Worlds Apart: Two Views of Recent African-American Experiences in Los Angeles

Abstract

Each of these books covers Los Angeles from the 1960s to the early 1990s, one of them focusing exclusively and the other heavily on the city's African-American population. Raphael Sonenshein deals with these residents as part of a biracial coalition led by the city's first black mayor. Gerald Horne concentrates on one of the city's most significant recent events, the Watts Rebellion of 1965. Both books carry the story through the riot of 1992, but there is only occasional similarity in their texts. Most often, readers will feel that they are in two worlds. One book details the world of elite political leadership, treating the mass of people largely as statistics in polling and voting tables. The other describes a world of lumpen proletariat and their feelings, with elected leaders rarely mentioned and then usually seen as out of touch. Sonenshein, a professor of political science at California State