The story of segregation in Los Angeles

#housing

At a time when around 10% of the California’s public officials and policemen were Ku Klux Klan members, including Los Angeles’ chief of police and sheriff, Bass’s activism was no mean feat.

Rather than being a question of individual choice, as economists such as Milton Friedman once suggested, Los Angeles’ present-day segregation—it’s now the 10th most segregated metropolitan area in the US—is the outcome of decades of active effort to keep power in the hands of those who have it. Gibbons’ book chronicles how people of color have been historically confined to areas with poor public services and stagnant property values.