I've already written of taking the bus in Los Angeles westbound on Sunset Boulevard from Hollywood to UCLA in Westwood. Continuing in that direction and reaching the terminus at the Pacific Ocean will put you in Pacific Palisades, one of the most homogeneously white locations in Los Angeles County – 89 percent Anglo. But if, instead, you took Sunset Boulevard eastward all the way to the end, you would reach another demographic extreme. As the name on the street signs changes from Sunset Boulevard to Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and then to Avenida César Chávez, you will find yourself in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles, 97 and 95 percent Latino, respectively. These neighborhoods are by some measures the least diverse places in Los Angeles County – almost entirely Latino and overwhelmingly of Mexican heritage.

A bird's-eye view of the Los Angeles Basin's Latino population shows them in all but the most exclusive sections of the city, but also shows a steady increase in Latino density as you move away from the ocean, culminating in the homogeneous bastion of East Los Angeles. (See Figure 8.1. In this and in the other maps in this chapter, black dots represent the exact location of individual Black voters and gray dots represent the exact location of individual Latino voters (see below for how I do this).)

Visit East LA and Boyle Heights and you will likely hear nothing but Spanish. But look at the street signs and you will see names that seem out of place, such as Eagle, Wabash, and McBride. These names are there, of course, because these neighborhoods weren't always Latino. Built up in the first half of the twentieth century, they were primarily Anglo, with a large Jewish population in Boyle Heights.