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I sometimes think of what Capt. John Smith wrote about the Chesapeake region more than 400 years ago: “Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation. … Here are mountains, hills, plaines, valleyes, rivers, and brookes, all running into a faire Bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitful and delightsome land.”

Early teachings extolled those who were “white and delightsome” and said God cursed unbelievers with a skin of blackness.

The justification was redemption, to transform them into “a white and delightsome people,” as Brigham Young, the Mormon Church leader and first governor of Utah, put it.

Laurie’s eyes followed her with pleasure, for she neither romped nor sauntered, but danced with spirit and grace, making the delightsome pastime what it should be.

It promoted a fantasy L.A., one bleached of its ethnic backstory into a blandly mythologized dreamscape of whiteness and prosperity, showing to the world a delightsome city of carefree song.