"I am not a racist," Donald Trump found it necessary to reassure Americans. It was a revealing echo of when Richard Nixon told us, "I'm not a crook."

Trump's derogatory remarks about Haiti, El Salvador and African countries generally were extremely vulgar. Presidents are human; many have used vulgar phrases, although seldom so crudely. What's striking about Trump's insult is that it reveals how small and stunted his view of the world and of this country is. He simply doesn't understand what makes America great.

Trump sees the world through a keyhole, from behind a locked door embedded in a wall. Yet America's greatness has come from maintaining an open door -- one that has allowed people and ideas to pass both in and out. America's values -- liberty, equal justice under law, opportunity, freedom of speech and religion -- were and are beacons to the world. Americans are forged from those values, not from one bloodline or one race or religion. Our values have attracted the energy and the hopes of peoples across the world. And the American example opened doors to Americans across the world. Where Trump sees threats, Americans historically have seen opportunities.

This country was not born in perfection. Slavery was its greatest scar. Our democracy initially was limited to white male landowners. It took a Civil War, our bloodiest war, to eliminate slavery. Waves of immigrants were often greeted harshly, segregated and scorned. It took a civil rights movement to end legal apartheid in this country.

What makes America great is that our most basic rights, enshrined in the Constitution, laid the basis for and gave legitimacy to the social movements that have been necessary to make America better. Freedom of religion protected us from religious wars. Freedom of speech and assembly and of the press helped keep government and business accountable, while giving citizens the possibility of driving fundamental reforms.

In his scorn for press freedom, his cancerous appeal to racial differences, Trump seems oblivious to this foundation of American greatness.

America was not always a good neighbor. Our expansion across the continent exacted a harsh and savage toll on Native Americans. We traduced our own values in supporting dictators and overthrowing democracies even in our own hemisphere. We were not a colonial power, but we continued a colonial war in Vietnam at great cost. For years, we saw the terrorist apartheid regime of South Africa as an ally and branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

What makes America great is that Americans objected to these violations of our basic values. An antiwar movement helped end the war in Vietnam. A movement in support of free South Africa helped end apartheid in that country. We may violate our values, but they retain their force. Trump, however, seems too often oblivious to the values that he is trampling.

America is a big country with an expansive vision, a country of many races, creeds and nationalities, a land of opportunity. We aspire to equal rights for all, yet we witness a growing and extreme inequality that threatens to undermine our democracy. Trump and his allies, as they lavish tax breaks on the already rich and empower multinationals to trample protections of consumers, workers and the environment, seem oblivious to how corrosive that is to the Republic.

Some worry about Trump becoming a dictator, but he seems less dictatorial than scared, less imperious than impulsive, less arrogant than insecure. His vision is too cribbed to make America bigger or better or more generous.

Leaders can choose. They can rise by appealing to our better angels, by offering hope or gain by rousing our demons, by peddling fear. This country and the world are now experiencing a political whiplash. We elected Barack Obama, a graceful president who sought to bring us together, arguing that there were not blue states or red states, but a United States of America. And then, in reaction, Donald Trump was elected, railing against immigrants (even as immigration was declining) and Muslims, promising to build a wall, appealing to our fears.

When Dr. King helped build the civil rights movement in the apartheid South, he had a deep and abiding faith in America and in American values. He could endure beatings and insults and arrests because he had an unshakeable confidence that the freedom movement was appealing to the best of America. It is that confidence that will move people of conscience to organize the movement needed to make Donald Trump, who so fuels racial division that he must assert that he is not a racist, a relic of America's past, not the tribune of its future.

You can write to the Rev. Jesse Jackson in care of this newspaper or by email at jjackson@rainbowpush.org. Follow him on Twitter @RevJJackson.

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