An Open Letter To Non-Racist Donald Trump Supporters

And we know that you've been lied to and betrayed. For nearly 50 years, since Republicans decided to make a play for the white working-class vote, they've been talking directly to you. Richard Nixon called you the silent majority, and now the slogan is everywhere at Trump rallies. He's promising to make America great again -- which was actually Ronald Reagan's campaign slogan, and the middle class has gotten a little more hollowed out every year since. In 2010, the tea party took over Washington and you were promised things were going to change, and they haven't.

Trump is giving a big middle finger to all of it, a clenched fist right to the face of the establishment. What could be more satisfying than that?

You may not physically assault anti-Trump protesters, think Abraham Lincoln’s decision to free enslaved African-Americans was hasty or want immigrants immediately deported. But you know as well as we do that a portion of Trump’s fans do feel this way.

It may not be fair, but it has fallen to you to disavow these people. Your silence is condoning a violent environment. You’re serving as a welcoming committee of sorts to new racists hoping to enter the party. From a crass political perspective, it's self-defeating: You will never win a national election on a ticket with the Klan. But it matters from a moral perspective, too.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. watched the unleashed dogs, the firehoses, the lynchings and bombings, the civil rights leader said something we should keep in mind today: "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."