high school in falfurrias texas and racism

[DanielWayne]

Well what I often hear about occurred 50+ years ago. Certainly not recently. But yes I have heard it time and time again. It's why a lot of Hispanic children outside of the big cities were not taught Spanish. Times were a lot different back then.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

No kiddin'!

What a disgusting sign and sentiment.

However, like others have pointed out, things were a lot different over fifty years ago, in Texas and in the South in general. And for that matter, all across the US - and the world. Until about the middle of the 20th century, racism was not only tolerated - it was an accepted fact of life basically world wide.

I didn't move to Texas till the early 1990s but one thing that immediately struck me was the marked LACK of racism that people expressed. I don't know what I was expecting, but I think I was a little paranoid because I had always been a military brat and then wife and I had four biracial kids - and we were used to living in the multicultural mix of military life. I was skeptical of the reception we would receive outside of a military lifestyle.

My worries were all for naught.

[jackalope48]

South Texas is a bit different. Towns like Fal were usually originally created by the ranches as a place where the folks who worked on the ranch could live. They also tended to be a days wagon ride apart and formed waypoints for the wagon trade to and from Mexico. Conditions varied considerably based on the enlightenment of whoever owned the nearby ranch. Some had a doctor some didn't, some had a school some didn't, some had a church some didn't. Essentially it was ranch feudalism so why be overtly racist towards your employees?

In the early 20th century things got a lot more complicated. Some of the big ranches were getting bought and split into smaller tracts(100 acres) for farming. The new farmers tended to not need the labor and didn't want to pay taxes to take care of wealthy ranchers people living in small towns and working on the ranch(sometimes the town was inside the ranch). They only needed seasonal labor for the harvest, if that, so a virulent form of racism took root.

As you might guess the ranchers and their workers were or became Democrats and the farmers were Republicans. Over the next hundred years an odd political unfolding occurred as the ranch towns became increasingly independent from the ranches themselves and desires for greater freedom and opportunity from ranches and their owners interplayed with heavy racism from people who viewed themselves as economic competitors and net donors to government services for the largely Hispanic ranch labor.

If you've never seen it Giant has a good viewpoint of the interplay and societal structure even down to the ranch owner played by Rock Hudson going from a benign-neglecting paternalist who gets along with his employees but doesn't think much of them as "people" to getting in a fist fight with a racist who makes a comment about his mixed race grandkid.

In the end I think folks in South Texas have lived together long enough that things have sorted themselves out for the most part and there is general consensus on right and wrong behavior.