Stymied in my research, last week I got in my car and drove up Fairfax to what seems to me to be the heart of white Los Angeles, toward Beverly Hills, where about 82% of the population is white. Where is white Los Angeles? What do white Angelenos believe? What food do they eat? In the news, white perspectives are treated as the default mainstream perspective, even though white people in Los Angeles have been a minority for several decades now. Times archives also proved largely fruitless. I’ve searched for books, scholars or articles about white Angelenos as a group, but I’ve found very little material. Amy Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd showed us that not only is police brutality against Black people lethal, but that some white people are aware of that disparity and willing and able to use it as a weapon, often without consequences. The pandemic showed us that racial and economic disparities have lethal consequences. I think part of the reason is the tireless work of Black Lives Matter activists across the nation who have never stopped calling out police violence and mass incarceration and created a movement that refuses to die.Īnd sometimes the news delivers a combination of stories that connects the dots for us and illuminates a truth as obvious as any constellation in the night sky. It’s as though for years we’ve stood, necks craned, eyes squinted at the horizon searching for change, only to find it suddenly lapping at our ankles and swamping our front doors, washing away entrenched debates like so much flotsam. Racism is finally at or near the top of America’s agenda, and I’m probably not the only one wondering: Why now? In just a few weeks, a slow and steady trickle has become a tidal wave with incredible, deceptive speed - global pandemic be damned.
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