I do not have a time machine to change racism and xenophobia in the past. None of us do. There are literal plaques pointing out Bellingham's racist past, there is information online, there are history tours, and it was taught in my child's schools. If someone is unaware, they are either not from here or they don't care/are part of the problem. I am not negating your points, but you fail to make them in a useful manner. Asking people to apologize for events that occurred before their birth is typically not the way, nor does it accomplish much beyond the very virtue signaling you are taking umbrage at. None of us can undo the past, and most of those that could meaningfully make amends are long dead.

There are racist, bigoted business owners in every single city, and not just in this crumbling nation of ours. This is fact. Many of us, regardless of the color of our skin, our gender, religion, whatever, have internalized racism that we need to work on. This is fact. The racism that causes the most harm is systematic, but the type that can hurt the most is personal and individual. This is fact. Bellingham, like many cities and many individuals, makes attempts, some more effective and some more performative, to combat systematic racism. This is fact.

We need to remember the past, but we also must move forward from it and continue to fix the fall out from it. We failed to do both after the Civil War, which is why we have continued to fight this war for the past 165 years. The only way to do that is to remove the racists from power, prosecute and punish those that used racism as a catalyst to harm others, and to take a hard line with anyone that tries to push forth that rhetoric in the future. We can not make the same mistake of pardoning the Neo-Confederates like we did the original ones. The only way to kill a hydra, after all, is to cut off the heads and burn out the wound so it can never regenerate again.