I have had a number of discussions with people about whether Donald Trump is a racist or not and, more specifically, whether his tweets telling congresswoman Ilhan Omar, among others, that if she doesn’t like it in the United States she should “go back” home and sort out her own country, were racist.
There is a lot to unpack. First of all, that statement resonates with anyone of colour. “Go back home.” It reminds you that some people think you don’t belong. It’s the statement I heard as a child, the statement I once heard outside a nightclub before I was attacked by skinheads, and that I still receive, on occasion, on social media.
The logic is flawed. The implication is that if you originate from another country, you cannot complain about what is going on in the US or Britain. I remember being on the school bus when some kids were pointing at a knackered playground and joking about how awful it was. I joined in and a classmate stopped me, saying, “I don’t know how you can take the mickey – your family live in mud huts.”
These incidents have been arguably infrequent in my life, though unfortunately more frequent through social media. But what they have done is supercharged the sentiment of those tweets from the president. People who argue that the sentiment is not racist are ignoring the fact that Trump’s tweets echo the beliefs of racists and scan like the chants of racists. To argue that it is about pride ignores that the US was built on immigration; I am sure many Native Americans would love it if everyone “went back to where they came from”.
These arguments are all irrelevant, of course, because Trump doesn’t give a shiny shit. He’s solidifying the extreme part of his support. Do you remember the good old days, when we thought Trump was going to catch himself out by saying something racist? Then we gradually realised that Trump would actually be more worried about saying something that would upset the racists.
I am loth to denigrate all Trump supporters as racists. I have heard many compelling arguments about why they resent this assumption and, believe it or not, these people give me some hope. It’s a reminder that some people still think being racist is a bad thing.
But statements like this from Trump, and the demonisation of immigrants by people such as Nigel Farage, make the experience of visible minorities in Britain and the US significantly worse. There are people being told angrily to go back home because it has been legitimised by the president. Can you imagine what it would be like to go out in a burka after Boris Johnson published his column, during the debate about Islamophobia, worried that someone is going to shout “letterbox” or worse? I often wonder if some prick is going to say something to my mum when she’s out and about.
Many of us were under the impression we were moving away from racism and xenophobia, instead it is being legitimised and accepted again into the mainstream. I would encourage you, when somebody suggests that a negative reaction to Trump or Farage, or to our new prime minister, is an overreaction, to make it your business to set them straight.
