bros, and hos, to rejecting the parade float of living civil rights icon Sylvia Mendez to its idiot congressman, Dana Rohrabacher (R-Taliban) and Barbara Coe, HB is just bad news overall. Only caveat: the world will soon know this.
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2. Santa Ana
Created by an antebellum Kentuckian, populated originally with old Confederates and Klansmen who lynched a Mexican with no fear of prosecution and burnt down the city's Chinatown, where a tree dedicated to the savior of the Klan's founder still stands. A city that couches its eternal campaign against Mexicans in plans inevitably using the word “renaissance,
especially when the council is all-Latino. In many ways, SanTana is
more racist at its core than HB, but it occupies the second slot in the
hope that its super-majority wab population will learn from the
mistakes of their gabacho city fathers. Then again: Lupe Moreno…
3. Costa Mesa
South Coast Plaza area notwithstanding, Huntington Beach's dumber brother. The Nazi Low Rider Gang (still one of the great oxymoronic names ever) came from here, and PEN1 members still roam the motels of Harbor Boulevard. Don't forget H. Millard and his minion, Allan Mansoor!
4. Los Alamitos
The city that's not Cypress made national headlines when its mayor, Dean Grose, sent out an email with a watermelon patch in front of the White House. It made local news when skinheads tagged up someone's car with swastikas and “Nigger“–did we mention a white woman owns the car? Also Los Al is where the Diocese of Orange shut down a historic Latino-majority parish, St. Isidore, because Bishop Tod D. Brown claimed he didn't have enough cash to keep it open–this while buying up big houses for his priests. Heckuva job, Brownie!
5. Anaheim
Yeah, yeah: we're Klanaheim. And yeah, yeah: we drove them out. But remember: Anaheim under the Klan was actually nicer toward Mexicans than the councils preceding and following their rule during the 1920s. Mix in segregated schools, swimming pools and parks (a policy enforced by the much-lionized Rudy Boysen), Harald Martin, the city's perpetual use of poorly paid Mexicans (then: in orange groves; now, at Disneyland and the surrounding hotels), and Angels fans who openly wish for the team's good-ol' losing white days, and you have my hometown!
Honestly, I'd put Newport Beach before Anaheim, but didn't want to play favorites. But ustedes have opinion–on with them!
What City in Orange County That is NOT Racist??