Sixty years on, the ethnic model described in Beyond the Melting Pot merits revisiting
In October 2022, Los Angeles’s ethnic politics cost city council president Nury Martinez her job. In leaked audio, Martinez can be heard discussing the city’s redistricting with two other Hispanic councilmembers and a Hispanic labor leader. In what she would later claim was a moment of frustration, Martinez called fellow council member Mike Bonin’s adopted son a “monkey”—Bonin is white, the son is black—and condemned Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón: “Fuck that guy, he’s with the blacks.”
