U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions from the press while departing the White House on November 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
For many, “where are you from?” is never as innocent as it sounds. The question is meant to figure out why you look, act, or sound the way you do. So when President Donald Trump told four Congresswomen that belong to minority communities that they should “go back” to these countries, people of color recognized the same pervasive bigotry that they’d dealt with most of their lives. So as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Alanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib shut down Trump’s racist rhetoric, Twitter users began flooding the social media site with experiences of their own, sharing how damaging it is to be told to “go back” to your country.
Below, check out some of their stories.
The 1st time I was told “Go back to your country” was when I was 15 yrs-old. A white man yelled it at me while I was working my after-school job as a grocery store stocker.
I’ve heard it many more times since. But I never thought 25 yrs later that it would come from the POTUS.
— E.J. Ramos David, Ph.D. (@ejrdavid) July 16, 2019
Yep. On a hotel elevator in NYC speaking Spanish with fellow journalists. Told this is America, we speak English, you can go back to your country and speak that.
— Marisol Bello (@Marisol_Bello) July 14, 2019
I was born in Puerto Rico but moved to CT when I was a baby. I first heard this when I was 10 years old.
— Nelba Márquez-Greene, LMFT ???? (@Nelba_MG) July 14, 2019
I was so young the first time I heard “go back to your country,” I thought my classmate meant the Tampa hospital we were born in. https://t.co/ky49aT6acy
— Monica Castillo (@mcastimovies) July 14, 2019
I've heard "go back to your country" many times. Sometimes in dms or irl. And when I tell them I was born in the U.S, they get so mad and they are like "no youre not" multiple times. This hurts me. Especially hearing it from the "president"
— Isabel | BLM (@honeymoonmija) July 15, 2019
I’ve heard “go back to your country” since childhood. I grew up in a lower middle class white community in Florida that still hosts KKK meetings. A high school teacher nicknamed me wetback.
— Dulce Vasquez 🍬 (@vasquezdulce) July 15, 2019
