[ilbegone]

Something I have to clarify from what I have posted above

Some of the stuff brown supremacists come up with is exaggerated or invented, but there really was such a thing prior to certainly 1965 as pools placarded "NO MEXICANS" (didn't even have to mention blacks - that was implicitly understood) and whole blocks in towns they just couldn't go to, and the stuff about being back across the tracks before dark was a reality to many. It was clear that the brown man worked for the white man and not the other way around. Those who were on track to become successful had to adopt names which didn't sound so "Mexican". Freddy Fender and Ritchie Valens are two examples among many.

For example: there are people whom I'm close to who grew up in the same time frame, segregated conditions and communities near the aforementioned ethnic studies professor Armando Navarro - some in the families might have known some of the Navarro family. Quite a few don't relate to illegals, whether or not they can communicate with Mexicans. Not a lot of them seem to have common cause with Navarro, he seems to be to a lot of them what recently deceased Neo Nazi Jeff Hall might be to an average white guy just trying to make a living - if they even hear of either one or both of them those two will usually be regarded by most as racist nuts. There is a saying that if you are fighting monsters you need to take care not to become a monster yourself.

I spoke yesterday with someone who grew up in the local Barrio in the 1940's and 50's and asked a few questions about the above. Here is a synopsis from the conversation with that person:

Prior to 1960 people from the barrio who had trouble with whites in town were primarily ones who had a chip on the shoulder, a sort of a "you don't like me, do you"? (the inference is "because I'm not white"). I asked about restaurants that wouldn't serve brown people, to that person's memory there was only one: a hamburger joint opened by someone from out of town on the main drag (lots of traffic, this was before the freeway was built), it lasted from 1958 to 1961. There was one restaurant which was definitely out of financial reach of barrio inhabitants, a high priced steak house which catered to monied travelers on the way to Palm Springs. It's now a fraternal organization consisting almost entirely of members with one foot in the grave with some having both hands clenched around each other's throats.

The white local jeweler gave that person's mother possession of a watch on credit, which was paid in installments without a contract, the same was true for a brown neighbor whose much needed car was fixed by a white local mechanic and the bill was much more than the neighbor had on hand. Once again, it was resolved with a "pay me when you can", and payback was made.

The person"s family ate beef once a month (they were poor, beans and potatoes with every meal for filler with tortillas and maybe some chicken or something else they raised - pancakes on Sunday), the white butcher always gave them more than they asked for, the extra free of charge.

There is a lot more along that line, but that's the drift. The white people in town generally treated that person's family from the barrio well.

Asked directly, the source of racial problems in town before 1960 was 50/50 between white and brown. After 1960 a lot of the white merchants and police had retired or died and were replaced with people from out of town who didn't know the locals, it seems there were more problems then. The post 1960 police were generally assholes and bad about a night time curfew on people from the barrio (I'm not sure if this curfew was general, or just for minors), this went on until about 1968.

Things I have understood for quite a while:

There were no houses sold or rented north of the tracks to people from the local barrio because of the percentage of people from the barrio who were assholes and ruined it for everyone else (I'll get to more of this further down), brown people from out of town could rent or buy north of the tracks, but these were few. It hasn't mattered now for maybe 40 years or more.

Fontana was a KKK haven (it's now a sprawling barrio slum), as was Cabazon (now largely a white trash, meth lab community dominated by a large sheriff's station). Yucaipa didn't allow browns, blacks, or white trash within the city limits for any reason or at any time. Highland Boulevard north of San Bernardino was off limits to brown people. They would be told by white people in the street that they needed to leave, and if they didn't leave the police would show up to facilitate removal.

Something interesting related to me some time ago - when illegals began moving into the long term San Bernardino barrio, people who had lived there for generations moved out to where the white people lived (San Bernardino is now largely a town of welfare recipients, gang bangers, and corrupt politicians).

The local traditional barrio doesn't seem to have many if any illegals at all, mostly descendants of families that have largely been there for over a hundred years, not a lot of mixing between the two groups from what I see. There is, however, some nostalgia of the past concerning music and the way things were. On the other hand, the same people who might still listen to Little Joe y la Familia on occasion might just as soon crank some Led Zepplin or Rolling Stones.

A lot of families from the local barrio haven't spoken Spanish for two generations and the generation before that are still alive thinks in English, I know a fifth generation child with those ancestral conditions with deep roots in the local barrio who is now being taught Spanish in kindergarten.

Banning had a pool placarded "No Mexicans", I think it was filled in about 1958. There was a segregated school in the Zapo Barrio, but Brown versus the board of education changed that. I believe it was converted into a dwelling by one of the Calderons.

For generations Indians from the Morongo reservation were thrown out of town because they would get drunk and tear the town up, they would get drunk and tear the town up because they would get thrown out - a never ending cycle. And now with all that casino money is flowing and two big box size welfare offices in east Banning, guess which way the red carpet is rolled out and which "home owners association" community is guard shack gated off from outsiders? And who's still drinking themselves to death with top shelf liquor instead of cheap rot gut?

I believe about 1980, two Banning police officers threw an elderly Indian woman over the reservation fence on the east side of Hathaway, the tribe retaliated by fencing off their half of the street, I saw it and believe it's still that way. About the same time a KKK adherent from Cabazon came on campus and threatened the black principle at the Banning high school.

Blacks in the area lived in northeast Banning, somewhat in the barrio Ligartijo area.

As far as the "notables" in the local barrio:

There was a big time heroin dealer in the 1940's and fifties who supplied drugs and pimped out his wife and her sister to celebrities visiting Palm Springs. He became active in politics in the early 70's, and encouraged local youth sports while taking credit for money supplied by a foundation set up by a local white rancher for that purpose - and that's not all of the scandals which he was a part of by any means. When he died in the 21st century, the man was lauded by pandering and ignorant of fact "news sources" as being a Latino civic hero who stressed education and was a role model for Latino youth. For some reason I'm reminded of the sleaziness of the current Mike Rios of Moreno Valley sensation, a man on the school board who is accused of pimping women (I believe including minors) and attempted murder. Maybe 40 years from now he'll be declared to be a hero to the "Latino community".

One local barrio family dealt pot in bulk in the 60's, at least one member of another dealt in just about anything illegal to turn a buck from the 70's on except maybe contract killings and prostitution - you name it. There was a spate where a number of people died from his bad drugs.

Another family vandalized a church in the 50's over a property dispute.

There were frictions in the Barrio, the most notable being two families who have lived next door to one another for 90 or 100 years and have hated each other for every long second of it. Maybe no one in those families know why they still hate each other, might just be family traditions from the long deceased.

There were a number of families who thought they were better than the other families (some nose in the air stuff), and to relate all the scandalous and eyebrow raising funny stuff that happened in that barrio would require writing a book. In spite of all the spats, nearly all these people are related to each other in one way or another, some in the most confusing of complex ways. The barrio was the home of a Latino movie star's grandmother (some funny stories about her), some of his relatives still live there.

Turning back to Banning a few years ago and debunking the notion that everyone brown is the same person:

Some Mexicans (from Mexico) moved in next door to Maurice Calderon's elderly aunt Maxine (Maurice Calderon is or was head of Arrowhead credit union, big supporter of a Mexican music and dance organization, I forget the name of it). They killed her dog, installed fraudulent property hubs, knocked her fence down, and tried to appropriate 5 or 10 feet of her property by building a block wall that far inside her lot. I saw it with my own eyes. They derided her for not being "Mexican" enough, not speaking Spanish "right", and hurled other abuse at her. Incredibly, Banning police originally took the side of the newcomers, but probably a Calderon working in City Hall managed to turn it around and eventually the interlopers left, I believe justifiably ran off. The woman is now deceased, She may have been almost 100 years old, at least 80.