California has struggled to grasp racial equity. Bruce’s Beach should be our new standard

It was the murder of George Floyd, whose life was snuffed out by a white Minneapolis police officer, that spurred last year’s protests for racial equality. Throughout that global movement on our streets, a single word reverberated loudest: change.

Last week, California leaders finally delivered criminal justice reforms reflecting the widespread harm caused by the institutional bias and racism that are self-evident in much of American life. On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed nearly three dozen bills into law, highlighted by police accountability and transparency measures that establish a duty to intervene, raise the minimum age for law enforcement to 21, limit the use of so-called less-lethal munitions, grants the public greater access to police records and requires departments to get municipal approval before buying military equipment.

The most critical piece of the police reform package was Senate Bill 2, authored by Sen. Steve Bradford of Gardena, chair of the Legislature’s Black caucus, and Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins of San Diego. SB 2 creates a new accountability division that independently investigates police officers accused of serious misconduct such as excessive force and sexual assault. In the most serious cases, subject to a difficult and transparent process, wayward officers may lose their certification to serve in law enforcement statewide. If successful, the law will prevent “bad apples” from relocating to other departments and causing greater harm.

Yet there is another new law that, more than all of these, reaffirmed that Black lives do, in fact, matter in California. Newsom signed another Bradford bill, SB 796, that rights a historic injustice by allowing Los Angeles County officials to return parts of Manhattan Beach to the Black family from which it was stolen.

In the early 20th century, Bruce’s Beach was home to a Black seaside neighborhood that grew out of a popular lodge, cafe and dance hall owned and operated by the Bruce family. Resentful white neighbors and the Ku Klux Klan tried to force them out. In 1924, city officials condemned the land and seized over two dozen properties through eminent domain. The Bruces and three other Black families were defeated in the courts and eventually moved away after the city blocked them from relocating their businesses.

In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, Anthony Bruce of Florida, a descendant of the neighborhood’s first inhabitants, wondered if his family’s hotel would have rivaled the Hilton or Marriott, “both of which were founded around the same time as Bruce’s Beach and grew from equally humble beginnings.”

The move by local and state leaders to right this wrong doesn’t constitute a sweeping, systemic change, but it does feel like the ground moved a little bit and California became more equitable in a real way.

California leaders are showing that we can redress historic wrongs and address the living reminders of our disgraceful past. Last month, in another example, 172 acres of sacred Mendocino coastal lands known as Blues Beach were given back to a trio of tribal governments.

“This is an example of what real reparations can look like,” Bradford said. Indeed, the Bruce’s Beach land transfer demonstrates what California’s nation-leading reparations task force, of which Bradford is a member, could help Black residents reclaim.

California can be a national leader in breaking the patterns that led to racial wealth gaps, even if it’s just one piece of land at a time. Done correctly, such transactions hold immense power to transcend cynicism and ensure that families robbed by racism are made whole economically and emotionally.

If change was the goal for last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, then perhaps we’ve started to see glimmers of a shift in our consciousness and capacity to advance racial equity. Returning stolen property and lost wealth to its rightful owners is the sort of intergenerational justice that many have hoped for.

There is still much work to do on criminal justice and broader reforms to repair racial inequity. But there is also a fragment of hope that we can take from giving the Bruce family their land back. It is an example to aspire to, a new standard for the kind of equality that California has desperately been searching for. It goes beyond renaming schools and toppling statues and shows us what it really means to reckon with our racist past.