Following the shooting of 18-year old Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, much has been made about racial disparity in this part of the United States. Ferguson is more than two-thirds African American, but the police department is largely white.

The same goes for the city council, where only one of the six members is black.

Seth Masket is a professor of political science at the University of Denver, and he studied racial disparity in local government. Host A Martinez talked to him about it.