Reparation activists angry as "Bruce's Beach" family sells land back to Los Angeles

Activists are upset that the Bruce family, which received oceanfront property last year that was unjustly taken from its forebears by the government, has now sold it back to Los Angeles County for $20 million. …

The activists apparently fail to distinguish between reparations for past wrongs in the abstract, and restitution to account for specific damages to specific people, in this case the racially-motivated seizure of private property.

[The anger is clearly misplaced. The return of the land offered the Bruce family a chance to manage an asset that had been stripped from them through a clearly race-motivated use of eminent domain. This wasn’t reparations in the slavery sense, but rather reparations for a different injustice — one committed by Manhattan Beach, LA, and California. The Bruces now had the choice of what to do with the wealth they finally could access, and they made a rational business decision with it. That’s no different than any other asset management task. — Ed]