Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Christian Science Monitor about the controversy that has erupted over blatantly racist remarks made by L.A. City Council members. “I refuse to believe that what those people said in that room reflected what real people think in this town,” Yaroslavsky said. The UCLA Quality of Life Index, which Yaroslavsky oversees, consistently finds rankings of race relations as the highest area of satisfaction in L.A. County. “This is not the city of 50 years ago,” he said. “This is a city where people of different colors and different ethnicities work together, go to school together, marry each other, go to the market together.” A political strategy that pits groups against each other is counterproductive, he added. “You want to find ways for everyone to win, and not make it a zero-sum game.”