White Out

Who knew that in the age of America First, the greatest threat to Hispanic communities in the United States wasn’t marauding bands of ICE agents wielding mass deportation orders or the construction of a border wall? No, the scourge is Art.

That’s The Scrapbook’s takeaway from the news this week that a small art gallery called PSSST had been driven out of the hardscrabble Los Angeles area called Boyle Heights. PSSST, you see, was one of several art galleries making insidious inroads into the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. The nonprofit galleristas thought they were bringing welcome Culture to an underserved area; the locals saw them as the thin-wedge of Anglo infiltration, the shock troops of gentrification.