Why I Am Glad About President Trumps Latest Twitter Tirade by Jake Johnson!
(2019-07-18 at 20:09:58 )

Why I Am Glad About President Trumps Latest Twitter Tirade by Jake Johnson

People of color in the United States have experienced many variations of the "go back to where you came from" sentiment.

In the wake of President Donald Trumps racist Twitter tirade aimed at "the Squad" of four recently elected women of color in Congress, the Los Angeles Times asked its readers to share their own stories.

The anecdotes were painful to read and yet all too familiar to me.

Social media threads are filled with similar stories, and, like the outpouring of shocking personal stories that marked the #MeToo movement, white Americans are hearing for perhaps the first time how widespread and deeply ingrained racism is in United States of American culture and how much people of color have endured.

I remember my first experience on the receiving end of this type of hate.

It was just a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

While I was driving on the streets of Los Angeles, a man with a large American flag flying from his car screamed out of his window at me to "go back to my country." I was shaken, but I was not surprised.

It was certainly not my last time being told to leave the United States.

It is an age-old American insult, a perfect encapsulation of xenophobic ideals about who belongs in this country and who does not.

It matters little if the targets of such attacks are natural born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal residents, undocumented immigrants or visitors to the United States.

All that matters is that they represent an "impurity" in the perceived whiteness of America.

They need only be nonwhite, have an accent, speak a different language, have a foreign-sounding name or simply issue a criticism about the way things are.

On the one hand, President Trumps latest example of racism has done deep damage and likely traumatized his direct victims, Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

On the other hand, it has created an opportunity to do away with any lingering doubts about where he stands.

Media outlets like The Associated Press have called out his racism using plain language and without resorting to euphemisms.

"Trump digs in on racist tweets: -Many people agree with me,-" reads one headline, a refreshingly direct statement that did not use quotation marks around the word "racist," or rely on phrases like "racially charged."

In fact, the AP Stylebook announced a critical change earlier this year, advising journalists to call something racist if it appears so.

Although some media outlets are chiding Democrats for falling for the presidents distraction, President Trumps words are actually a misstep on his part, as they have helped clarify claims of his racism in no uncertain terms.

It is not a distraction-it is a direct symptom of his presidency.

One can argue that it is better for a racist to show his or her true colors than to strongly hint at bigotry and thus preserve plausible deniability.

President Trumps words have also had the effect of uniting a Democratic Party that just last week appeared fractured along racial and political lines.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had openly criticized the Squad in a New York Times interview and was met with swift pushback from Ocasio-Cortez, who accused her of being "outright disrespectful" to the women of color.

Reprinted here from "Common Dreams" has been providing breaking news & views for the progressive community since 1997. We are independent, non-profit, advertising-free and 100% reader supported.