Dear Orange County: My Contribution to an Orange County Register Column

 Briefly in late 2020 the Orange County Register invited contributions for an occasional column entitled "Dear Orange County" about the social changes at work in the county. That column went dormant, unfortunately, after two installments were published. One was "Black in the OC Bubble" by Gladys Kamara and the other was "Inequity is About More than Race" by Charles T. Kelly. Below is what I contributed:

Dear Orange County,

Take a good look around, this is my hometown, a mid-century-modern suburb in Anaheim, and like the dying steel town Bruce Springsteen sings about, much of its history is slipping away, and cannot be returned or replaced. I’ve watched large chunks of Anaheim’s history vanish while others, like the trees that still shade my old Loara High School, are neglected.

My neighborhood’s homes and streets have histories, too. Once geographic reminders of history are gone, they’re gone. What I have left is photographs and memories, and those photos and memories that comprise a life can prove important in unexpected ways. Maybe in those personal individual histories is where people keep how they relate to others.

I’ve witnessed Orange County’s transformation from a largely rural backwater of a county, when it had a national reputation for extremely conservative views. For many decades “Orange County” was an automatic punch line, a handy label for America’s most extreme right-wing fringe. Since the 1960s we’ve witnessed a transformation to a sprawling metropolis, wealthier, more cosmopolitan, better educated, with (sometimes) more moderate politics. Except sometimes ”new” Orange County still acts like old “Orange County” as when the board of education recently chose to act like this new-fangled COVID-19 would change nothing.

When I was about two years old, my parents moved into a then-new mid-century modern housing development, within walking distance of Disneyland, one of so many suburbs built during the housing boom of the 1960s that drove Orange County’s transformation.

A block south of Disneyland was Katella Elementary School, amid a strip of tourist motels, and the rest of the neighborhood was dominated by orange groves, strawberry farms, irrigation ditches, and lots vacant but for tumbleweeds.

Stoddard Elementary School with its surrounding park often defines my suburb today, but my school days began when orange groves stood where Stoddard now stands. I attended Katella Elementary until third grade. Then someone labelled me “gifted” and a decision was made I should receive a “special” education for the “gifted.” For five years I was bused to Eldorado Private School in Orange. I was “bused” but it had nothing to do with race. I received a “special” education but for the gifted, not the developmentally disabled.

Eldorado was progressive and experimental, completely different from the public school experience the other kids in my neighborhood received. I learned algebra and Latin in eighth grade but was mercifully never graded on either, because on those subjects I performed below my grade level. Reading and writing, on the other hand, I performed far above my grade level.

My parents taught me the simple fact that people, no matter what skin color or religion or sexual identity, are people. My parents were liberal Democrats in a sea of Goldwater stickers. They questioned Christianity and all religion, in a county where revival meetings were common, prayer and the Bible in schools was a battleground, and the reaction to John Kennedy’s assassination included some saying prayers of thanks. They opposed segregation in a county with a history of segregating not just the Black, but the Brown.

I was too young to understand much political or social significance, but Eldorado tolerated children with rebellious views. Pre-teen boys wore long hair, pre-teen girls wore flared pants, everyone wore peace signs, and every day brought anti-establishment and anti-war talk. Acceptance was offered two Black students and one Afro-wearing teacher—but not me. For five years I endured daily bullying, just because. The kids that were so into peace and love didn’t extend it to me. That was long before any anti-bullying programs were developed anywhere.

My final four grades were spent back in Anaheim public schools, where the student body included Asian-Americans and Spanish surnames, but only one Black--and he was an African exchange student. I remember no Hispanic or Black staff or faculty, and only one Asian. I spent those years putting up with more bullying and with some teachers making terrible statements and “jokes” about women, gays, and American Indians, and encouraging students to behave similarly.

When I came to a gym teacher complaining another girl hit me, the teacher’s response was, “Are you going to fight her after school?” Welcome to anti-bullying measures at Loara High.

Such attitudes have continued to prevail in my adult life. I’ll give but one example here. If I mention my father expressed sympathy for American Indians, I too often get, “Was your father Indian?” I look about as Indian as Ivanka Trump. I’m not sure which is more appalling, that the person’s so clueless about what being an Indian means, or the person’s “reasoning” is that if you’re sympathetic to Indians you must be one. That’s not something, “Say Native American, not American Indian,” can fix.

Such reactions smack of Donald Trump’s reported, “I don’t get it. What’s in it for them?” regarding the war dead and military veterans. The person’s thinking is limited to, “me.”

History of a community can be about the physical, geographical, and economic changes, but you can’t bulldoze thinking the way you can bulldoze orange groves or downtowns. I’ve seen some deliberate destruction of my community’s history, but I’ve seen some historic preservation, too. The extreme far-right views that Orange County was once synonymous with are part of its past, but as William Faulkner once said, the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past. Witness a recent KKK rally in Pearson Park, and the wide support Donald Trump enjoys right in my neighborhood. We’ve reached a place where we understand the need for anti-bullying measures. Maybe similar measures can be used to send far-right intolerance the way of Orange County’s bulldozed orange groves.