Here.
Alas, poor Santa Ana, we knew thee well.
I am sure Santa Ana was White at some time or another, but honestly, I keep trying to remember when Santa Ana was not like this. To me, it’s been this way forever now. I hung out there in 1979 and 1980, and it was pretty damn Mexican then even. More Mexican-American, but still. I worked in Santa Ana in 1989-90 at Stewart and Barnett, a major law firm downtown. It was already completely gone that way even that far back. I might as well have been working in Mexico. It was a very alienating place to work, like working in a foreign country.
I don’t think I ever taught in their school system, but I’m not sure. Maybe I did. I think I was actually teaching in Garden Grove schools though. They were very heavily Southeast Asian, especially Vietnamese and Khmer. I don’t mind teaching Viets and Khmer at all. They’re perfect students and the older ones who work at the school are quite easy to work with. When you meet the SE Asian aides, they practically bow down in front of you, apparently because you are this revered thing called a teacher. They’re really nice too, even the men. Bend over backwards nice.
