Jay Kuten: If it walks like a racist, talks like a racist ...

COMMENT:

Donald Trump's cheerleading of a chant "send her home" directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar (Dem. Minn.), a former refugee from Somalia, seems to have been a last straw in a litany of comments and tweets targeting Mexicans, ("they're rapists") Muslims ("Islamic jihadist terrorists") and support for Neo-Nazi white supremacists ("good people").

Even a few Republicans have called him out for racism

The question continues to be asked, "Is Trump a racist?" And if he is, what's the significance of it?

Trump's supporters, leaders of his party, Fox TV, members of Cult 45, claim Trump is not a racist and point to a number of black celebrity endorsers like Kanye West.

I don't know what's in Trump's heart. But the "some of my best friends are ..." argument doesn't work for me.

In any case, I'd answer "if it walks like a racist, talks like a racist ..."

It's easy to throw around "racist" as an epithet but what does the term mean when applied to Trump?

Mathew Yglesias writes in The Atlantic exactly why he believes Trump's "birtherism" and attacks on those members of Congress were racist.

"Trump sees non-white Americans as not genuinely American, as possessing a kind of inherent foreign-ness regardless of where they were born and a second-class claim on citizenship."

That's the essence of his racism, the willingness to foster an otherness, an inferiority, on fellow American citizens - on the basis of skin colour in this case.

I say "in this case" because Trump's attacks go beyond the specifics of colour or racial characteristics.

Enabled by a media that earns a living from outrage, Trump uses techniques of provocation along many of America's fault lines. Today it is race. Tomorrow it may be political adversaries, or the press or any group critical of him or his policies, policies combined with commentary which weaken the nation's common resolve.

His purpose is to use the stirring up of hidden hatred to distract from his failures and to divide his potential critics.

Normally we look to religious leaders for guidance on moral issues like racism. The effective divisiveness of Trump is reflected in contrasting views of US Protestant leaders in response to the president's language and actions.

Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, of the National Cathedral, Washington, DC, was moved to call out the president's inflammatory rhetoric as racist, and said it might encourage others to act violently.

Reverend Richard Land, Southern Evangelical Seminary president, was asked his views of that rhetoric and taking a leaf from the confirmation hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, he turned the argument on its head and claimed - with no evidence - that religious leaders (meaning Bishop Budde) were accusing Trump supporters of racism. Land said his own support for the president was based on Trump's pro-life policies. He never otherwise answered the question as to a need for religious leaders to speak out on the incendiary rhetoric of the president.

If we have learned anything from the history of racism and violence - the Holocaust comes to mind as example - it is that perpetrators are enabled by seemingly passive bystanders.

Recall the famous words of Lutheran pastor Martin Neimuller : "First they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't socialist ..."

In that sense, yes, if you support Trump for reasons of being against abortion but do not speak against his racism, you are at the least, a racist enabler.

The election of the first black president, while it served to offer self-congratulation to many, also breathed new life into the race hatred that many still hid in their hearts.

It's because of that hidden racism in everyday people that we must call out this president for his own racism that, as leader, sends vibrations through the culture that gives new life to stale ideas and weakens thereby the common bonds that hold Americans together.

Donald Trump is not just a racist. He's un-American.

• Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.