It’s hard not to have a negative view of the SCV when you read comments on the Signal website, which trend more John Birch Society or perhaps Ku Klux Klan than your regular, run-of-the-mill Republican. I can deal with Republicans, I was once one and I grew up with them. But I can’t deal with comments like this one, left on a story about certain SCV schools’ failure to reach the standards of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind:
Being against illegal immigration -and its cousin globalization- is one thing, but to call out Mexicans specifically and proclaim proudly that you avoid economic activities that have Mexican involvement is another thing entirely.
I mean, seriously? You avoid food that has been touched by Mexican hands? How in the world do you eat exactly?
Mexico is as much a part of the history of this section of the country as Canada is a part of the history of Maine, and England is part of the history of Maryland or New York. You are aware that this part of the country was under Spanish control round about the time the Founding Fathers were signing the Declaration of Independence, right?
A Signal reporter once told me that if I thought some of the comments on the Signal website were questionable and eyebrow raising, that I should hear the phone calls they get and read the letters they get in snail mail from regular SCV subscribers that they refuse to publish. The reporter specifically remarked on a Signal newspaper cover in which a young Latino child was photographed on A-1, above the fold, in one of those typical heart-warming, parent-friendly Signal school stories.
The letters and phone calls rolled in: “You shouldn’t put brown people on the front page!” And this was the sentiment from multiple Signal readers.
Growing up here, I got used to the sort of casual racism on display in certain parts of town. Whether it was Stevenson Ranch or Valencia people referencing “those people” on the east side of Newhall or the disgusting debate about the opening of Vallarta in the 91355, you could at least count on SCVers having some sense of shame & decorum about their views. They wouldn’t mention “Mexicans” or the “Spanish” (I kid you not) specifically, but rather cloak their views in terms of culture or economics.
But people like “edsam” show the ugliness is just below the surface.
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