A child’s view of anti-Black racism

Re “A century after its seizure, a vote to return Bruce’s Beach,” June 29

As a young child growing up in southern West Virginia in the late 1940s, I thought that Black people were separated from whites because they were special. They camped out in those “shanty houses” across the river, and I was sure they really lived somewhere else in a house nicer than mine.

We white kids couldn’t ride in the back of the bus because the Black kids were going to their special school in the big town nearby, and they got to sit back there. My friends and I couldn’t go to our special Catholic school because our families couldn’t afford the cost. The movie theater’s balcony was closed to me and my white friends because only the special people could sit up there.

Time brought the ugly truth.

Not only had my Italian immigrant grandparents suffered discrimination after coming to America; the people I called “special” were living a life, for many years, bearing heartbreaking discrimination.

Thankfully, now, the Bruce Family is truly special as they regain their property in Manhattan Beach, stolen from them nearly 100 years ago.

JO ANN GOFF

Thousand Oaks

Although many deserve credit for undertaking this complicated process of returning the land stolen from the Bruce family back to heirs Willa and Charles Bruce, I would like to give kudos to L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn for taking the lead.

Her father, former L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, an ardent supporter of civil rights, would be proud.

ANN C. HAYMAN

Westwood