On Sunday, President Trump tweeted that four first-year Democratic members of Congress should all "go back" where they came from. The president's comments were aimed at representatives who are women of color — all of them American citizens, three of them born in the U.S.
Rhetoric scholars say racist remarks like these have deep roots in American history. The statement has been commonly used to take ownership of the county away from non-white and non-Christian people.
The words may not always be the same or target the same group of people, but the sentiment still remains: you are not welcome here.
"There have been different phrases that have been used," Michael Cornfield, a scholar of rhetoric at George Washington University told NPR, "but the idea that we don't have any more room for people, or those people don't look like us, this is a long, ugly strain in American history."
