What is scary is not that Donald Trump can use overtly racist phrases but there are people who won’t call him out because he is 'the President'.

When the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet can boast about telling women of colour that ‘they should go back to their own country’ then we are lumbering towards another form of acceptable 'racism'.

Trump didn't name his targets in the original tweets, but he was aiming them at four Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. All except Omar, who came to the U.S. as a child refugee were born in the United States.

He then went to paint them as America-hating and Communists. Are we really now using language from the fifties?

And to rub more salt into the wound he himself believes that it wasn't racist at all.


Yesterday, both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt quite rightly condemned him for his use of language – but stopped short of saying it was racist.

There two reasons why some people are treading carefully. Firstly, one of them is likely to have to deal with the President when they take office and don’t want to start off on the wrong foot and secondly, there is a fear that saying anything will have an adverse effect on the leadership campaign. Who wants the President making you out to be weak and unable to speak out days before you could be the next PM?

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was more forthright. He said today, "Telling four Congresswomen of colour to 'go back' is racist. But the Tory leadership candidates can't bring themselves to say so.

"We should stand up to Donald Trump, not pander to him for a sweetheart trade deal which would put our NHS at risk."

Asian Image:

From left, Rep. llhan Omar, D-Minn., Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., respond to remarks by President Donald Trump (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

If Tommy Robinson was to have stated these points in this country would we even be have a debate as what constitutes racism and what doesn't.

To tell a minority to ‘go back home’ is one thing that we can relate across the Atlantic. It comes from the experiences either as children growing up in the seventies and eighties and those of our parents when they set foot in Britain.

It doesn’t matter if you are born here and have lived here all your life - we do not care what you have done and what you have contributed to this country you are the wrong colour and religion so must therefore be made to feel inferior.

What is even more troubling is that such terms and phrasing is normally used by the extreme right-wing. And in fact you would be more likely to hear this from your typical racist thug.

The problem is this - Trump is simply pushing the line further and further and what was racist before is slowly becoming quite acceptable. Once it is said and it is out there who is to say you can't say something else?

Shockingly, we have seen TV shows and commentators debating whether this is racist or some clever ploy by a 'bunch of lefties'.

The women at the other end of these comments are now being blamed for calling out this blatant racism.

It is now their fault for calling Trump out on social media.

Here is the point - when we begin to do that we are reaching a new level of acceptance of blatant racism.