One of the more banal traits of racism is that it’s never original — it’s years and years of repackaged language, as harmful as it is lazy and ineloquent. The idea of “sending back” the people this country’s government hasn’t wanted is a sentiment that has been reiterated repeatedly since the early years of the United States. Whether it has manifested in the form of “the Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln wanting to send formerly enslaved black people back to Africa, or white people asking black people some iteration of “why don’t you go back to Africa?”
On Wednesday night, before a crowd of thousands of people in North Carolina, President Trump went on a vitriolic attack against Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. It’s not the first time he’s attacked Omar, but this time, his hateful speech promoted thousands of people to respond, chanting “send her back! send her back!”
Even after a relentless week of racism by the president, the video clip of the moment of the Trump supporters is hard to watch. It feels like he’s reached new levels of abjectly racist behavior. Except, he hasn’t.
View the complete July 19 article by Ophelia Garcia Lawler on the Mic.com website here.