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I grew up in the Bible Belt, known for lots of church meetings, good fried chicken and in-your-face racism. As a child in the 1950s and ’60s, I remember going to my uncle’s home for family dinners and scanning through coffee table pamphlets distributed by race-baiting Christian organizations and the local White Citizens Council.

He pretty much summed up the common view among many in my community when he shared, “I believe in the natural order of things, that blacks are under whites, and women are under men.”

At our county fair in Middle Tennessee, the John Birch Society sponsored a prominent information booth, displaying, among other bits of right-wing hysteria, Jewish conspiracy theories and photos of Martin Luther King Jr. attending what they called communist meetings. These same photos were on billboards along our highways.

All this is to say that it was a time racists of many stripes were out in the open and proud to be there. They carried this narrative everywhere they went.

Then the ground slowly shifted for all of us, including the racists. Four little girls were killed in their Birmingham, Alabama church and this even shook some of the segregationists. Arkansas public schools, the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama integrated through the force of federal troops. These, with the Selma to Montgomery March and the March on Washington that included King’s “I Have a Dream” speech strengthened an old, but newly invigorating and compelling movement that could not be ignored.

And it forced people to take sides. The national narrative began to shift to one of inclusiveness, to the point that a small-town Texas politician, serving as president, felt compelled to push through the U.S. Civil Rights Act, followed quickly by other freedom-enabling legislative moves. The shift culminated years later in the election of an African-American politician as president.

And what of the racists and their children and their children’s children? As the law of the land gave more freedom and rights to a minority they despised, did they disappear or admit to their misguided ways? In fact, thankfully, many people did evolve and threw off the cloak of hate worn by their community for generations.

But, of course, many others, in the millions, stayed the course. And this is striking, because except for the dispirited Ku Klux Klan and lingering home-grown Nazis, they lost their collective voice. At least it was lost in the public forum. They pretty much kept their views to themselves in living rooms, around the dinner table and in exclusive clubhouses.

Trump has opened the doors to our racist and xenophobic neighbors living all around us, letting them walk out into their own version of sunshine.

Rather than attack the African-American president publicly for his race, they attacked him as a foreigner and un-American. They just could not say openly that they hated seeing a black man as their president. Despite this not-so-clever squirm, in recent years they have started to gain confidence again, egged on by Lee Atwood-inspired Republicans, right-wing radio and TV commentators and the insurgent tea party. They just needed some force, or someone, to set them loose, give them cover and allow them back in full voice.

Well, they found him. After years of living in their exiled wasteland, they are empowered by Donald Trump to put on their coat and tie, their cocktail dresses, boots and cowboy hat, or whatever passes in their communities as respectable fashion, and return right back to their passionate espousal of loathing for those not like them. They have waited decades for this opportunity and now they have been given cover to return to their roots where racism and intolerance is acceptable in the public forum.

This is Trump’s core base. That’s the bad news.

But there is good news here. While their numbers are not small, they are not overwhelming — at least not large enough to carry a presidential election. The only way Trump can win is to entice those outside his core followers to vote for him.

Thankfully, in this, Trump proves incapable. So when he mocks a disabled journalist, he only keeps his base. When he demeans women as fat and unattractive, he only keeps his base. When he calls Mexicans rapists and demeans a federal judge only because he is of Mexican descent, he only keeps his base. When he advocates locking out Muslims, killing families of terrorists, bringing back torture and enhancing it, he only keeps his base. When he demeans the family of American war dead, he keeps his base, though he certainly doesn’t widen it.

Finally, when the KKK and American Nazi Party publicly endorse him, it does not bother the base, but it brings him no closer to the presidency, as even most traditional conservatives are horrified by this.

So, yes, Trump has opened the doors to our racist and xenophobic neighbors living all around us, letting them walk out into their own version of sunshine. It is an unfortunate reality in our American culture that they hang around, but it’s not so bad this has happened, as we need periodic reminders that they are still around us and they are dangerous.

At the same time, we see that he can only appeal to this core citizenry, which give him unedited and effusive support that speaks directly to his ego. He can’t lose that or he loses his reason to run. So let’s cheer him on as he says the most offensive things, because that will not get him elected.

After November, we can gently redirect the racists and their like back into their dark rooms to brood and wait for the next enabler to appear. Let’s just hope it is a long time off so we can repair the damage done, clear the air and get on with building a pretty good country that pushes for inclusiveness and fairness rather than hatred and just plain boorish behavior.

In the meantime, it’s OK to let Trump be Trump.