I am a lifetime Grays Harborite. In all my years in this fair county, I haven’t seen one slave, or plantation here, or in any other county in my travels around this state. Washington attained statehood well after the Emancipation Proclamation, which I think should speak volumes of our state’s innocence and separation from those of the confederate south.

The proponents of Black Lives Matter Inc. will accept nothing short of “guilty as charged,” and want all Caucasians to apologize for civil rights abuses based a century past, and, for just being white. To me this is wrong on many levels.

I am impassioned by the idea “All men (and women) are Created Equal” as it’s a credo of this land, so ensuring it stays that way is on my short list of things to support. If there’s racism, I say address it and eliminate it, case by case, and by all means, we are all Americans first. No prefixes. I will not apologize for something I am not guilty of, and I will not subscribe to a group just because they speak one way, but in practice exhibit a completely different behavior.

I am old enough to hearken back to Dr. King and his impassioned call for love, unity and prayers for this land to heal from the blight of civil unrest. I see none of that in this movement. BLM Inc. appears to be a group more interested in dividing and conquering through violence, and lawlessness, and only using the past plight of black America as cover for a Marxist political movement.

If the true goal were calling attention to a specific case of racism, or inequality and for all of us to come together as God’s children to promote healing, I would be all in.

I care a great deal for all life on earth, Black people as well as anyone else, but I want no part of the current BLM Inc. that lists on its donations web page, the same organization that fuels the Democrat National Party, which screams its purely political in nature.

Truth be told, the United States has led the world in eliminating slavery as relative late comers, and were early to end the practice. We can do so much better and are so much better than rioting and violence.

Denny Martin

Elma