In their recent letter supporting the local police forces in Umatilla County, the commissioners completely missed the point of the peaceful protests in Pendleton and Hermiston. While condemning the idea of painting all police with a broad brush as corrupt and racist, they didn’t mention one word about painting people of color with same said brush.

While this county doesn’t have a large Black population, it does have a large Hispanic one. I’ve lived in this county for 22 years, and have heard more than my share of bigoted comments. I think it would be safe to say that not one of them has once felt the sting of bigotry in their entire lives and no doubt voted for Trump, a notorious bigot with a long history of housing discrimination against Blacks and other minorities along with his father in New York state.

It’s so easy to live in your white bread world and pretend that discrimination doesn’t exist. Your narrow-mindedness and inability to think in the abstract or engage in critical thinking makes me wonder how low the bar may have been set to qualify for a commissioner’s job in this county. Wallow in your ignorance like pigs in a sty, but you’re not fooling a lot of us.

Thank goodness that there are a fair number of really good people that are not of color in this area that keep my faith that maybe, just maybe, we can see a light at the end of the tunnel. The diversity of the protests proves it. All lives can’t matter unless Black lives and brown lives matter also.

David Gracia

Hermiston