While my wife from Thailand has been called a "refugee" (she isn't one) and told to "go back", I myself have not been insulted (knock on wood) in this manner directly. A collective insult was "camel jockeys" when I was an undergrad walking with a bunch of international students.
I've experienced much worse bullying in my home country of India (and I have bullied too - much to my shame and regret today, if I could take it back I would) than anything in the US due to my appearance. My mixed kids also seem to have never been targeted due to looks/race.
That said, I feel that anyone who insults you like this is deserving of pity, not anger. They're either ignorant, or going through a bad time, etc. to have this kind of anger/hate/etc. Of course, there are some difficult to redeem cases but I think in a majority of cases, it may be possible to overcome such superficial differences.
Years ago when I was was in the ad business, there were ads with thought,clarity, purpose, and got to the heart of the matter--move the merchandise. These anecdotes bring to mind an award winning ad by Cadillac entitled The Penalty of Leadership. The ad pointed out the high expectations expected of the the leader of the leader of the bunch and selling. Our great enterprise is paying that penalty these days because from those who have done much, much more is expected to be done. We've got freedom merchandise to move but no one available to be in charge of moving it. It certainly cannot be moved while we're busily sniping at at each other. My country tis of thee but how mightily I weep for thee.
Has there even been a man as divisive as the current president? I have lived thru decades of presidents and even if I did not vote for one, I was still proud of them; Republican or Democrat alike. This president enjoys hurting others. It is in his personality, and because he is president, people listen. It is my hope that the coming presidential election, enough Americans will decide that he does represent true American values and make him a one term president.
1
My heart goes out to everyone who contributed to this article. I sometimes use social media to look up names of people from news articles and let them know that their situation touched my life. May this note be that message today.
1
I'm the daughter of Irish immigrants and was the sister-in-law of a man whose grandparents were also Irish immigrants. Whenever we had a disagreement over political issues (I, center-left and he, right-right), his response to my views was "Go back to Russia," which was hardly possible as I was American of Irish parents. "Go back to wherever," is a chant used by racists and so best ignored. The alternative, of course, is to tell the person that unless they are descended from native Americans that it is they who should go back.
I have been told I have white privilege that has made my life easy, but the only way to really feel it is to talk to people who don't have it. I love learning about people and am curious about differences and want to take any opportunity to learn and connect. A one-on-one conversation is so much more real than just reading people's stories. So, anytime I encounter someone with an accent, I don't want to pass up an opportunity. I've made mistakes and assumptions that make me cringe now, but it was never out of hate or bad intent. My whole life (55 yrs) I have always asked, "where are you from?" I want to hear their stories if they are willing to share them! I ask out of a genuine intent to engage and understand. In no way would I ask to make them feel they do not belong. We all belong wherever we are! I've made mistakes and assumptions that make me cringe now, but it was never out of hate or bad intent. I had an amazing conversation with a young Muslim Somalian cab driver that I will never forget. It brought to life the stories I've read in the form of an amazing young man I was honored to meet. Do I have to stop initiating these conversations? I don't want to make people nervous or scared. Am I misusing my white privilege to even ask? That makes me so sad. It seems like such a loss of opportunity for human connection and understanding.
1
Dear America,
Y'all need to calm yourselves down. You've turned into the neighbours from Hell. Please make a change in 2020 or we're putting up a big fence.
Love,
Canada
8
The problem with the current administration is that it normalizes these racist feelings and every moron with a mouth thinks it's ok to tell people what they think of them. It's not ok. It is never normal. The US was built on immigration, and the idea that everyone can help build a better America (not just white Europeans). Despite what 45 says, the US needs immigrants. Let's face it, 45's mom was Scottish. Should he go back to Scotland then? (Please don't, it's a lovely part of the UK). Telling people to go back where they came from is just plain, nasty racism.
As an immigrant myself, I have had a bit of that here in the UK (however, I can usually pass as British unless I open my mouth). These people don't realize their countries would be nothing without the hard-working immigrants who decide to leave their own countries and move to theirs, for whatever reason (mine was romance).
As the lyrics from Hamilton say, Immigrants, they get the job done. Yes we do.
4
I have austro-arab roots, and lived here in Austria for the last 41 years of my 60 years of age.
A physician doing his rounds at the hospital where I had surgery, asked me where i came from and what my profession is, and I told him what my profession is and said that I am half austrian and half of arabic origin and that I am living, raising my family here since 40 years. And then he asked: "Why don't you go home and build up your **** country?" I was stunned, first because I wouldn't have expected a physician at the hospital to say that, especially with the undertone he had used.
And the funny thing is: my mom is roman catholic, my late dad was muslim and my late step grandfather was jewish who lost his two sons in the holocaust during World War II. We have a bible, a Koran and a Siddur in the house.
All my life, people confronted me with their belief and what they thought I believe in. Often I had to defend one of the three religions in our family and tried to explain that its not the differences its the commonalities we should concentrate on.
So if its not skin color, then its the name or the religion that is attributed to the name. Why can't we just start seeing the person in front of us as a fellow human being? I just don't get it.
4
When I read these stories my first thought is I want to speak to each of them and say I am so sorry that you have experienced this. I am so appalled that people can be this way. Especially our president.
I grew up in the South with parents who were not racist but accepted the racism around them as normal. This is part of why I left the South fifty years ago.
My wife and I adopted our wonderful daughter from Vietnam when she was three months old. Now 19 she says that she has experienced little of this. Thank goodness. But my heart aches to think of her encountering such people. She is home.
5
Maybe I just have a sense of the strange, but I've been in arguments that are escalating to the point of screaming and have often screamed at a white guy to go back from where he came from (bonus points if he has a MAGA hat) . Talk about stopping things cold.
4
@sjs
I have also, on occasion, complimented them on how good their English is (can barely hear the accent). I love watching them sputter with outrage. Guess they don't like being treating like that. Funny how it OK when they do it to others
1
"Go back to your country" might have been the green light for El Paso Walmart killer. Families loosing members to that tragedy might consider suing the Hispanic hater in the White House.
3
One of my relatives was yelled at in the street shortly after 9/11. She's from South America, but presumably the antagonists assumed she was Middle Eastern. Not that it matters and not that it's logical. In fact, it was the true definition of prejudice. So discouraging any way you looked at it.
2
The first time I can remember was during a fishing trip with my uncle. We were in a minivan and he was taking a van full of sub 10 year old nieces and nephews fishing at the Redondo Beach pier. As we were waiting for a parking spot, a pickup truck aggressively pulled into the spot and tried to take it. My uncle and his friend confronted the young white man and an argument ensued. It ended with the white man leaving, but not before yelling at us “you chinks go back to your country.”
My uncle worked up from the confrontation muttered “what does he mean go back? This is my country” as he was getting back into the van.
My uncle is a Vietnamese refugee that immigrated here in 1979 and is a naturalized citizen. All of us children were born and raised in Los Angeles.
2
I was at my in-law's where my husband's brother's family were hanging out. they decided to group quiz me on US history since I was getting ready to take my citizenship exam that month. I missed a couple questions, then I hear my nephew, who was 12 at the time, yell at me "Go back to China!". I felt immediately upset and was tearing up. I didn't know what to say. He thought it was funny. His parents then said to him " stop it!" The kid then proceed to say "I'm sorry" in a joking way. and everyone laughed about it. A few minutes after that, I stood up and left, still tearing up. My sister in law came to me and said: you can't possibly be mad at that, he is a kid. you have to forgive him. he probably learned it from us, sometimes we see a car from out of the state, and we yell " go back to North Carolina! or wherever. I was still speechless. thinking that was not good behavior on the adults, and instead of using that as a teaching moment, they just brushed it away and joked about it like I shouldn't have felt hurt. At work, my background was checked over and over due to the sensitive information I have access to, which is reasonable. Yet my brother in law calls me a "spy" all the time, and the kids think it's funny. Eventually I expressed my frustration: that I take my work very seriously and this isn't funny. They thought I was over-reacting. I don't know if their behavior is going to change, but I will probably never feel about them the same way.
20
@Annie Lee People who are unaffected by this kind of attack often try to minimize it. Your top priority is to keep yourself safe: mentally, physically and emotionally. It doesn't matter whether they understand you or see you as reasonable (though of course it feels important) and you're not obliged to teach them anything.
2
It's hard to imagine what happened to you all because I've never had the experience of racism but I think there is a mutual feeling when people can't see who you are, the truth without caring about your name, color, country, religion
I'm Muslim but not a terrorist Muslim you know from Hollywood movies or Isis, I'm from Iran but not Iran that you hear about it in news as a threat, when you are from a country that doesn't like to be dependent on the USA because of it's policy and the Isreal that murder children and because of that they use media and run a huge propaganda against you to show you a terrorist and a big threat, when you have a religion (Shia_Muslim_iran) that justice and standing against cruelty and injustice are the bases of it and your responsibility is to work to get rid of poverty in the world that is against European and USA's governments policy (forget the news or adv about unicef or unesco, I'm in the middle east!), since there is one policy that European and USA governments follow, you gotta use weak countries sources such as oil ( Iraq, Afghanistan), treasure (African lands), etc, to make your country rich like the difference you see between European luxury countries and African or middle east!
and this is the major problem countries like Iran have with these countries, we are all human so we must use everything in this world equal!
so you have to tolerate a different kind of racism when you wanna say:
I'm Iranian or I'm Muslim!
1
I lived in Australia for one year - 2016-2017. I always wonder about how Australia could change so fast from their racist policies in the past to the relaxed environment I found there. I never felt so at ease in the USA. I have relatives and friends who live in a few states in the USA. That is why I keep coming back to this country. I have fun and enjoy the place, indeed, but from time to time I face something strange and someone treating me suspiciously and/or badly out of the blue. And I am a tourist coming to spend my money.
1
Contrast that with the time I have spent in your hometown. While you have to always pay attention and watch your back, I have never felt as much love and friendship as I have in Rio. I think most Americans abhor mistreatment of anyone, but I think we haven't learned yet how to be proper allies.
For me based on experience, if you are white , you're racist until proven otherwise. I have come across all sorts of comments through the years even though I am american, speak fluent English and overly-educated. One time I sat next to this guy on an flights who asked where I am from. I told him. He said sooo tell me about your refugee story. I responded back -you tell me your refugee story. Another time, I was with my sister at a bar when these middle aged guy approached us and started asking where we are from. He tried to tell us people from where we are from usually work as maids and aides. We told him we are both doctors. He didn't know what to say. These are just a few and don't include the subtle racism I come across at work.
5
I had no idea. I can't think of any time I've seen or heard such before the Trumper. It's more likely I was not attuned than I never witnessed it. Therefore, I am part of the problem.
Can't imagine the scope of racism and unAmerican activity except to think every minority individual has experienced it routinely across many settings. Forever.
4
These first person accounts are very moving. To think of all those ignorant, hateful slurs emitted by those undoubtedly white persons makes me weep for those insulted, especially the children. Those who pronounce such hate are hardly good Christians. The Almighty made everyone and to insult others as these ignorant people do is to hurl insults at the Creator.
On a lighter note if Trump were told 'to go back where he came from' I doubt Germany would welcome him.
6
I am 73, raised Republican, Democrat now for many years. I have moved beyond being shocked by Trump to being frightened. These stories of " go back where you came from" are sad enough standing alone but beyond belief when spoken by the President of the U.S. The reelection of Trump will be a disaster not only for the U.S. but for the world. The U.S. is the drum major at the front of the parade and the Trump effect can already be clearly seen in the rise of rightist neo-facism in Europe. These " go back" comments will only increase and harden with his re-election. VOTE and make sure your friends do the same. Hopefully, we can avoid disaster.
7
Oh, my dear hearts, you all so belong.
You know these people are filled with fear and self-loathing. How much easier to hate you than to look inside at their own self-hatred.
I have made it my practice to always greet and smile at anyone who passes me, especially my brothers and sisters of other nationalities, color, and religion.
I send you all much love.
6
Racism is a horrific problem. It's like a disease that needs to be eradicated. Kudos to the NYT for posting this story.
5
Yeah. When we lived in Philadelphia people routinely asked us where we were from No on ever told us to go back.
I am so grateful that some how my parents brought me up without prejudice and almost naively unaware of stereotypes. So much prejudice seems to be learned at home.
I feel bad mostly for those who are targets of hate, and also for the "not very fine people on the other side" who are so full of hate inside.
4
Honestly I wish we could just not be offended by these bullies/racists...because even feeling something seems to validate that this is their country instead of ours. Instead, I think we need to stand in our right to be here and understand that we could also ask them to go back to wherever their ancestors came from. I will not feel unwelcome in MY country. I am an immigrant - I came when I was 2 years old - and I will not be bullied into thinking I have any less right to be here. This is not something that anyone has to give me permission to feel. I claim this country as my home and I will not be bullied. If the Alt-right doesn't like it, they can leave.
5
In all fairness I hope you will pose to others the question, "When was the first and last time you were called stupid and ignorant?" And what effect did it have on you?.
I realize this project was built in response to President Trump's clearly racist and unacceptable tweet, and I don't support him, but a couple of things occurred to me as I read the comments.
Did anyone (of the 16K+) have the honesty to state that they are in the US illegally and were told to go back? I would be curious to hear their remarks. Was there anyone who is in the US legally, but not a citizen, who had the experience?
I'm a straight white male and have never been specifically told to go back to where I came from (in a nationalistic or racist context). But have heard a number of times in various ways "You're not from around here" and the like. These comments seem clearly screened (and again, I acknowledge why) on a race / color / religion / origion basis. Were any simply based on regional accents within the US? Or from academia, to a conservative or (Christian) religious person?
I applaud this project; I would like to see it continued and expanded.
3
I came to the US, legally, because my father’s (white, American) employer sponsored him. In response to your specific question, yes I was told to go back to where I came from in 1980s Houston, by older, bigger students in my elementary school, and by white adults. This was when I had a green card, but before I became a naturalized citizen when I was in high school. Of course I hear these comments still today in my 40s, though thankfully very rarely. The level of casual hate by many Americans is breathtaking.
17
when i moved from the Midwest to the Northwest in 1963 someone at a job asked me where i was from based on my regional accent but i didn't take offense. we weren't so easily offended in those days. but i have experienced reverse discrimination (i am "white") from Black Americans & Latinos in job situations and retail. i don't have any sympathy for those "women of color" the "squad" for their grandstanding for the media and thus encouraging Trump to take the bait when they should have known better. they probably by now all have "book deals" & will clean up plenty, stuffing their pockets before it's all over. then things will go on as before.
1
It was my first day of fourth grade and one of the girls at the monkey bars said to me, “go back to Mexico. Your clothes are not American. We don’t like wet backs”. Do you really need to know if I was undocumented or not? And the girls saying this to me were actually of Mexican decent. Racism is an infection, not a normal state of humanity!
18
Please stop focusing on this issue. While racism is important, it is an issue that Trump can use to motivate his base and independents from the midwest and south, so he wants to focus on this issue. Trump is bad for the USA and for the middle class. So have the self control to wait until he is defeated to address this issue, America. Every single one of you should exercise self control. The issues are health care, climate, getting along, and living wage jobs with benefits for the middle class. Please focus and get rid of Trump, then address the other issues!
6
my sentiments exactly.
That is not acceptable! We will not be ostriches, hiding our heads in the sand. It’s time for ALL OF US to refuse to cede “patriotism “ to narrow-minded people. I love my country. But, "love or leave it” is an anathema to what this country is about. I love it and want to change it for the better!
23
Your bias is showing. This is as real an issue for people who feel “othered” in the current political climate as the ones you mentioned. How about letting empathy rather than political expediency be your guide?
15
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” Mr. Trump said in one of a series of posts on Twitter.
He didn't say "go back TO THE COUNTRY" from which they came. When did those three words get added? They came from various congressional sectors where they were elected. How did country or race get injected into his words?
I'd like to see a direct quote and source that includes a reference TO THE COUNTRY included.
@Bicycle Bob
Did you read the article associated with this post?
many ways to communicate one is not wanted; just read the various ways others have heard loud and clear exactly what Trump inferred.
6
Thank you for having the courage to tell you stories. Thank you for sharing your culture, opening our eyes and staying resilient. Our country is better with each and every one of you.
5
Where did this ugliness come from? I grew up in the South and granted, North Dallas in the 60s and 70s wasn't the 'deep South' and we were white, college-educated and upper-middle class--but I never remember things being so awful. I didn't grow up with the n-word, and I wasn't raised to think of brown people, or Jews, or anybody as 'inferior' or 'un-American'. We saw institutional racism but this kind of hatred and animosity is very distant from my experience--I went to school with Hispanics, Sikhs, and Jews. If busing was a disaster it wasn't because of race. I don't recognize my country. I am so sorry.
5
I had a colleague recently ask "Where are you from?" but not in an unkind way, he was from the UK and detected a faint British accent, and guessed Hong Kong (I lived in Singapore before coming here, and grew up in Australia). I was initially suspicious until he explained why he was asking. So don't assume everyone asking this question has ill intentions.
That said, the reason I was suspicious was from the heightened political climate now, and something that happened to me 12 years ago, when I rode a bike in Maryland. Not wanting to hold up traffic, at a red light I waved a pickup truck through to go first (he wanted to turn right on red). The driver took the time to wind down his window and inform me "We have laws in this country, y'know."
Yes, I know, I'd been in the US for 10 years at that point. Maybe I should have just biked first and let him wait. After all, it is the law for turning traffic to yield. Then again, his demeanor didn't inspire confidence that he wouldn't have just run me over.
We need a simple, enforceable plan for migration from other countries to the United States. What are the arguments for and against such a policy? What are the issues? I read and read for such information, and this is what I get.
Focusing on trashing Trump and trendy topics like this one do not help us achieve this goal.
Why is the Times against a clearheaded solution? At this point the confusion leads directly our not having any enforceable policy, and hence our rights as citizens of a republic are overcome by the sheer force of illegal entries.
I long for a republic which respects American citizens and puts our rights and needs first above the interest in more votes for the Democratic Party and an enlargement of their base.
I am not a Republican, or a conservative. But I am capable to clear thinking.
1
@Sandra Cason
May I suggest you start with Trump illegal hirings, and his properties being used for Russian birther tourism.
5
I was once interviewed as part of a background investigation for a US government security clearance, where I was told by the security officer that I could be deported because my grandparents had not filled out the proper documentation when they entered the country in the early nineteen hundreds. She went on to ask who's side I would be on when the United States went to war with Israel. I had heard a lot of racist comments during my career, mostly directed at other people, but this really shocked me. My impression is that these attitudes are more the norm rather than the exception.
4
I wish I could have been there to use my whiteness as a shield for all of these people. Come to me, my chickadees, this is not your house to clean; I will make these invertebrates wish their distant ancestors had never crawled from the primordial ooze.
4
The word/description that should be used here is xenophobia-fear of the 'other; fear of he/she who is different from what one is accustomed to.
Science -and particularly genetics -has proven that we humans are all about 99.99999 % the SAME. (Some use 99.5 as a tipping point.. but who can split cMs over a mere 0.5 or even smaller 0.9 -either are infinitesimal) Race is an artificial construct used to divide peoples into groups-creating the 'other' who is not the same as they and therefore thought to be inferior. Ethnicity is an artificial geo-political construct of divide and conquer technique to create geo-political borders- neither of which exists. If you doubt, the next time you fly check the ground beneath you... the only borders will be the natural ones of mountains, water, and terrain.
I am an adoptee whose migratory ancestors -including my Magyar grand- and great-grandparents ancestors migrated across four of the five continents. My maternal haplogroup is 100% Berber. I have sub-Sahelian cousins, as well as indigenous cousins from south America.
Curses and taunts are made by ignorants who were taught by parents.
As far as 'citizenship', it too is artificial. We are all a mixture and all cousins-human.
I was legally blind as a child, blessed with great intelligence which endeared me to no one, and an adoptee, who was a super clutz abused by adopters.
My diversity and my strong gene pool helped me survive, and I consider myself to be a citizen of earth.
1
Many of these stories are about elderly people being offensive. Please, please, consider the possibility that they may be in the early stages of dementia. Two of the loveliest people I know did start insulting others as Alzheimer's set in. And just yesterday, I had to quickly leave a fast-food restaurant with my husband, who has dementia, because he was starting to make offensive comments about a person and was getting louder enough that others could hear. My husband!!
2
I came as a grad student to a major university in the midwest. Interestingly enough I was more likely to get those kind of random comments from undergrad frat boys rather than local blue collar people. I always enjoyed having the same frat boys show up in classes where I was a TA with their backwards facing greek letter baring baseball caps.
4
I am an Asian-American. I was born in Bellefonte, PA while my father was working on his PhD at Penn State. He finished his degree and we moved away when I was one year old (Ohio, California, Missouri). Although I experienced countless numbers of racist taunts in the years that followed, the first "go home" insult happened when we returned to State College, PA when I was fifteen. It was yelled at me from the window of a moving car as I walked down the sidewalk across from the main campus of Penn State. I thought it was particularly ironic, as here I was just 10 miles from the exact place of my birth. I'll never forget it.
6
The racism and ignorance in the "where are you from?" experiences effects interactions between people in another way. In 2006 I spent 6 weeks at a seminary in California as part of my Doctor of Ministry program. The students, mostly ordained ministers were a diverse lot. I was part of a program in International Feminist Theology which had a cohort of women from around the world. Many students in other doctoral programs were also present.
On the 1st day, at lunch, I sat across from an Asian looking man. I asked him where he was from, as I had asked many other students that day. He smirked at me; gave sidewise glances to his friends, then said, "Vancouver" with a sneer. I felt sad, angry, and humiliated. The thing is, I did not ask him because I thought he was from China or Korea or Japan. I asked him as I had asked a couple dozen people who look just like me in the course of getting to know fellow students. I was not, as he seemed to assume, surprised by his answer other than that he was from Canada and not the US.
The thing is - since that experience I am very, very hesitant to ask any person of color where they are from, even if I am (or would) asking those just like me where they are from. I do not blame the other student for he was responding out of how he had been treated. Still, my experience shows a different way that such racism effects relations between people. Those of us with some sensitivity are afraid of being misunderstood and/or causing more hurt.
@Anne-Marie Hislop
I ask people the same questions as a conversation starter although it might be easier for me since I am Asian-American. Recently, I met an older man with a heavy Eastern European accent at a cafe -- crowded so tables were shared - the same question and he seemed a bit offended initially saying he had been in the US for close to 50 years but had never lost his accent. However, I followed up with my own story of coming to the US and we had a lovely conversation about various topics.
When people ask me the same question, I'll them "It's complicated" and go into how I am a mix of 3 different cultures. For the most part, people are curious and not asking to be offensive. It also helps that I speak English without much of an accent (unless Seattleites are deemed to have an accent). So if it were me, I would not automatically deem your question to be offensive.
Once I share my background, I've also had people who look Caucasian share their backgrounds with me. Many I encounter have studied, lived in, or travelled in Asia. Others are even part Asian and/or have in-laws who are Asian or their grandchildren are part Asian. An Italian man who asked me this question recently told me his dtr.-in-law came from the same region my maternal side came from.
I was 29 and excited about starting a new life in San Francisco after moving from Tokyo. I felt accepted in the city by the bay until one day at a gas station, a guy yelled at my direction "Buy American!"
Those two words were obviously intended to my husband who was pumping gas, but he was not referring to the car - an old Plymouth station wagon - as American as, well, a Plymouth station wagon.
I couldn't believe I heard those words, undoubtedly suggesting that my husband should not be with an "Asian" woman. Also, those words suggested that women are properties that you can purchase.
I think I have suppressed this memory for a long time, but after reading all these stories, it emerged again and I decided to share...
4
What I'm going to share has nothing to do with my direct experience with racism as I am a 'privileged white man'. I am a very large, blonde and blue privileged white man. I love saying hello to people I come across; I love to interact. But now, today, thanks to the hate filled people of this country I am not allowed to do that. When someone who is 'isn't' white comes along they shrink in fear as I near. I'm certain their thoughts are 'what's this big Nazi gonna do or say'. So, because of the vitriol of far too many idiots I cannot enjoy interacting with all people. Believe me, my story is no where near as heart breaking as those shared with us today and the millions of stories we did not get to read today but damn it; I like talking to people of all color and nationalities. It does two things in my mind - 1. it allows to me to be friendly and learn something . And 2. By interacting with folks I hope they see not all Americans are brain dead racists. Everyone I meet I say Hello, how are you? and I do it with a smile. I'm a US Veteran who served in South East Asia. I'm a Veteran who cares about people. I'm a US Veteran who strongly believes in “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Damn it!, let me interact with everyone,and damn it! let these folks come here to enjoy what you and I already do!
10
I am not an American but these types of experiences are not limited to America of course. I feel gutted for everyone with such a story to tell.
I am a white person with grandparents all immigrants from the UK. I was privileged to never experience feeling bothered, never experienced bigoted hatred until I had a couple of life changes that have allowed me to walk in another persons shoes. I took a married name that some people assume to be Jewish. Then I started to understand what it was like (and only a tiny bit) to be Jewish in North America. People would walk up to me, not necessarily with open hatred, but treating me as quite different from their (non-Jewish) selves. Then, I got cancer and had chemotherapy. My hair and eyebrows never really grew back well so I wear my hair very short. Now the bigots assume I am lesbian or transgender and I occasionally get to walk in those shoes, receiving open hate from total strangers. It's only a tiny bit of the experience, it only happens occasionally, but it's given me a whole new level of respect and dismay for what many people endure as they go about their business as human beings. The world would be a different place if people could truly experience the lives of others not like themselves.
9
One unpleasant child in my daughter’s class, on hearing that I was a resident alien, gleefully told her, “I could have your mom deported!” To be honest we thought her idiocy was hysterical, but of course I wondered whether the odious nitwit ever said it to people who were in a more precarious position.
What I do regret, though, is that one can no longer ask where someone is “from.” I try to get around it (where’s your lovely accent from?) because I want to know. I love hearing about other countries and homes; I love connecting to people that way. It’s just another thing that racists have stolen from us. Can we have that back?
4
Parents are the primary influencers for their children. External social networks will either reinforce behaviors modeled in the home or cause someone to consider different perspectives to inspire a behavioral change.
It's disheartening that so many of these adverse experiences occurred to young people and their aggressors were other youth.
What is clear about prejudice, mainly systemic or institutional racism, are the health and economic costs we pay as a nation. Discrimination is stressful and ultimately becomes a risk factor for otherwise preventable diseases. Diseases of the heart, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, obesity are all linked to stress. Another argument for improved health care...
The pattern is likely generational bigotry... the trend is a leader who incites, defends, and signals this incendiary behavior is acceptable has released a depth of ignorance and hate reminiscent of the Jim Crow era.
4
Sadly, the overt and shocking racism experiences shared by readers of the NYT from across the US, represents only the tip of the iceberg. Racism is endemic in the 'great' USA, compounded by arrogance and ignorance, and inflamed by the current occupant of the White House. As a Native American reader noted: if we are not Native American, the message to go back where we came from should also apply to the rest of us.
5
Seeing the direction the US is going, I am convinced Donald Trump has a hidden agenda, and it is the exact opposite of MUGA.
He is bringing out the worst in people. All great empires fail by rotting from within, and this is exactly what he is trying to accomplish. Incite hatred between your citizens, and you don’t need external enemies to destroy you. However strong your military, however strong your economy (and even that is an illusion), you cannot prevent hatred from tearing the country apart. He does not even need to pass legislation to limit foreign students and workers. Just the reputation of racial violence would be enough to deter people from coming. I used to attend an academic congress in the US every year and enjoy meeting up with my US colleagues, but I have not been for three years because I no longer feel welcome or even safe when I visit.
5
I was a 15 year old Indian girl living in Jacksonville, FL the first time I was told to go back to where I came from. I played goalkeeper for my high school soccer team and as we were playing one of our division rival teams and beating them easily, I made a routine save in the second half. I began to hear a murmuring in the stands and soon heard the opposing team’s parents yelling “Go back to where you came from! We don’t want you here.” Grown adults...PARENTS...yelling racial slurs at a teenager who was just playing a game. I remember later asking my parents what the comments had meant. After all, I was born in the United States. It was the only country I had ever lived. They quickly just commented on the other team being sore losers and changed the subject. But I can still see the specific stadium where it happened when I think about it. I can remember a few of the parents’ faces. And I’ll never forget the loneliness I felt on that bus ride home with the rest of my team when not one of them understood the lingering hurt those statements left.
9
These stories are simultaneously heartfelt and heartbreaking at the same time.
3
I wouldn't be completely defined as an immigrant since my American citizenship was backdated to my date of birth, but I was born and lived in Europe. What I find heartbreaking is that despite hearing an accent, knowing I'm not "truly" from America, or listening to me happily speak about my old life, no one has ever told me to go home. My white privilege allows me to feel American when so many other Americans aren't afforded that opportunity.
4
What's ironic about the "Speak English here" crowd is that many of them make basic grammatical errors. Their spelling and writing are atrocious. They can't get its and it's right, and they think a plural noun needs an apostrophe before the s.
I'm an old white guy who grew up in a middle class of not nearly as diverse America. When I ask people where they are from, it's on the basis of their English accent and not how they look. My goodness, we didn't tattoo ourselves, have rings everywhere or color our hair differently when I grew up. I never saw a hijab. The world changes. If anybody needs to go back somewhere, it is these ignorant Dementors. And the somewhere is called "school."
7
When I was working at a thrift store I rang up a couple of Southeast Asian ladies. They were speaking in their native language together throughout the transaction. The next person in line was an older white woman. When she walked up to the register she muttered "go back to China." I was shocked. Those ladies did absolutely nothing to this woman (not that that would have condoned her comment) other than speaking another language than English in front of her. I blurted out "what did you say?" with so much anger I startled her. She said "nothing" and stayed quiet the rest of the transaction. I'm still amazed by her casual hatred and her assumption that I would be on her side.
9
I became a US citizen when my mother re-married in the early 70’s. My family lived in various parts of the world while my stepfather worked for CARE and we were raised to accept and embrace all cultures and racial identities. When I graduated from high school in the early 80’s, I moved to the U.S. and attended several universities. It was in a small liberal arts college in Wilmington, Ohio that I encountered my first racist remark as a college student. I got into some sort of disagreement with a white, male student while standing in line at the campus cafeteria. He quickly reacted, “Go back to China”! I wish I could remember what I said back to him. I walked away annoyed but decided not to dwell on his ignorance. I’m from the Philippines and knew where I came from!
2
@Juliet Funchess The irony is that Chinese Filipinos get the “go back” treatment in the Philippines too, despite their community having been there for generations and - much to the befuddlement of the white expats I knew there - are Asian as well.
Thank you for publishing this! We still have a long way to go, as a country.
1
I was visiting my long-distance boyfriend and we took a walk holding hands. A couple of young white men drove past us slowly and yelled at my boyfriend to 'go back to his country' and 'stop stealing their women', among other racial slurs. Even ignoring the obvious misogyny, the racism baffled me.
While my boyfriend is of Hispanic descent, he is a third generation American and has spent most of his life in the US. I, on the other hand, am white, but my whole family are from Germany, I had lived there until I went to college in the UK, and this was my first week in the US as a tourist. Just because I am white and he isn't they presumed that I was one of 'them' and he was 'other'.
On the other hand, I have also had Americans telling me, after finding out I was German, 'oh, I'm German, too'. Initially, I thought that meant they, or maybe their parents, had emigrated, but often they were talking about a great-grandparent who left for America in the 19th century (before Germany was even founded). This awareness of precise ethnicities seems to be a uniquely American issue. When do you stop being Something-American, and start being just American? Does that not prove that the US is a country of immigrants?
That being said, I have seen xenophobia not just in the US, but also in my home country. However, this affects black and Latino people a lot less than Arab and Turkish immigrants. It might just be that you encounter so few of them, they are more of a curiosity than a threat.
4
My family moved to the United States when I was two and moved to Canada when I was thirteen. We are from Northern Ireland, so British and Irish. In the fifth grade, so I guess I was 10 years old. Somehow in social studies class it came up that the legal term for immigrant is Alien. From that day forward I was the class alien. Made into a sub-human creature who didn't belong in school, on the playground, in Tennessee. An alien who should go back to her planet. I had lived there for 8 years, with no memory of where I lived before.
3
Although I cannot distinctly recall a "go back" moment, I have had the "what are you" questions raised constantly since I was a child. I'm mixed race (white/Japanese natural-born citizen parents) and have a fair complexion and freckles but some Asian features. My brother's features are more white, but his complexion is darker and he had the "go back" statements thrown at him often as a child. He experienced discrimination at work from a supervisor who had lost an uncle in Vietnam (he hated all Asians). We had a neighbor back in the 70's who relied on my mom for transport, but would refer to her as a "Nip" or "Jap" (very hurtful to her). Since Trump started his trade war with China, people mutter behind my mom's back (she's 96) to go back to China. Thankfully, she's hard of hearing, but I'm not.
Most of my white friends voted for the current office holder. We don't talk politics as a result, but after reading some of these stories, I do have to wonder what they say/think behind my back, especially since I'm more liberal than them.
I was so optimistic in 2008 when Obama was elected president and re-elected in 2012. I naively thought the country had turned a corner and was putting racism in a lead-lined box. Unfortunately, his election seems to be the spark racism needed to flare back up, and now the current office holder is trying to fan it into a raging wildfire. I fear for my country.
7
I heard this all the time growing up. I'm honestly surprised the headline says only 16,000.
2
Hatred is loud and mean and angry. It is time for the "good" people to stand up to it. However, good people tend to be timid about expressing their opinions. Is it fear of the loud, angry, red-faced bullies? Is it the general opinion that most people are not bigoted and hateful, therefore it is not necessary to speak up? This is not an aberration and it will not go away unless we "good" people speak up. Love is gentle, but it is also strong. Time to acknowledge that strength and face down the hate bullies.
3
As early as age 5, I've had this quote directed at me. I don't know if it's the same for my sister's. Somehow, we've determined, I look more foreign. I'm darker, my nose is more prominent, my hair is darker and curlier. But when we all worked at the same restaurant, we constantly got mistaken for each other. ("Waitress, I'm still waiting for my salad!" "Sure, I'll let me sister know")
🤷♀️ so maybe it's my personality too. I'm very proud to be Jewish and more likely to randomly talk to people while grocery shopping. All I really know is that I cannot count the number of times I have been told to go back to where I came from. For the record, that's Jefferson City, MO. The most notable instance, the one that stands out in my memory the most, was when my child's friend had stayed over for dinner. He is a sweet kid. I enjoy talking to him. He has good manners and genuinely wants to help out and learn. Follows Dan around like a puppy. But this one dinner conversation really hurt me. We were having breakfast for dinner. I cooked eggs, pancakes, Turkey Sausage and Turkey Bacon. He wanted to know why I always cooked with turkey instead of pork. I explained it to him and without even thinking, he pops out, 'If you don't like the food, maybe you should go back to where you came from.'
I know he heard it from home. I know he had no idea what he was really saying, but from this little boy, who I had accepted into my home, I never expected it and it hurt.'
5
I think Rogeria Christmans gave a very good answer to this woman. Without sinking to the woman's level, it called out her rudeness and made her look small. Good for you for being so quick thinking.
1
My husband was born in Mexico to a Mexican mother and a 1st generation Japanese American from Hawaii. (His father, who became a surgeon, was 10 and out selling eggs when Pearl Harbor was attacked.) Although Spanish was his first language, he grew up in the great plains - and sounds like it. He’s usually pegged as Chinese, Native American or Native Hawaiian, and has had his share of “go back to where you came from” comments.
He’s relatively thick-skinned and usually lets the comments roll right off, but I clearly remember one instance in which he responded with a quick comeback. We were living in a state bordering the deep south where he was a university professor. There was an older couple in the neighborhood who kept to themselves and had two noisy outdoor “guard dogs”. One summer afternoon their barking was particularly persistent and my husband yelled “QUIET!” from our front porch. The man yelled back the classic “Why don’t you go back to where you came from.” My husband knew better than to yell back but couldn’t help himself, and retorted with “Where I come from we eat dog.” Silence followed and we had a good laugh once he was back in the house.
Please don’t think I’m making light of the issue. Mostly I’m proud of my husband, who has put up with this for more than 60 years. Sadly, I know many other Americans of color and/or those from or with ancestry from certain parts of the world have to deal with far worse.
3
I shared my experience, but the degree at which the "go back to where you came from" inference in these comments is stunning.
Absolutely stunning.
It's clear that those words have inflicted pain and hurt on many, many more Americans than just me. And we now have a president who embraces this phrase... it is now his center point. He keeps coming back to it, without apology or explanation. He is now defined by it.
It also explains to me at least, exactly why we are not hearing too much Republican objection to the furor over what is happening.
At this point, race will be the center of this upcoming presidential election and I truly believe that the Republicans are taking a middle ground with this strategy, knowing fully well that Trump will lose as a direct result of it.
If he loses, they can regroup, correct the spiraling-down direction of the party led by Donald Trump, recalibrate, and elect Republican leaders in the future who realize that their party has to once again, "reach across the aisle" to get things done.
Of all the phrases NOT in Trump's Twitter vocabulary, "reach across the aisle" is not now, nor will it ever be, in there.
2
The volume of responses has shocked me. Perhaps I am naive to believe in the Statue of Libery's quote: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, ..."
I am an American living in a small town in Scotland. When people ask me where I am from and I say, Peebles (Scotland - I've been here 11 years), I often get "no - really - where are you from originally?" I don't take it as a racist remark but my accent separates me from everyone else.
I started to wonder if during the course of our history in the United States, that racism has happened before - but we really were aware of it because of the lack of social media.
My Great-Grand Uncle was a first generation American. His parents were from Germany. Herman Steinke changed his last name to Stanke when he enlisted to serve in WWI. I can only imagine to sound "less German" Herman died on the fields of France at the age of 18. I wonder if he and his family experienced racism and were told to "go home".
More recently, my Grand-uncles legally changed their last name from Wischnacht to Knight just prior to WWII. Again to sound less German.
I have heard of stories of Irish immigrants experiencing racism; Japanese interment camps; even hatred of Southerners after the Civil War. History is full of these stories. The observation is not to excuse racism, but rather to ask the question how do we put an end to it once and for all?
As John Lenon said, "Imagine....."
1
A native of Argentina and speaker of Spanish, I came to the United States as an adult without much English but in love with a young woman from the Midwest whom I married 34 years ago. By the time I became an American citizen, 5 years later, not only I had learned English, I was teaching it to adults at the community college along with citizenship classes.
It was not until days after the 2016 election that a man told me if I was not happy with the new president I needed to leave the country. When I told him that I was an American citizen he responded that I was not a real American because I was not born here. He found a new way to discriminate: the “more real” and “less real” American categories.
It did not hurt me but it upset me. I wanted to suggest that having trained hundreds of teachers of English over the years, written textbooks, and even helping write the US citizenship test for USCIS, I had contributed more to this country and knew more about citizenship than he did. But I quickly changed my mind. My possible contribution to the country is completely irrelevant. Telling a citizen he is less of a citizen because of the place of birth, is wrong period.
Then he told me the president will get rid of people like me. He might have been in the front lines of the aggression but he was not alone. I have had many people, particularly using social media tell me to leave the country in the last 2.5 years. I grit my teeth, smile and say (or write) “I am here to stay.”
9
I am originally from India and a naturalized citizen of USA.
I had this experience of someone telling me to go back to my country about ten or fifteen years ago when I was working in Pittsburgh, PA.
I am Physician on my way to work in the new city that I just moved in. Got lost as there was construction and the usual route is closed.
Confused and stuck at the intersection got even more confused and baffled, when I heard someone yelling from a white pick-up truck “ if you don’t know where to go just turn around and go back to your country”.
Figured out my way and finally made it to work with mixed emotions of anger, humiliation and insulted to the core. I thought I had a good self esteem and did a decent job as a physician helping my patients - totally lost myself for the next few days. Started to question my own competency and started
wondering why I am in this country ( which I adopted as my home ten years prior to this experience) why do my patients seek my help and advice though I do not appear or speak like a typical American woman.
It took me several months and multiple discussions with my colleagues and friends to regain my composure and be my usual self.
3
My wife and I were told to "go back to your country" when we were queuing for pastries at Eataly in Boston. It was an elderly white lady carrying a basket of goods who enquired if we were in line.
She must've really wanted those pastries.
I sound like I'm making light of the matter but I was incensed and would've given the lady a dressing down if not for my wife holding me back.
And I remember it clearly to this day, to share this experience when prompted by the New York Times and anyone who ask about our experience in Boston, MA.
We left and have no intentions of returning.
And sadly I will never step into Eataly again even if we visit New York; even understanding it has nothing to do with the venue but it's defaced by that lady and my memory.
2
As heartbraking as these stories are, think about the DACA children and the TPS immigrants. These are people who came to this country by their parents as children, or to escape circumstances that America deemed horrible. They have worked hard, studied and, as a general population, settled in and made significant contributions to their communities and our country. They are now being told they do not belong here and will literally be "sent back" to countries they do not know, or fear for their lives if they return. Republicans want to deport them based solely based on the color of their skin. How afraid and horrible they must feel.
1
We must speak up and turn the table in these ugly situations:
1) “Stop being a bigot. Apologize to this person now!”
If that fails:
2) “May I have everyone’s attention? We have a prime example here of what sounded like un-Christian, rude, and ignorant behavior.”
Then, turning directly to the offender, say “okay, now that we have everyone’s attention, can you ask/say the mean thing you said again, but this time, first explain to us why you felt you could say that and what data you have that make it true?”
No eyes will be on the original victim. The ignorant bully will have to answer for her/his actions in public. I hope they feel shame, hurt, and embarrassment. If enough of us do this, they’ll shut up.
5
One of my friends remarked,"There's no insult for the people at the top".
People do think of insults but the people at the top don't care. or they understand the attempt was made but they don't dwell on the injustice of it.
Many of these anecdotes dwell on childhood insults. And few people mention many deliveries of insults.
So, I'm going to argue that people need to let go of the insults. It's well known that children and young people can be beasts. There are always ignorant, prejudiced, and nasty people
in the world. There is no way to get rid of them. The children will mostly grow out of it but the others remain.
If there is any consolation, it's that those people use ethnic insults as only part of their weaponry. They try many nasty verbal weapons, what one book called,"cold prickeliess". Ask Google "spell prickly" and read the definition... you will laugh.
To this degree it is worth learning not to care. The insult is retrieved from a stored repertoire of insults. That person might have learned it at their mother's knees or they may have read about it in a newspaper. But once it has been heard, it is often retained. Whatever the reason, the insult is dragged up as a less lethal weapon. And it is, in most times and communities, less likely to meet with violence.
Having an apt and humourous retort can take the sting out of most such insults. Using a direct and unpleasant retort is second best. Both are better than none, unless under threat of violence.
My mom is a French American, having come to the US as a WWII war bride. Her French American friend was visiting and they were conversing in French while shopping. An older white man approached them and angrily yelled “this is America, speak American!” The irony was that my foreign born mother and her friend spoke English better than the native born man.
5
@Tania Hanson-De Young Perhaps they spoke better English, but clearly not better “American”!
2
I think one thing that is forgotten in this narrative is that people in the US are the most likely to be xenophiles. That is to love strangers just because of their exoticism.
Well at least most of these people have the luxury of being told to go back to an a undisputed point of origin and agreed upon homeland.
Like Amos Oz said “Out there, in the world, all the walls were covered with graffiti: 'Yids, go back to Palestine,' so we came back to Palestine, and now the world at large shouts at us: 'Yids, get out of Palestine.'"
I am white, female, middle class...a so-called "average" looking person. But when I start to talk, some people remind me to speak better English and a few tell me to "go back to my country." Where is my country? Right here in USA. Why do I speak differently? I'm totally deaf in both ears so my speech is far from "perfect." How we have gotten to this low of judging people? I am appalled.
20
Fight back. I recommend this, when possible, for those attacked and to those of us who overhear such bullying and ignorance.
“What is your name? Can you spell that for me? Where do you live? Would you please repeat your nasty comment/question so I can record it? I’ll keep my camera rolling so you can explain your belief system.”
If we catch any such behavior on camera, post it so they lose their jobs.
8
I am white, German/Swedish, 74 years old and wept as I read these stories. I have to live in what should be a quiet pleasant time in my life -- in the hell that Trump has created, revealed, and released to me. It has consumed me. I just can't let go of how broken hearted I am, I drive my girlfriend crazy with it.
I am blessed to live in Brooklyn in a lovely integrated family building, and share the A train with so many beautiful people.
11
In the late 1960s I was told the following story by a white fellow, who drove a VW bus and had a beard (both often common among hippies). He was actually a PhD candidate in chemistry, and liked to build harpsichords, not exactly your typical hippie.
He had gone to visit relatives who lived near a small town in Mississippi. When he announced that he was going to drive into town to buy some pipe tobacco, he was told to take his 10-12 year old nephew with him.
When he asked why, he was told that if he went to town in a VW bus with out of state plates, and wearing a beard, he might not come home if he did not have the kid with him to inform the locals that he was the kid's uncle. It was clear that even if he was a white American going about his business, Southern accent and all, that was not going to protect him.
There is plenty of mindless bigotry out there, and having our wanna-be dictator stirring the pot does not help.
10
Although I was saddened to read so many of these stories (I have many of my own--the words "dirty Hindu" are not easily forgotten), it was somehow comforting to know that many others of many different races and ethnicities have undergone the same trauma--a strange nonwhite "brotherhood" of shared pain. Thanks to all for sharing.
9
I am an immigrant who has lived in the US for 6 years. I have lived all over the country, lived in 3 different states at different times and traveled to see 22 states of this great union. I would consider myself quite politically outspoken. But not once have I been told to go back to where I came from.
Maybe, there are a lot of immigrants that don't get told that. But maybe, just maybe, it has something to do that I am a white male from an English-speaking country.
I recall a time I visited a bar near the college I attended with a friend of mine. That friend was an international student from China. The bouncer asked to see his visa before allowing him in. That bouncer did not ask for any such documents from me. When he saw the visa, he saw it had expired and refused him entry. The bouncer clearly wasn't proficient in immigration laws or he would know that you do not need a current visa to maintain legal immigration status in the US. Even if so, what does his immigration status have to do with the bouncer's duty to ensure responsible service of alcohol? I have never been so furious in my life. And this was the moment the glass shattered for me and I saw the white privilege I have been benefiting from for all these years. I honestly believe xenophobia is nothing more than thinly-veiled racism and it needs to stop.
20
Where I live in Miami / Miami Beach, most people are from somewhere else, whether that's another state or another country. While context is everything, asking where someone is from is generally not seen as aggressive or belittling; it comes from a sense of curiosity and a desire to see what we have in common, be that language, a love of a certain cuisine, having visited someone's country of origin, etc.
Shortly after Hurricane Maria, I was in an Uber, talking to the driver about the storm. I mentioned that my aunt lives in Puerto Rico and we were concerned because we hadn't heard from her yet (side note, she was fine). He asked if I was Puerto Rican and I replied that I was not but my aunt had lived there since the 1970's. He asked where I was from and I said, "New Jersey, where are you from?". His reply, "Cuba". He then spent the rest of the ride saying how much he hoped the Puerto Ricans wouldn't come to South Florida and "ruin everything - we have enough foreigners here". I was taken aback. I mentioned that Puerto Ricans were US citizens . He thought they should go to New York instead. The rest of the ride was totally uncomfortable. I was truly saddened to encounter such bigotry in a place that welcomes people from all over.
8
Somehow racist slurs are automatically assumed to come from white people. This anecdote proves how racist people could come from anywhere regardless of their ethnicity or color of their skin. I am a person of color and have experienced discrimination firsthand from other people of color. My point is that racism is a much deeper rooted issue that needs to be addressed in a well thought out systemic manner.m
6
These recollections are heart wrenching. 💔🥺
6
While we’re having this conversation, what’s going on with these ICE raids?
You see what’s happening here, right?
Right now, as we discuss the slurs we’ve faced in the pages of the NYT, there are agents walking through the boroughs of this very city picking people up to actually send them back.
3
I was born in communist Poland to an American mother and a Polish father. My mother was a third generation Polish-American, whose family decided to move to Poland from Ohio after the WWI and polish independence after over a 100 years from Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungarian Empires. They did not expect WWII to come about. After the war my mother married my father and started a family. I have two older brothers, twins.
My family tied to emigrate from Poland back to the US for seven years, finally in 1954 we did. We moved to Cleveland, where we had family. My brothers and I went to a Catholic school several blocks away from where we lived. We were different; we didn't speak English and wore old clothes and short pants, which was a dead giveaway that we were immigrants. We were called DP's (Displaced Person) and commies, daily. My brothers who were 13 years old got beaten up almost daily on the way to and from school. I was 5 years old and in kindergarten where I was the only kid who did not speak English. The taunts and bullying were constant. This lasted about three months until I fought back. I remember being in front of the church steps, after mass and ready to go to class, when the two boys started taunting me and pushing me around, calling me names. I went into a blind rage and fought them, I beat them back until they started to cry, The nun's where trying to pull me off them and I couldn't stop. I remember it very well this wast 60 years ago...
8
I grew up in England and did not see anyone other than white people until I was about 8 years old. In the 60's, watching TV, I saw two African American little boys in church. They were about 4 and 6 or 7 years old. Their father had been murdered standing up for civil rights. The younger boy was crying, tears rolling down his cheeks and his older brother was comforting him. I remember feeling sorrow and very sad about what I was seeing. I remember that feeling very well and today I feel the same way. As a white woman I thought that the wound of slavery and racism was slowly healing. President Obama represented that healing to me. The wound still had a scab on it, but we were coming together and I felt optimistic. Trump has ripped that scab off and now there is a gaping, festering wound. I never really understood until now just how the evil of racism is embedded into the basic fabric of America. I feel kind of stupid not to see what was always there. Now I see it clearly. It's is really hard to see these people at the Trump rally shouting " send her back" and looking so very pleased with themselves. This is more than sad, it is sickening. don't know whether I want to live here anymore.
10
I really appreciate and was surprised to read the few entries from people who admitted they were one of the ugly “go back” bullies and that they now regret it. Thank you to the NYT for publishing that perspective and thank you to the few who fessed up. I’m only disappointed that there are not more of you.
4
I grew up in Sugar Land, TX, a place that has even gotten news coverage for being “diverse”. But I still remember very clearly an episode that occurred probably about 12 years ago, when my dad and I drove separate cars to our neighborhood Walmart to get the oil changed for one, with the intention of then driving the other car back home together and not having to be stranded. When one of the mechanics came up to us and I explained why we were there, he stopped me, and said, I want him (my dad) to tell me. My parents immigrated from China to the U.S. when I was just an infant. My dad speaks English well, but also has a very noticeable accent. And he responded, and repeated what I had said. But the guy wasn’t satisfied. He kept wanting him to repeat it, despite my dad enunciating and being v eye clearly understandable. When I tried to jump in, he wouldn’t let me, saying, “I want him to say it!” And clearly getting much enjoyment from it. When I tried to confront him, my dad out his hand on my shoulder and told me to let it go, that it was fine. We finally left in frustration because he refused to do the job, stating that he “couldn’t understand” and that we should “go back to where we came from.” It was the first time I had ever felt so impotent and angry. I have had several more instances of such behavior directed at me since then, many in the years of Trump’s reign, but that was the first time I really realized that people would always see us as “other.”
7
First, some light relief:
I live exactly zero kilometres from Earth. If I went on a mission to Mars I'd then hope to "go back to where I came from". My sympathies to all Americans who have been told this by their fellow Americans.
And some consoling thoughts:
"My race is your race, our race, the human race."
"We really should respect and love one another because the proper attitude to have when confronted with one of us is reverence and awe."
"Our present official name is 'homo sapiens', which means 'wise human' - but that’s often a prescription not a description."
"The racist are ignorant. The racist are inferior."
"The more sophisticated something is the more spectacularly it can go awry."
This very important article reveals the mythical truth about being an American. We think to be American is to be tolerant, to treat others as you want to be treated. But in reality, humans don't do tolerance all that well and when our President signals it's okay to malign anyone, it opens the floodgates of racism suppressed, once again. It's not whether you are Black, Jewish, Korean, Muslim, Hispanic, Boer, Cherokee, Inuit, Irish, Italian or a mix of all ten, you are not Anglo/Saxon Protestant and never will be. This is also why reparations is a bad idea. There's not enough money in the world that can heal any form of racism. Deal with it and prosper. At least, here you have that chance regardless of who's president.
1
I have been playing the game of life for over 70 years. It is never to late to learn.
I am a hetero white guy, born in Brooklyn, big enough that I played football as a defensive tackle. My very short story is that when I went away to college in the early 1960s, another freshman (from Indiana) asked me where I was from, and I said "Brooklyn, NY." His response was "I thought you were a foreigner." Yes, that was uncomfortable to hear, and it was something I was not expecting. But I finally decided that his stupidity was not my burden to bear.
Before I allow anyone to insult me, on any account, i have to respect the source.
This may not wash away any of the feelings of shock and being abused that some people have expressed, but I would offer the following advice.
Not to make light of any of the published comments, but if someone were to tell me that I am ugly, or stupid, or whatever, my first reaction is to tell myself that if I do not respect the source of the comment, it has no value, and allowing it to demean me is foolish.
Tell the next person who insults you "If I do not respect the source, I do not respect the comment. I do not respect you."
If you are an American citizen, as I am, preface the above comment with that fact.
Do not allow someone else's bigotry or ignorance to become your problem.
2
@Joe From Boston that is a great sentiment to have but for those of us who regularly hear the demeaning comments it’s not always that simple. We shouldn’t have to “not allow someone else’s bigotry or ignorance to become our problem” I have often found that it’s in my best interest to make those comments the center of my problem by loudly and swiftly retorting. Turning tables on my attacker in anyway possible has benefited me more and made me feel better than turning the other cheek and ignoring such comments. It’s all about perspective. If you can put yourself in the shoes of others, you can fully understand the devastation and impact these racist and ignorant people have on the lives of they’re victims. Especially when the victims do not defend themselves.
1
The examples of racist, xenophobic conduct mentioned in the story and comments are sickening, and legitimizing this sort of hatred, as Trump recently has done, must be strongly and continuously opposed.
But let me mention two small counter-examples from my own experience. Some years ago, I was visiting our local zoo when, within earshot, though apparently not specifically directed at me, 10-12 year old African-American boy, loudly proclaimed "white people s**k." None of the adults with him appeared to react.
In the swimming of a very diverse apartment complex, I was told by a lifeguard (a foreign student on a summer job) that some Muslim women had complained that my having hugged my girlfriend -- quite decorously in fact -- made them uncomfortable. I asked the lifeguard to reply to them that such conduct was quite acceptable mainstream behavior here. I felt like saying -- but refrained - that if normal behavior in this culture made them uncomfortable, why did they choose to become part of it? And why did they feel it was appropriate to attempt to impose their cultural or religious preferences on me?
My point is that, while the current political climate gives rise to nastiness aimed against those perceived as non-white, culturally insensitive comments are not a monopoly of white folks.
I’m glad I’m not alone
2
You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
Richard Rogers
4
NYT. Did you get zero stories where bystanders intervened to support the person being targeted? I personally think there is hope that at some point we can come together as Americans and celebrate our beautiful diversity. Any tiny event that can show us how to get there should be celebrated. If you got even one story that showed how bystanders can help to dilute the hate, you should have included it.
1
I was surprised that the New York Times states in this article hate against African Americans, Jewish Americans, Natives Americans, Arab Americans as targets without mentioning the prevalent hate
to Hispanic Americans which are well represented in the different accounts in the article. Was the omission intentional or the expression of a more prevalent hate? I am really concerned.
1
news flash! White people with accents are told this too.
@John
Non-white people are immediately "othered" simply by the way they look.
3
I am a white female Canadian woman that was told to go back to my country while in Arizona ? Racist & narrow minded people.
But not all American are like that.
1
So ironic that many of those who spew hate and racism view themselves as Christians.
8
"If you are not native American, I will have to take you back with me"
This should be a good retort
6
I was a college student the first time I was told to go back to where I came from. It happened at the same bus stop on Speedway Blvd, on the campus of Univ. of Arizona, yelled out the window of a car by a drunk man, and then another time from the back of a pickup truck filled with rowdy frat boys. They threw Big Gulp Slushees, crushed, half-drunk beer cans at me, and yelled, “Go home, spic!” They laughed and slapped each other on the back as they drove away. (Back at my dorm later, I would have to look up the word “spic”.) I had been riding the bus to a job required of my major, where my employer told my professor during his first on-site visit, “You know how lazy those people are!” in response to a question about how I was faring. My prof looked dumbfounded. I felt ashamed. After the interview, we met in the hallway and I explained they had wanted me to clean their house and I had refused. He told me to never go back, my course requirement was completed after 5 weeks. That was fine with me.
4
I was bullied in middle school for just about everything: the excess hair on my arms, my baby fat, and my ethnicity.
I don't remember the first time I heard a racist taunt--and, of course, at 10 years old I did not know it was racist--or why they began, but I suspect it was because of the fact that I spoke perfect Spanish in the weekly Spanish lessons.
I was called a "beaner" and "wetback," and on the bus home the boys in my grade would throw crushed-up Goldfish at me, shouting to "go back to my country." When I was called a "sp*c," I asked a good friend of mine what that meant. She told me not to repeat it because it's a bad word.
I stopped speaking Spanish, and would refuse my parents' efforts to have Spanish spoken at the dinner table. I lost a good portion of my vocabulary, and my tongue felt leaden whenever I tried speaking Spanish after several years of not doing so.
I joke to myself that I "learned" how to speak Spanish, because I did not start doing so regularly--willingly, and with pride--until my last year of high school.
1
This was during the Obama administration. I was visiting a cousin in Brooklyn. A friend of his was there — a Polish immigrant and recently naturalized US citizen. He offered the opinion — not in so many words, but slyly and obliquely — that blacks were lazy and stupid and pampered by the government. This man was my cousin’s friend, so I said nothing, but I’m sorry now that I didn’t tell him to go back to where he came from.
6
Maybe 12 years ago, we had just gotten home from church. The kids ran inside and my husband and I were gathering things from the car. We saw our next door neighbor outside on her lawn. We had never engaged much. We knew there may have been something off about her. We had heard stories from other neighbors. Nevertheless, my husband and I said, let’s say hi to her. So we said, “Good Morning.” “She turned to look us and yelled,” Since when did wetbacks marry n-gg—s! Go back to Africa! Go back to Mexico!” and she continued to rant, yelling some other expletives. We though maybe she had some mental illness. I was trembling with anger and shock. We yelled at her to go back inside. However, a few weeks later we saw her in church. Her demeanor changed from pleasant to to an evil stare the moment she saw my husband. She continued to live next door and we never, ever spoke to her again. She’s gone now but that encounter will forever be etched in my memory.
2
I'm a white American, female, and understand the slurs expressed toward people of color, because white men feel free to express them toward any woman who challenges them, no matter the color. I also know that people won't come to your aid.
A month ago, a man threatened to punch me in the face in front of my building in Greenwich Village. He kept coming back and threatening to punch me, even though it was in the midst of a crowded street fair and there were other people around.
I froze, and after he finally let me alone, a man came up and said "I saw what happened. I'm so sorry." He appeared to be (east) Indian.
Had he intervened, I'm sure that guy who threatened me would have beaten him. Any other man intervening would have had to have been way bigger than the one saying he was going to punch me.
Last week, it was a white woman calling me a "Nazi bitch." I have blond hair and blue eyes. I did nothing other than walk past her on the street. I knew she was crazy; that I shouldn't say anything, but I am really tired of having to never say anything to people who abuse others. So I gave her the finger.
It's tiring to constantly have to be quiet when others are bullying. But I don't get the constant racial bullying that others do. It's terrible. We have such a racial problem, and most people don't want to confront it. Scared? Not sure. But it needs to stop.
4
America is now officially, from the top down, a Fascist country.
America that saved the whole world from Fascism 75 years ago.
Shame on America.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
5
Tell people who tell you to go back to your country that they should go back to theirs.
After all, a whole bunch of Caucasian colonisers were responsible for the genocide, enslavement and mass extermination of the original populations of of the Americas, Asia, Australia and Africa. Really something to brag about, right?
Idiots have yelled/hurled this racist slur at me too many times in America, Canada and Europe.
You ignore it or roll your eyes if the situation is going to escalate otherwise or if you think it's possible, just tell them exactly the same thing. Having the pleasure of watching racists deal with this apparently mindboggling reply has been very satisfying.
Oh yes, and take out your phone and ask if they would like to repeat their racist slurs.
7
I still remember riding the school bus for the first time when I was 8. A brown-eyed, brown skinned boy in a sea of white and affluent suburban children. The taunting began immediately, and while it began comments about how dirty my skin was, it soon turned to what kind of feces my family must eat and culminated in the children on the bus singing “Go back to Jamaica”. I was in tears on that first day of school, and also confused, since I was born in Chicago and my parents are from India. It is decades later and I’m dating someone from Texas who is white, and my sense of the racism and bigotry lurking in the heart of America is a hidden wall, like a buried sandbar that alters the currents between us. During the campaign, I remember the Obama speech on race. I’m still waiting for a white politician to do the same.
3
To Trump,
I am Absolutely American.
In the fall of 1975, my parents, my sister and I immigrated to America as refugees from Vietnam. Each of us had one suitcase of belonging but an endless bounty of dreams. That fall, I went to my first school in the US, a public junior high school in a white neighborhood of Queens. I was the only Vietnamese there. On my first week of school, a bully called me ‘Gook, go back to the jungle and get out of here’. It lasted for 2 long years and on most days I went to school scared, but I was determined to endure. I was determined to endure to prove that bully wrong: that I am the most damn patriotic American ever, that I am Absolutely American, that no one can ever again question that I belong here in America. And to prove it all, I was determined to go to that most American of all institutions- West Point. And to serve honorably in the Army. But 44 years later, Trump brought it back- the pain and the question of belonging of every immigrant that has come to America believing that ‘All Men are Created Equal’. For me and every immigrant, being American is an ideal as Reagan succinctly put it: "Through this Golden Door has come millions of men and women. These families came here to work. Others came to America from often harrowing conditions. They didn’t ask what this country could do for them but what they could do to make this refuge the greatest home of freedom in history."
5
I am a first generation American Jewish man 77 years old and "look" Jewish. I have lived in New York Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta and traveled all over the USA. Never once in my life have I experienced any prejudice toward me or experienced any Antisemitism.
If I experience any hostility from another person, I say to myself "that is their problem, not mine." and do not take it personally. I then ask them " Are you having a hard time today?" Most of the time they immediately become friendly and tell me their problems or stressful situation.
My advice to people who are not WASPS is to be sympathetic when a person with inferior morals and intelligence tries to insult you. Respond with love against hate. Ask them nicely what problems they are having and what stress they are under. Ask them if there is anything you can do to help them. They are probably Christian so if they continue with hate ask them "what would Jesus do?" Do not try to prove to them that you are just as American as they are - that will only escalate the confrontation. Try to understand where their hate is coming from and then you may be able to help them. They need help. Hate is destructive of the soul. You are superior to them.
17
I am a blond, European immigrant. Interestingly I have never been told by anyone to go back, even though I have an accent. It is and has been always pure racism, fueled presently by a racist president.
17
These acknowledgements make me want to cry.
11
I was born into the Jim Crow era of the South. Although I was not even 10 years old, I remember the "whites only" and "colored only" water fountains, restrooms, even the movie balconies where blacks were required to sit. My mom says, occasionally I'd sneak away and would drink from the first water fountain I came to. Whites would only smile when I accidently drank from the "whites only" tap.
When the Civil Rights movement galvanized the country, whites got much bolder. The name-calling (always with the N-word), the shoving, pushing. All I was trying to do was go to class in junior high school.
That's when I first heard "go back to where you came from." I immediately thought "I was born in Cleveland... why would I want to go back to Cleveland?" Later, the taunts were more specific: "why don't you go back to Africa?"
Never been there either.
After Barack Obama was elected president, I thought America had finally turned the corner.. no more race hatred. It was only when Donald Trump began his campaign with the birther issue, that I shuddered to think, all those racists are coming back, out of hiding.
Today with Trump's blessing, I know they are truly back, in full force.. their hatred of minorities forced into the closet for so many years, now back to the surface.
I don't expect white America to feel what I feel, nor even understand why Trump is a racist.
Just don't criticize me for pointing out painful, obvious racism when I see and hear it.
16
As an 4th generation American of German ancestry who has never faced this sort of abuse, I want to tell each person featured that my heart breaks for you. It infuriates me that idiots can be so cruel.
I suspect your abusers are jealous and frightened of the new competition they from you and suspect they won't match up. That's obviously no excuse; it's only a theory.
I tell you this: you have every right to be here. And know that the vast majority pf Americans, including European Americans like me, want you here. As for the mean people, trust me: karma will get them.
10
I was walking past the middle school with my father when some fire trucks showed up, lights flashing but no sirens. I skipped ahead of my father to investigate, much to his chagrin, who chased after me to pull me away. While doing so, a firefighter gestured angrily at my father, yelling “GET OUT OF HERE CHINK!” It was no less than the esteemed town fire chief, humiliating my father in his attempt to “clear the scene”. I was probably about 5 or 6.
Here’s the thing: my father was an abusive paranoid schizophrenic. In reality, I actually was still across the street from the fire trucks when my father, being a paranoiac, freaked out like I was about to be hit by a train, because I had dared run more than 5 feet ahead of him. Fire Chief Joe instinctively reacted to what must have looked like some crazy dude running TOWARDS a potentially dangerous scene. He likely never saw me - the reason why this man was running in the first place - because the average sane person would not have noticed a child standing such a far distance from the school.
To those who dismiss us, who compare the “go back” epithets to being bullied for wearing glasses, or “it’s not like it was cancer”, could you tell me - the daughter of an abusive, mentally ill parent who also happened to be an immigrant minority, since we get cancer and depression and whatnot just like white people - do you think if it had been a crazy white dude in glasses, that the fire chief would have screamed “GET OUT OF HERE, 4 EYES!”?
5
In the very first paragraph, the article implies that it's just fine to say "go back where you came from" to people who are foreigners, visitors, undocumented immigrants, or green card holders: "a reminder that they haven’t always been welcome in the country where they were born or naturalized." What if they were neither born in the U.S. nor naturalized? Apparently, we shouldn't care.
It's not about race, religion, or ethnicity. Rather, it is about "The Other", he or she who is "different." This really isn't new. The well-documented Peloponnesian War was all Greek. What is new is that America is an experiment in a consciously multi-whatever society, and we judge our successes and failures by that standard.
"Go back to...." is nothing new. In the 60s people would come up to me, often spit at me, not infrequently start a fight, and/or simply scream in my face, "Go back to Russia you EXPLETIVE commie!!!" A variation had me going back to Cuba. This was all because I had a beard.
Life is largely a Rorschach blot. People tend to see either what they hope to see or what they fear.
Earlier generations could tell their own stories. As bad as this all is, which is very bad, let's not give the xenophobes and others who hate and/or simply are fearful the power they do not deserve by making it a defining contemporary issue or by letting them make you feel humiliated. When an idiot acts like an idiot, it's about them, not you!
Yes, discrimination and threats are objective realities you have to deal with in a concrete manner. However, humiliation and other such feelings are subjective. You are whoever you are. Others may wish to, but they cannot demean you in your own mind. Only you can do that. Don't let them push you into it. That will be your strongest response, the best role model for your kids, and absolutely frustrating (to put it politely!) to the idiots.
4
One of my earliest memories as an transracial adoptee is being at a family reunion, the only Asian person among white people. When I arrived one of my cousins just a few years older than I wrinkled her nose and said, when are they doing to send her back? Classic.
6
What a piece of journalism ! My blood is still boiling. I hope these US citizens will remember the voting power they have and use it on Election Day.
7
In 2008, there was a constantly suspicious, bigoted woman working in my department. She didn't want the IT department working on her computer (which was owned by the company) because the head of the IT Department was a Muslim who had been born in Pakistan. When we were having a party for a co-worker who was expecting a new baby, she took one look at the package the present we had purchased had come in, and blurted loud enough for everyone to hear, "Why can't they print the instructions in just English? We don't need all these other languages! This is America! We speak English here!" Everybody was stunned into silence, as her outburst had thrown a pall on what was supposed to have been a joyful occasion. I calmly said to her, "Why don't you ask the people in China who made it?" Several of my co-workers laughed. Later, my supervisor thanked me. The bigoted co-worker was eventually fired because it was discovered she had lied about her credentials on her job application and resume. Good riddance.
11
So sorry for this affected by the ugliness of racism and xenophobia. After WW2, when my dad came here from Germany, he experienced "go home" from relatives in the US, other soldiers in the US Army he served in for 7 years and at his job of 40 years.
Being a 1st generation US citizen and loathing the current occupant of the White House, someone out there should be telling me to go home. I understand my privilege in not being told to do so. Hang in there. Things will get better. And vote. Everyone, please, vote the vileness out of the White House and Congress.
6
In response to comments in the vein of “get over it, we were all teased as kids”: most of us did, but we wonder why you haven’t.
Children of color, even ones who are immigrants, get bullied for things unrelated to race or national origin, just like you. I was also bullied for my braces and glasses as a child. Maybe you were even teased for being a “dumb blonde”, which I can’t relate to.
But something about “go back” was different. I ACTUALLY wore braces. You were ACTUALLY blonde. What the heck could make you think I’m from a country as foreign as X? This made no sense. Our language was English, our music western.
Was it because I wasn’t white?
You see, I agree race shouldn’t be so central to my identity, but you told me it was - less in telling me to “go back”, and more in the complicity of those who either said nothing, dismissed it, or even encouraged it. The other kids laughed too. I looked at the teachers, waiting for them to say something. Nothing.
So I guess that was my answer.
In spite of those schoolyard bullies - the first people to tell us our race was our identity - we HAVE moved on, becoming parents, servicemembers, whatever. But it seems you’re stuck in the past, voting in the bully and his complicit enablers to lead our country.
I’ve since lost the braces and glasses, but I can’t change my race. You CAN change who you vote for, and your vote has told me you have never moved on from those playground bully days.
9
I can’t be the first person to notice that most of these comments happened during childhood from other children. While it may be especially traumatic for kids to be on the receiving end of such treatment, remember that these kids don’t always know what they are saying either. You have to let things that happened to you as a child go at some point, especially if you weren’t physically injured.
4
First, they also happen plenty in adulthood.
Second, the fact that all these people remained in the country and go about their daily lives reading the New York Times, etc., is a good indication that they did let it go as much as they could.
Third, despite your attempt to helpfully dismiss the problem as something in one’s past, when this does happen to a child, it becomes an existential trauma. You are literally told you do not belong in the only place that you can be.
30
it also doesn't say much that the attitude of children is replicated by our president
17
My first distinct Go Back experience came at age 29, and it was from my parents. I’m a Korean adoptee, and my parents were Trump supporters/apologists in 2016.
I was 29, visiting my parents house in suburban Michigan for the first time after the election. We were discussing current events, and my mom made a comment about me getting deported and the rest of my family laughed along.
I was shocked, but they didn’t seem to notice. I explained that it wasn’t a joke, that families were being separated in my town, Ann Arbor. My parents shrugged it off, saying it wouldn’t happen to me because “you have papers.” It wasn’t a blatant attack from a stranger, but coming from my family, in our home, it felt like an uprooting.
113
I appreciate the NYT asking for these episodes.
I will work my way through all the comments.
Now from the other side. I am 73 and of the pale pigment part of the nation. I grew up in small towns in GA/SC-father a lawyer, step father a doctor.
Did I ever say ‘send them back to Africa!!’. In 1954 as Ike enforced the law with troops in Little Rock, I must have said that every day. I am sure my friends and I chanted it. It was as common as saying good morning.
Did I ever shout at a dark pigment person? I must have. Don’t remember, but I was loaded, locked, cocked and looking for a target.
I will give you another natural as breathing from every day in high school: “I can do this because I am Free-White-and16”
I have spent 55 years living a project, rewiring my heat and brain and mouth over dark-pigment-phobia and tangled unearned pale-pigment-privileges.
That crowd in Greenville last Wednesday? From that grows Lynch mobs. Trust me: I have done the research.
Stay safe everyone.
36
The phrase was yet another thing that Trump said that he should not have, and his supporters should not chant it, either.
But calling it "racist" is a matter of opinion. Specifically, it represented a calling out of Rep. Omar who suffered in her native Somalia, was allowed to enter the U.S., live a better, safer life, become a U.S. citizen, remarkably only in America, be elected to Congress -- and then promptly rail against the U.S. and American Jews. So yes, some Americans might say from their gut, or from the hip, "OK, so go back where you came from." That's all it is, a "come back" political statement, not some grand moral imperative to have a cow about.
2
It’s time you thoroughly read Rep. Omar’s actual words, full length, not snippets.
14
@Scott - No, it is not "only in America" that refugees get elected to public office. Refugees and immigrants have been voted into Parliament in Canada, and even into the federal cabinet. Several refugees and immigrants have been elected to provincial and municipal positions, too.
Immigrants and refugees have also been elected in Australia and the UK, that I know of. And probably in other countries, too.
You seem to take issue with the fact that Rep. Omar has criticized US policy domestically and in Israel. Is this not her prerogative as a congresswoman? Why should her ethnicity require her to be silent?
Have you not read or understood the stories of the many, many people in this article who were told "go back where you came from" for no reason at all?
Yes, this is something to "have a cow about". Very much so.
14
We , as citizens, black , white, brown or in between, have the right of free speech. Rep Omar voiced criticism if Israel ‘s policy .
That is NOT Anti- Semitism .
She , as you , have every right to do so without being told ‘ go back ‘.
We will fight back .
7
Total hogwash. I’ve been told to go back as well, for being in a Puerto Rican neighborhood and not being Hispanic. I didn’t even remember it until now. You’re finding stories to fit the narrative to embarrass and shame Trump supporters into thinking they are supporting a racist. He’s not a racist - he was the first person to open a country club to Black and Jewish people in Palm Beach. He’s from Queens - the most diverse area of the country and as such he just speaks his mind because that’s what you do there. Political correctness isn’t a thing in Queens and people do get along despite that. It’s called being real and or using humor to diffuse differences. As for his comments, you know as well as I that he meant “if you’re going to adopt an anti American attitude to the extant of accusing law enforcement of running a concentration camp and also being very lax toward 9/11, then you could tell us how it’s done in other countries so much better. That’s what he said. That was the real heart of it. The left is running with it in an attempt to convince casual or swing voters that Trump is a racist. It’s unbelievable.
3
your anger betrays your truth
22
@First Gen
Of course Trump is a racist. My grandparents, mother, aunt, uncle and cousins are from Queens. I attended Queens College and have many friends who grew up in Queens. No one whom I know who is from Queens sounds anything like Donald Trump.
No. People from Queens don't :" Just speak their minds."
You can't be serious by stipulating that Trump's was "being real " by having told four Congresswomen :"Go back to your countries."
What's unbelievable is that you believe that Trump is not a racist.
16
@DJS
My husband is from Queens and I live there. Have you read thre research regarding Trump being the first person in Palm Beach to open a Coo try Club that doesn’t bar other races? The old school society there did not allow black ppl or Jewish ppl in .. of course they didn’t let Trump in either bc he is crass. So he opened his own - Mar a lago and called out the racism. These things are not reported. The media is showing a false narrative. Even the reporting on his tweets is spun. Did you read the tweets? Remember that many conservatives have family in the military- his tweets come from a place of patriotism not racism. If you listen to one side of MSM exclusively you’re going to be propagandized. It is very important to listen to two sides throughout the day
Great article!
My father and I went to a 14th Air Force Reunion in Crystal Springs,Virginia in 2001.
More than 300 people had gathered to tour the Air and Space
Museum out near Dulles Airport. Our family has Latin and
Native American roots. So many of the people kept asking where
we were from? After all, all of them were white.
When the guide asked this same group that the Fourteenth
Air Force started as the 23rd Fighter Group ( Flying Tigers)
and wanted a show of hands as to highlight the original group,
only my father raised his hand.
I can remember the defining silence to this day. I can also
remember the questions as to where we came from ceased.
7
I'm white and my family, of German and Polish backgrounds, has been in this country for several generations, since the early 1900's. My last name is German, but could be construed as Jewish although I am not.
One morning when I was graduate school, I was having coffee with classmates. I was thinking about moving and was discussing my plans. One classmate suggested I move to a nearby city that is predominantly white and Jewish, so I could be "with my kind". I was totally taken aback and had nothing to say. This man was a naturalized American citizen from Cuba.
In the late '90's, I worked with two guys that were brothers. The older brother was white, while his younger brother was Asian. The younger brother had been adopted. One of my co-workers kept saying he couldn't understand how they were brothers; how one "came out" looking white and the other Asian. It was a totally uncomfortable situation because no one wanted to say, "he's adopted" and make the younger brother feel "other", but at the same time, by not saying anything, he was still feeling "other". Just a weird situation all around.
1
Serrly Vega's words about feeling like an outsider in her adoptive land echoes the experience of many immigrants. The daughter of Russian-speaking immigrants, I lived a parallel existence in 1970s New York, immersing myself in the large Russian-speaking community, which seemed more real and vibrant to me than the outside world. That world was at once attractive and hostile to children with Slavic-sounding names. At the height of the Cold World, we were called "commie," "Red Devil," and told to go back to where we came from. We made peace with this scarring early experience. Some of us became scholars of Russia, worked for USAID, nonprofits and banks that did business in the Former Soviet Union in the 1990s. Others remained in their close-knit communities and observed holidays according to the Julian calendar. Still others have left their past behind. We are all Americans now. In becoming our new selves, we have shed the old, perhaps the most intimate part of ourselves, so that a new stitched-together identity could emerge. This may be a rite of passage for all immigrants: an ultimate acceptance of a new place, a new self, a new reality. This is the story of America. The remarkable thing is how quickly we forget it when a new wave of strangers comes to our shores.
1
Interestingly enough, I am a redheaded, blue eyed and very fair Irish-American woman. Over the years I have lived overseas and been the “odd one” who stood out. As a child, we lived in a Latin American country. As an adult I lived in a European country. In both cases it was either obvious, or close to it, that I was foreign.
Though I was never told to go back to my country, I was frequently asked all kinds of (weird, intrusive, clueless) questions about my origin and my beliefs. People also frequently made assumptions (often incorrect ones) about me simply because I was American. I truly believe that in most cases, they were simply trying to learn more about me and about Americans in general.
Because of all of the questions I have been asked over the years, I sometimes will ask someone I meet where their ancestors are from. It makes me sad to think that I may have offended them. What I really want to know is “How has your cultural background influenced you?” just as I was asked when I was the “other.” We are all a product of our background and I love learning about the differences. Believe me, my Korean-American friend, my Ecuadorian-American friend and my German-American friend have had vastly different influences in their lives. And yet, they are all Americans and contribute exciting differences to this melting pot.
I wish we could share these differences and learn new ways to view the world. The US is not perfect and other cultures have a lot to offer.
@C
This is the kind of question that can be asked ... but only after you get to know a person well enough that you are both comfortable sharing personal information.
To ask someone this question while first meeting them means that you are seeing them primarily for the way they look.
This is not the kind of question that usually pops up when white people meet.
This story deserves two Pulitzer prizes, one for the content, which clarifies beautifully one of the issues we face as a country, and one for use of the internet to get access to a story.
Almost 50 years ago a fellow grad student (an Indian named Jayaram, renowned in our field before he even got his degree) told me that in America "they never let you forget you're foreign."
7
I was 8 years old. My family had moved from a tiny apartment in Woodside, Queens to a modest ranch house on a cul de sac on Nassau County's north shore. Heading outside onto our first-ever lawn, my sister and I were subjected to shouts of "Go back where you came from" accompanied by stones thrown at us until we ran terrified back into the house. I learned then from my parents that we were the first and only Jewish family to move into that zip code. I've never recovered from feeling like I have to defend myself.
1
The Chinese were told to go back after they completed the western portion of the transcontinental railroad 150 years ago. The Chinese Exclusion Act put it into law. By staying home, they have created the largest political and economic powerhouse in the world.
Maybe it is time to think about going back.
I’d like to remind you all that at the core our country is the idea that there should be no taxation without representation. Meaning that no one should put up with being a second class citizen. We come from a long tradition of people who stood up from themselves and did not allow others to define them. The next time someone tell you to go back to your country your answers should be a string of 4 letter words.
Thank you for reaching out to your readers with your question and for compiling this set for us to read. MLK would be so disappointed in our lack of progress.
5
My family (brown) visited an amusement park in upstate New York around 2005. My kids (5 and 7 years) were in line for a ride when another little white boy was going in and out of the line. The line kept moving and when the boy came back my daughter was about to embark on the ride. The boy was upset that he missed his place in line brought that to the attention of his mother. The mother was irate and yelled at my children to “go back to your country”. When I tried to intervene, she told me “to learn to speak English”. My kids broke out in tears. The young white park employee who was supervising the ride and another white parent who was near by consoled my kids. The park supervisor (another young white employee) took my kids to another area of the park and got them free ice cream cones. I’m thankful for the bystanders and park employees for making my kids feel better that day. My kids have grown into young people who will stand up for justice.
6
You wouldn’t think an old white guy like me would have a “why don’t you go back” experience, but I do.
When I was a child, Polack jokes were a big thing, and I had them aimed at me at school, and even from some who were part of my family, by marriage, and thus not part of my ethnic group.
It was all good fun, I suppose, but I remember feeling that there must be something wrong with me to be part of this ridiculed group.
So when the Black is Beautiful movement came along, I paid attention, and I read books by Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver, and they helped me. And when my sister got the idea that we should visit the old country, I got on board, and we did it in 1989.
When I came back I was sitting at our block party talking about our wonderful trip, and one of my neighbors looked at me with pure hatred and asked why I didn’t stay there. It stopped me cold. The jokes were one thing, but here was someone who really believed I was inferior.
I grew up in the 60s, and my friends and I liked to think we were better than that, that our generation would put aside the pettiness and hatred that had always been a part of our great country. But here we are, freed by our president to be as racist as we secretly have wanted to be.
It’s so easy to forget that all of us are immigrants, and as such, are hated by somebody else for exactly the same reasons we pretend it’s alright to hate others.
7
Congratulations to the Times for soliciting and publishing these comments. I myself grew up the U.S. awash in white privilege, but my late husband immigrated here at age 60. He was tall and fairly white, but he did speak English with a slight accent. It didn't occur to me that he would ever be told to go back where he came from. I realize now that if anyone told him that outside of my presence, he would never have mentioned it to me. It would have been too humiliating.
1
It appears to me that the biggest problem in the US with white citizens is that they are monolingual and xenoglossophobiacs. All to often when a problem arises, those who speak a foreign language are chastised for not speaking English. Americans on the whole, are simply afraid of foreign languages and since they cannot understand them, they fear them. I speak several languages, none of which is Spanish or Arabic, and if I encounter someone who speaks one of the languages that I know well enough to be conversational, those around me get antsy. I guess they think we are talking about overthrowing the government or something else that they consider evil. The problem will worsen since many schools are dropping their language departments, even colleges, so the Americans after that will all only be monolingual. Knowing many languages, and my basic ones are Yiddish (though I am not a Jew), German, and French. If you don't use those languages, you lose them, so I try to stay active with all of them. What will happen is that their personal vocabularies will drop in the number of words that they know or can figure out if they had a language background. In addition to the aforementioned languages, I also took Latin. Insofar as Greek terms, Anglicized, I have no problems with them, but I cannot speak Greek. With my languages, I can crack almost every word I come upon, I seldom have to look up a word
1
There are many days, in the current climate, that I would love to go back to where my ancestors came from. Denmark is sane, and Danes often rank as the happiest people in the world. We are all from somewhere else.
1
I had to stop reading these heartbreaking stories because my eyes became too clouded by tears. Thank you to all those who shared your experiences. Hopefully, bringing these stories into the open will enlighten at least a few people who would otherwise have unthinkingly yelled a "go back" insult in a moment of anger.
2
Sadly, Trump's reelection strategy is to tap into a huge reservoir of racial hatred and bigotry in America.
Given, the Republican Party's cynical support for the man. I don't pretend to know what the solution is for such a problem, but I do know its very, very dangerous for America and it could to its demise as a nation and international leader a if this man is not thrown out of office.
4
I have been an immigrant for 20 years. I am hispanic and bilingual. I haven't faced a situation as bad as the ones listed here, except maybe one time at a bank some guy yelled at a friend and I "Where are you from?" because where speaking Spanish. I just told him I was american and dismissed him and that was that. However when in public I am always self concsious about speaking Spanish too loud, as if I am on guard or expect this to happen. As if I should be ashamed for some reason. I am raising my children fully bilingual and it annoys me and hurts me that I have to prepare them for the eventuality that they may face this situation at some point in school. Although I don't want to break their innocence I fully intend to prepare them to face the bullies. In fact in my paranoia I guess I am prepared too, if I ever I am faced with those comments, maybe I will just say "No, I don't want to". Some people may never accept that we become american through naturalization. This is still a free country and although this may change someday, for as long as that is true, I will live here.
2
It saddens my heart to read all these comments. I am truly sorry for the behavior of others in this country. My mother was from the south, and she and her whole family were prejudiced against anyone that did not have white skin. My siblings are that way also, as are most of my cousins.
I guess I believed too much in "Jesus loved the children of the world" and the "Love your neighbor as yourself" to be as angry and nasty as my siblings and mother were. I apologize if any of them has said any nasty words to my fellow Americans. They are all church-going people and should live and think better than they do.
I am also sad for America and wonder why some people's religion teaches not the words of God, but the words of hate.
3
While waiting in line to enter a KKW Beauty pop up shop in Los Angeles, I was told to get back in line or else I’d get deported by the security staff there. I responded that he can go first, and I’m Native American, he’s occupying stolen land. If that wasn’t enough, he followed me around inside the store then telling me if I wasn’t going to make a purchase, I need to leave. I’m Native American, from the Navajo Nation.
4
I've been told to go back to China multiple times (I grew up in Japan so I found it amusing as well as annoying) but the one I remember clearly came from a black woman as I was crossing a street in Central Harlem. She was angry and screaming and I just happened to cross the street at the same time.
Internalized racism does live in all of us. We have so much work to do.
1
It was five years ago during a job interview with a national corporation headquartered in Columbus Ohio. I had applied for a job as a communications manager with the company. I interviewed in person for the role, but didn’t hear back from the director. When I called to follow up he asked to meet me at a local coffee shop where he attempted, in many different indirect ways, to get me to divulge my race. “Do you speak any other languages?” “Just French,” I lied. “Where are you from?” “Here,” I said. “No, where are your parents from?” “From right here I said.” He stood up, visibly angry, and bent over the table so that we were nose to nose and said: “I think you should go back to wherever it is that you come from.” And then, he walked out of the coffee shop leaving me sitting there alone stunned. I was in disbelief. I’ve been the victim of racism at work many times but it never gets any easier. Never. I should have reported him to his superior, but like most people, we say nothing and slink away with yet another rock in the backpack where we carry these comments. And btw, I am a 50 year old Puerto Rican woman born and raised in Ohio where I work long hours followed by more long hours caring for abandoned pets.
58
@Amy Reyes I am so sorry. No words.
11
@Amy Reyes I hope you reported him. We are a nation of LAWS.
3
I was just going about my business as a foreign worker waiting his turn for a green card in this country. Then suddenly the Immigration and Nationality Act yelled at me - 8 USC 1152 (a) (2), specifically, that it didn't like me because of where I was born. My friends from Canada, Korea and Russia were let in, but the Act kept telling me that it didn't like me.
I can never forget it. I have never been yelled at by passers by on the street, and even if they did, I would figure that they don't live in circumstances comfortable enough to be polite. But 330 million people of all races, creeds, genders and persuasions, through the laws their representatives had enacted, kept yelling at me that they didn't like me because of where I was born. It was like 330 million people were yelling at me to "Go Home" collectively.
I got my green card eventually, and became an American, in part to do my part to make sure 8 USC 1152 (a) (2) stops yelling at people because they were born in some countries. But it still does. Recently the House passed a bill that puts an end to this yelling, but the Times didn't mention it.
Sure, let's go after the tired old white woman who wants to cut in line at Costco. No that's not enough. High school kids, right, that group world renowned for their politeness, let's bemoan how that group doesn't know how to draw the line at insulting somebody who immigrated to this country. Because you see --- all the systemic problems have been fixed long ago.
NOT!!
5
I appreciate each recount of being called out as “other”, or “not American”. I read the article twice, why, because I realized that my initial reaction was from a racist point of view. I couldn’t grasp why the Times had all these people expressing their encounters. Wasn’t the important issue of the recent statement to the four Congresswomen about the color of their skin? Was my beloved NYT trying to say, look this happens to all types of people in the US, you’re not special? By the time I got to “trying to fit in” I was crying. I can’t not be dark brown or black or African American or whatever label is out there. Then I took a minute to think, my pain and their pain is a hurt inflicted on upon us, it may come in different forms, but it still hurts. I’ve learned from these stories and about myself, and I’m a better person having read this.
19
I have had the opportunity to travel in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and North and South America, including countries the US has attacked in war and outside of war. In all the countries I've visited or lived in, I have only been met with hospitality and kindness, even when I've stood out as white, as a non-speaker of the local language, as different, as American, even when I've done something stupid or not in line with local customs (Okay, once when we refused to buy a souvenir, a vendor shouted at us, "Dirty feet! Ugly shoes! Peace Corps!"). I have never once been told to "Go back where you came from" or anything like it. It stings all the more to know many friends with darker skin are told this and other hateful things, whether they were born here or not. I am sickened that the current occupant of the White House promotes and endorses such vitriol through his own words and actions. I am afraid because he continually gets away with it. We can and should be better than this. We can't sit back and let him define us.
11
It’s hard to be interested in genealogy and curious about surnames these days.
1
If I could call every one of these people & apologize for what’s happened to them, I would. If I could hug them, I would. I’m so ashamed. What have we become? To all these people: know that you are loved.
9
@Fly over City
My fellow Ohioan - let's put those thoughts into action and make sure to vote in 2020. Turn Ohio blue. One small step on the path of trying to Make America Civil.
3
I have a forever foreigner face and speak with a born and bred New Yawk accent from the diversity capital of the world Queens.
A driver in the inner left turn only lane decided to go straight instead and almost hit my car turning left from the outer left turn lane. I barked at him "left turn only (derogatory body part)". That's only time I remember when someone screamed at me to "go back where you came from".
Even though I've been told to go back or called an ethnic slur a few times I can't remember any of the other circumstances.
C'est la vie.
1
Notably, that person was a jerk in the wrong. I sense a theme.
3
In the mid 1950s, I was a second-grader in Deming School in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The teacher was a tall, lanky Ichabod Crane-like character who wore baggy dresses and an over-sized cardigan sweater. One day, during class, I accidentally dropped a small coin purse on the floor and the nickles and dimes went tumbling out, causing a ruckus in the process.
"Why don't you go back to Russia, where you came from!" the teacher shouted at me with fury. I froze in my seat. I was embarrassed and frightened. My father had emigrated from Russia, yes, but how did she know?
She then shouted at me again, "Answer me!" she demanded. "Why don't you go back to Russia?"
I took a deep breath and sat up straight. Why don't I go back to Russia? I responded defiantly. I don't speak Russian! And I don't come from Russia!
After that, this horrible woman pretty much left me alone. She was a bully -- and I suspect anti-Semitic -- but she backed off when this precocious 7-year-old talked back.
For me, it was an eye-opening experience in discrimination that I never forgot and which, thankfully, at that time at least, was not all that prevalent in Wyoming.
Hey, let's send Trump to Russia!
21
To anyone who thinks reverse racism is the real problem: have you ever been accosted in the street for being white? I highly doubt it. I'm white and even if I'm in a predominately black or hispanic neighborhood, nobody has ever bothered me. The only time I've ever been bothered in public is for being a woman or for being out with my boyfriend who is brown.
10
Trump is the worst example of a racist American who takes advantage of his position to denigrate American citizens.
We Americans should do whatever we can to remove him from office, either by impeachment or voting.
11
The day after Trump won the election, two small boys in my granddaughter's 3rd grade class went up to every child who had any brown skin and told them they were going to be deported. The parents of those boys defended their son's actions as a first amendment right and saw nothing wrong in their son's actions. I leave it to the reader to guess as to the ethnicity of the boys and their families and which political sign they had on their lawn.
16
I'm a 60+ year old white man. For some reason I've never been told to go back where I came from, which is just as well, as I have no idea what combination of nations that might be.
My sympathies go to all of you who have experienced such ignorant, un-American bigotry, especially in these racially-charged Trump times.
I'm almost afraid to ask, but I wonder if any Native Americans have ever been told this.
9
Then there are people like myself, I always agree to go back as long as they go back to their ancestral land. Case Closed.
6
When you become a US citizen, your whole existence must change regardless of what you look like or where you came from. Other than the first nations, everyone else has come from somewhere else. For the freedom the US gives you, you must, you must give your heart, mind, soul and physical being to the US and believe in its ethos and act upon them wholeheartedly. However, with all the freedom you were given and you still support the very evil you ran away from against not Trump but the US, US policies and way of life, doctrine and everything the US is, then you do not belong, and when you do not belong, you should not belong.
1
I cannot disagree more. Part of being a US citizen is having the ability to vote to shape the future of the country. To say to someone that because they disagree with a particular policy, they do not “belong”, is against everything the United States stands for.
2
The individuals profiled here are the true Americans, not the ignorant bigots who accosted them. I may finally understand how Trump won the 2016 election: There are far more people not deserving of the term "American citizen" than I imagined.
9
These are all examples of cruelty and tastelessness and Trump is not doing a thing but encouraging it.
BUT, why don't you ask Americans about the times they have been told to go home when traveling in foreign countries.
This terrible behavior is not an American action only.
1
You don’t seem to understand the difference between traveling and living in a country.
2
As Americans, you are assuming that people all across the world would want your citizens back.
Get out of your own backyard and you will see how horrified the world has become of America's actions to both enemies and friends alike.
As Neil Armstrong showed, there is one small fragile world we are all living in.
Unfortunately it is increasingly becoming governed by zealots from both sides of the political equation and the human species is exasperated with it all!!!!
5
I come from a poor Chinese immigrant family, but I was born here. When we first moved to a new town, people wouldn’t rent to us because we were Chinese. We’d call them to visit the house, but as soon as they saw our faces, they’d close the door on us. When my parents are working, white americans will talk to each other like they are best friends, but often with my parents they treat them as if they are their servants and demand things instead of politely requesting like they would normally do with other white people. The change in tone is so obvious. As bad as it gets at work, you can bet it doesn't end there. No matter where they go, they are always treated like outsiders. Unfortunately, this is also the reality of Chinese Americans as well. Growing up, and still today, I’ve faced stuff like this. People have completely ignored me sometimes, they say stuff like “Oh he’s Asian, don’t talk to him.” Other times they say stuff like, “You’re Asian, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can’t be a leader, you’re supposed to be smart aren’t you” and so on. It feels like growing up Asian, you’re already defined as a person before people meet you. That you’re so foreign that the only thing they know about you and choose to believe about you are those racist stereotypes and societal beliefs. Just think about the lifetime of opportunities we’ve been denied because of these beliefs. It doesn’t directly say “Go Back” but it sure sends the message of being an outsider.
8
The people who say thirds things are ugly and indecent. The victims are beautiful. Know that. No one should tolerate this nonsense and people who stand by while it goes on without objecting are guilty as sin.
2
Black parents usually give "The Talk" to their children --- a set of warnings and instructions on how to deal with authorities - especially Police.
I guess the same needs to happen when encountering a Trump supporter.
That said its only a minority. They got lucky they could elect someone of their own to be President.
Lets hope history does not repeat...it will be more than farce.
5
The woman in the first video, Serlly Vega, is quite lovely and America is lucky to have her. I hope she knows millions of us welcome her with open arms.
I'm worried about her, though. Specifically, I'm concerned about the dark spot in the white of her left eye. It could be occular melanoma, which is exceedingly rare but quite dangerous. :(
1
My extremely athletic daughter was being hassled by this bully in middle school during the Iranian crisis. She was a baby when we came here, and American was the only country she had known, but was being bullied, harassed and was told to go back where she came from. We had talks about what was going on and how she needed to avoid conflict with ignorant kids and adults. I had just started a teaching job in the same district and didn’t want my daughter to be labeled a troublemaker, and she knew better than getting in trouble. One day, I was called by her assistant principal to go pick her up because she was in a fight. No need to explain how I was feeling. When I got there, he told me that my daughter punched the boy in the mouth when he kept telling her that he knew Iranian girls have hair on their chest and everyone was laughing at her. She kept asking the teacher to please send them both to the principal’s office, but the teacher, young and no understanding of conflict resolution, made them face each other and work things out. The boy, Bolder by now, pulled out a container of some sort of liquid and poured on my daughter’s hair, and that was the final straw. She punched the boy in the mouth and that’s when the teacher sent them to the assistant principal’s office. He told me the boy had it coming, and was surprised it took that long for her to react. He suspended the boy for a week, but wanted me to take my daughter home for the rest of the day, because she had a hard day.
16
During our elementary school years my brothers and I got into an argument with our (white) friends with whom we played with every day. At one point one of the boys' moms came outside and yelled at us, "Why don't do you boys go back where you came from!"
To hear such an angry and hateful thing from an adult on our street was jarring. I can't recall what we argued over, but the raw, disturbing emotions of rejection and hate I felt that day are still fresh thirty years later.
6
Maybe I was raised by parents with minds of great width and depth, but they instilled in me a love of the diversity of the world and an intolerance towards any display of racism or xenophobia. Growing up in a rural Michigan community where dislike of black and Hispanic persons was shown openly by many of my neighbors and schoolmates, I was shown to do the opposite. Hearing the stories of people here, where the phrase “go back” repeats like a broken record, tears at my heart and my understanding of how humans should treat each other.
If we understood true hospitality and compassion, we’d be saying not, “Go back!” but, “Welcome home.”
10
Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, our next door neighbors were Japanese Americans, the only nonwhite family on the block. They were extremely kind to us, and the mother of the family often sat with my grandmother on the low concrete fence between our two yards and chatted in the evenings. They had a son the same age as one of my brothers, and both boys were named Jeff. So of course they became fast friends. As a child I would wonder why the Watanabes' house was so often "tee-pee'd" when that rarely happened to anyone else in the neighborhood. Mr. Watanabe would come out in the morning on his way to work, see his trees and garden festooned with toilet paper and patiently clean up the mess before getting in his car. Only as an adult, long after we moved away and we lost contact with the Watanabes, did I realize that I was witnessing racism in action.
13
This article confirms what a friend of mine here in Victoria, B.C said she experienced growing up in large cities in the Midwest and why she choose to leave for Canada. "I only have one life, she said, and I am not going to waste it being dissed as an unwelcome foreigner in my own country." Here she said she feels "white"...meaning that her race is of no issue at all. She said almost incredulously that no one has ever asked her if she speaks English or has tried to give her a table near the rest room since she crossed the border.
I must admit that until reading your article I had difficulty fully understanding her situation in the U.S. It was hard for me to believe that an attractive and educated woman of Japanese ancestry whose grandparents and parents were U.S born would have these issues, but sadly that certainly seemed to be the case. An option for all Americans in her situation is to do the same and perhaps try Canada. You may find that we are much less xenophobic and ignorant up here, and that you and perhaps more importantly your children, will be treated with little to no racism, compared to the U.S.
11
@Carol. Unfortunately that has not been my experience growing up as a third generation Canadian in Montreal.
1
@Sandi
I'm, sorry to hear this Sandi. Quebec does have a reputation for being racist especially since the passing of the law barring the wearing of basically non-Christian religious symbols, which would never occur here. You seriously might want to check out Victoria or other B.C. cities. There is no reason to stay in any city or place that doesn't treat you right.
3
Being a white gay male, I have been called the usual names, by strangers on the street. Even in San Francisco.
But I have never been told to go back to my country, although I’m an immigrant, too. From Northern Europe.
And in my profession as a manager at an Asian restaurant, there have been instances where angry customers described me as the ‘ugly white guy’ or the ‘bald white guy’, on a restaurant review site.
The stinging remarks is a reminder that whatever the otherness may be, some people will use it as an excuse to label, and humiliate another person. For kicks or for power.
And this is exactly why we should condemn president Trump for his rude and racist tweets and remarks, whether they are directed at people of color, women, trans people or someone with a disability.
Kicking someone else and humiliating them for whatever characteristic that makes them different or unique is unacceptable and un American.
9
This is heartbreaking to read. The worst is the children's first, shocked exposure to racism. Then that experiences of blatant racism are on the rise since Trump. It is our original sin as a nation. We need leaders who denounce it and serve as examples of its demise. I miss President Obama, who made me proud to be an American.
10
This all just makes me so sad for all the writers. And mad. And so frustrated that there are thoughtless and cruel people that you just can't reach. Thank God I do not have any family members who have said or believed such things (as far as I know), but there are a few in-laws and I do not like to have to visit when they are around, although they wouldn't say anything in front of me. It won't make anyone feel any better,but it is like this the world over--the whole "otherness" thing. I have lived in four countries besides the U.S.. and have heard the comments directed at foreigners or people from their own country who have are a different shade or build or different accent than theirs. Something in human wiring maybe? At least some of us overcome it. We can't give up.
2
I would venture to say that most people like me, a female, brown, naturalized immigrant has suffered some kind of “fo back to your country” otherness. Your profession or degrees or community service or even wealth as a result of hard work doesn’t matter because you didn’t deserve it. The hurt never goes away and the frustration is you can’t change who you are so you will always be that outsider
5
These stories make me weep. I've been in this country since 1998. I have been a citizen since 2013. I am not a member of a visible minority. My accent registers to most Americans as American. And, predictably, I have *never* been told to go back to where I came from.
3
These stories are appalling and heartbreaking.
I can't begin to imagine the impact that this has on children.
I never experienced racial hatred directed at me until the past few years, and I found it to be terrifying and confusing... and I'm a senior!
The insanity of this vitriol and hatred leads me to suspect that a huge percentage of those living in the U.S. were abused as children, and are now passing it on... because the abused often become abusers.
I'm a first generation Jewish woman, in my 70's, living in NYC where I was born, a woman who fears for this nation,
and also fears this nation.
6
My family was white, white, white, and we grew up in a pure white California enclave. But the only thing my parents cared about was academic and athletic achievements, and the color of skin or language somebody spoke was irrelevant -- only their talents. My heroes were Jesse Owens, Bob Beamon, Ronaldo Nehemiah, Edwin Moses, Jackie Joyner-Kersey, etc. They made me proud to be a US citizen.
2
Some of the moments that stand out the most to me from my childhood are being out and about with my family (at the store, the park, just walking down the street--basically, existing as a minority) and having white women literally instruct their children to say "go home" as we walked past. It was a strange and cowardly thing. Strange that people felt the need to verbally accost us just for being different. And cowardly for adults to infect their innocent children with hate. Trump's racism and all the myriad expressions thereof are nothing new under the sun. What makes him dangerous is that he is not some random stranger you will never see again. He is the president of the United States.
9
I forgot to add one I’ve overheard when I was in high school in rural Pennsylvania...and also why I hope for no further connection with my graduating class:
On the morning of 9/11/01 after we’ve learned the towers were terrorized, several boys in my class actually cheered and laughed happily. We’re going to war to blow up the sand monkeys, they said.
I think the kid that made that remark wasn’t accepted to the military and dropped out of university.
4
I am an immigrant from Canada of European and Native American ancestry and I came here 25 years ago. I've only experienced prejudice a handful of times, but two incidents stuck out vividly.
Once, when I was in university here, there was a school shooting and I commented to one of my classmates that this probably wouldn't have happened in Canada because of stricter gun control laws. One of my other classmates piped up, "Go back to your own country." All of this because I dared make an observation about the US and Canada. She didn't have the courage to say it to my face.
The other time was five years ago and I worked with an older colleague, a dear lady, that I loved working with. One of our conversations was on the healthcare system in Canada and she repeated the same rightwing nonsense she heard on Fox News. I mildly replied that no Canadians weren't dying because they couldn't get open heart surgeries. After I explained how the Canadian healthcare system works, she became incensed and told me to go back home if I didn't like it here.
I didn't lose my temper and explained to her that I had as much right to criticize American society as anyone else since my freedom of speech was protected under the US Constitution. That shut her up, but I remain very careful about discussing anything remotely political with native-born Americans lest I be told to pack my bags.
I never know who will tell me off so I keep my mouth shut.
3
Alas, this seems to be a universal human trait. Forced to flee their homes in what was then eastern Germany in 1945, millions of desperate refugees arrived in the war-ravaged western part of the country, where they weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms. Decades later, ethnic Germans from Russia and Kazakhstan were greeted in West Germany with suspicion, skepticism and resentment. And thirty years after reunification, old tribal animosities between western and eastern Germans continue to fester — and this despite everyone speaking the same language (albeit with different dialects and regional accents) and looking just the same.
Humans are curiously clannish. The different breeds of cattle where I live seem to get along fine, oblivious to the shape of their horns or the color of their hides.
3
So many times, in so many formats, that you become numb.
But my indoctrination was at Harvard Square in 1998. I had my first professional job in the area, after college. My friend (darker skin than mine) and i went to buy flowers at the local florist. We were speaking in Spanish (both of us spoke English fluently) and laughed about some silly thing. The florist attendant decided to be “friendly” and without hellos, he asked, “which of the kitchens at Harvard did we work for?”. Now, first, there is nothing to be ashamed to be working in a kitchen. However, the assumption that i was not suitable to be anything else because i spoke spanish, in a city (Cambridge Mass) where pretty much most people are immigrants, was a surprised to me. What i didn’t know was that i would had to spend the following 21 years, almost daily justifying and working twice, three times as harder as any of my white peers to be unequally paid, unequally promoted and be subject to double standards. In the meantime, the question has always been passive aggressive: “do you ever consider going back home?”.
12
Just stunned reading the accounts of verbal abuse directed at our fellow human beings. If nothing else, how about showing manners and common decency.
This article makes it clear that the rude and racist tweets and vitriol from president Trump is beyond the pale and wholly unacceptable. No one in the position of the presidency should behave that way.
America deserves so much better.
6
Hateful people are everywhere. Certainly not to diminish the sad postings of overt racism displayed here, please understand that anyone who’s “different” has been subjected to vile comments. For example, I was sitting on a park bench enjoying the day when a woman walked over towards me. I shifted closer to the end thinking that she too was looking to rest. Instead she started screaming to me about how fat I was and I should be killed because people like me caused her health insurance to increase. Everyone in the area immediately looked over at us. I was shocked into silence. She was loud, hateful and persistent. I was mortified as I walked away. I am a white woman she was not.
4
Outrageous regarding US citizens of any origin. Also outrageous regarding legal immigrants of any origin. Also outrageous regarding people in a legal status of being considered for asylum. I do not support the millions of illegal undocumented aliens in the United States. The idea that legal and illegal immigrants are the same is wrong. Somehow if one is against illegal immigration they are often seen as intolerant or perceived as racist. That’s absurd.
@Eric Martinez This article is not about illegal immigration. This is an article about how all sorts of (legal) Americans (mainly ones born here) have had people say hateful things about them. Why is your response to this not to sympathize with them, but rather to express your own dislike for a different group of people?
4
@Eric Martinez So do you ask people for their papers before you tell them to go back to where they came from?
2
Every newspaper in America should ask for submissions. Or these should be more widely disseminated. They are heartbreaking. As an Air Force brat, I attended schools and lived in communities where I was the only Jew. I was uncomfortable with my identity, but because I was white, I didn't have to advertise it. Sadly, this is America.
6
The government's own EEOC has a rule that the statement is considered racist. In the workplace Trump would be fired and the employee could sue. Instead Trump doubles down on the rhetoric. He must really be worried about Mueller's testimony or Epstein being denied bail.
10
The response is actually global and is not just a response of conservatives. Or maybe you need to redefine conservative. As an expat child in Latin America I saw many a scribbled graffiti demanding "Vayase Gringo" or "Yanqui Go Home". Those were legitimate expressions of frustration of U.S. influence and its results.
Living here in Norway I once commented that I had found a topic that could evoke that direct response. The topic. Well.. even the Norwegian libertarian party (Frenskrittspartiet) is to the left of most of the liberal democrats involved in the U.S. dispute. All Norwegians (and Scandinavians) are taught that social differences cause social conflict and to prevent that all people should be treated equally. And all Norwegians will nod agreeably. So then I ask.. "Why did you choose to have a Royal family when you started off as a Republic? and why do you keep them? ( Then I add a comment about the current king...)
I told a friend about this and he set me up with a Norwegian Socialist party member... who needless to say went livid and asked me to leave. That was the last time I publicly asked that question. The friend was just amazed... stating. "That surprised me... that guy surely actually agrees.. but he lost it"
So back to issue at home... Conservatives are being banned from universities. No one can violate a listener's comfort zone and minorities cannot suggest social improvements. I need to ask where are we going with this?
I come from a racially mixed family, my mother mostly Native American, French, English, throw in some traces of Asian, and my father Swedish, Irish and I look more like my dad! Never been told go back to where I came from. But as a kid walking down street with my mother, a black man spit at her! First day she took me to school, the teacher looked at her and than at me, and said It’s obvious she not your child and asked if my mother was the domestic of the household! As a 6 year old kid I was confused by both of these people.
Shortly after trump came into office, I had a person who was at my house as a guest, demand to know exactly what my family was racially, as we have so any different looks! He will never step foot in my home again! Turns out he’s a big trump supporter!
5
I am a white American living in the United Kingdom. I will never experience this hatred, because I am white, despite actually being a foreigner (11 years in the UK). My American accent gives me away when I speak, and sometimes I get a slight sense of not belonging, but it is never so outright and racist as everyone has explained here. I do my best to be an ally and defend anyone who gets asked ‘so where are you from, originally?’ because of the colour of their skin (a form of more subtle racism that frequently happens in the UK). Thank you for sharing these difficult stories, and I’m sorry you have to go through this.
6
Something about the U.S. seems to bring out the worst in people.
As a white expat living in S. Korea now for almost 15 years, I have never experienced anything like this here. My wife and I have a son who is now 10, and he is half Korean. His mixed-race looks have never elicited any xenophobic remarks from his classmates in his Korean public school. But I know that one day in the future he will be in the U.S. and someone will say something hateful and stupid to him. I need to talk to him and help prepare him for that, but I'm not sure what to say. And I really hate that I have to even think about doing this in 2019.
6
I heard that comment so many times when I was growing up and would speak Spanish to my parents. I always had a quick reply but after all these years I’ve learned it’s best to reply
“go back to school, learn another language, get a degree and then we can talk”.
6
Vicious and undeserved insult disqualifies the insulter from serious consideration but it does identify a dangerous possibility.
1
I think the worst part is that most of the white senators and reps in Congress do not understand how hurtful, ignorant and racist go back to your country is. Why do I know that because silence is agreement and many in our government are complicit thinking about their jobs more than than their diverse constituents.
My GOP reps and senators have not said one thing that this is an awful thing to hear from our President.
8
@Looking For Light
Yes, we have cowardly, lickspittle representatives and I hope that they are voted out of office inspite of the gerrymandering! Burr is silent and Tillis a sycophant. Let's do our part to change our state.
3
Oh this is just heartbreaking reading this. Thank you NYT for publishing this. I’m white and have never had to experience anything like these stories.
To my fellow Americans, I am so sorry for what you’ve had to endure. Please take some comfort in knowing that the majority of people don’t share the sentiments of the hateful vitriol that is happening today. Stand strong as proud Americans!
28
I am a lawyer in the Midwest and I’ve learned that no matter how hard I work and how many “American” customs I adopt, I will never be accepted as someone who is “from here.” My professional advancement is probably capped at its current level despite the fact that I have another 25 years before I retire. The people who support Trump are awful, but the nice guy in the office next door is worse. The guy in the office next door will honestly complement my work and solicit my advice but will never consider me an equal, not someone who could be his boss.
Given the direction this country is headed, I am trying to leave. I tell my children that the advantage of being an immigrant is that I don’t hold the delusional belief that my country is somehow too special/unique/blessed to crash and burn. My parents picked the US thirty years ago and it looks like they guessed wrong. If they could leave their home to give their kids a better life, so can I.
I tell my children that we can’t stay in the US because they will never be accepted as “real Americans” and really, why would we want to? Immigrants built this country and make it great once (only for some, sadly). I don’t want to live in a country without immigrants because immigrants are people who had the courage and fortitude to start over for a chance at a better life. You can only do so much with a group of people when the main source of their “success” is entitlement and nepotism.
33
I first came to the US at the age of 6 with my family around 1995. We had moved to the Westside area in Houston. I don’t remember when I was first told to go back to where I came from. In general I was pretty resilient against the background of overt and inadvertent racism I faced in school and in the neighborhood. There are two incidents that do stick out in my memory when I was maybe 8 or 9.
For some span of time, a specific group of boys a year or two older would regularly harass me physically and or verbally for their amusement. Occasionally, while I walked home from school, they would pelt me with small stones and pine cones, shouting racial epithets and telling me to go back to my country. My parents advised that I ignore them the best I could. One time though I was struck in the face by a pine cone, lost my temper, bellowed at the boys and tried to charge at them by myself. They just ran off laughing, and I remember being red in the face and feeling humiliated.
Another time, one of those same boys left a note at my door saying something along the lines of “go back to where you came from, or else!” I thought the note was a death threat, and it was the first time I was truly afraid.
8
I am a proud American (a naturalized citizen) since 1996 and am married to an American. My husband's father’s ancestors came to America in 1635, his mother’s side came in 1890 and both sides are originally from England. During the 2016 elections, my sister in law who is a teacher criticized me related to Trump's immigration policies and told me that I could not understand his points because I was actually, not an American, but she was! I live in Birmingham, Alabama and have faced so many times racist and discriminating comments or attitudes, although I am white, but I have an accent! My husband and I are highly educated people and our social circles are filled with educated people also. I was always reminded in many creative subtle ways that I was not one of them. While they call you 'sugar' and can add brutally "How often do you go home for visit?" This is my home! America is my home. America is us and we are America all together.
7
I am in Canada. Maybe it is because I am white, I haven’t heard this. But it seems to me, that maybe as a younger country, we don’t have so much built-up arrogance. Certainly our cities and universities are incredibly diverse; and I think the vast majority of us, Canadians, know that our diversity gives our country both strength, and a bigger international and global voice than a country of 38 million would otherwise have.
12
I pray (from Canada) that every single person who felt the sting of those words will vote this November.
21
The first time I heard it was when I was a 6 year old growing up in the suburbs of San Mateo. It shocked me as little girl and at that time didn't know the implications it had. Then it just recently happened in 2017 that I heard those word "go back to where you came from" and of all places in San Francisco in Golden Gate Park in the morning hours as I was stepping out of my car to go to work. In the most beautiful part of San Francisco that is so diverse and that I have called home for over 40 years. It can happen here. It shakes you up, but mostly it shocks you to the core that you don't know how to really respond. I walked into work that day feeling so different and appalled at what has happened to our country since our current President has been elected.
17
In my grade school in Flatbush, girls who were criticized used to respond, in a sing-song voice, "it's a free country".
3
As a child of Vietnamese refugees, I can relate to these experiences. Racist "go home" insults had left me feeling perpetually homeless as a young person. Much of my youth was driven by the search for "home."
Thich Nhat Hanh (another Vietnamese refugee), has taught me that the practice of mindfulness is to embody the spirit of "I have arrived, I am home," in every moment, anywhere I am.
May we all feel at home, in our own bodies and minds, and in our communities and our society.
17
These stories are breaking my heart and boggling my mind. They have opened my eyes about how much our citizens and our nation have yet to learn. I am deeply grateful for all of the stories shared here and full of sorrow for what so many have had to endure. Please REGISTER TO VOTE so we can make a change.
24
Three out of four of my grandparents are immigrants. The only difference between me and many of these stories are that my skin is white and my grandparents were Dutch. People see me differently just because of that one fact. It makes me sad beyond words that everyone isn’t treated like I am, as an American citizen, nothing less, nothing more.
11
These stories are heartbreaking.
6
I’m from England and was told to go back to my country for criticizing Bush. I became a citizen in 1994 and it’s my right to be able to criticize a president. For what it’s worth, I think the man who told me this was fired.
16
I was called a Yankee all the time while living in Texas, both Houston and Austin. Someone even called me a blue belly once. Every time I opened my mouth; Yankee. It was my first time living in the South, and I thought ‘these people are still fighting the Civil War. That war is so over, and they lost!”
22
@Pb of DC
Wait, wait... I live in Texas now and I believe the natives refer to that as the War of Northern Aggression...
1
My father was a US Foreign Service Officer, and I spent my childhood living in several countries overseas. Thus, I've always been interested in talking with people about their countries of origin or ancestral homes, and I used to ask people 'where are you from?' in a friendly manner. But then in the last two decades it has mutated so that now asking that question of someone sounds threatening, and I hate that so much. I am so ashamed of how vicious Americans have become.
25
@TNB Thank you for recognizing that the rhetoric and intent is (or has become) poisonous, and not that it’s solely some infection of political correctness.
4
I am 70 years old. When I was in third grade in the 1950’s we lived in Paramus, NJ. That land had been farm land until after WWII when returning vets needed affordable houses to live in. My father was one of those veterans. One day I was playing dodge ball on the playground at school. I must have done something that another child, a boy, did not like. He pushed me, not hard, and he told me to go back to Israel. I was confused. Other children laughed, I remember that. I told my mother. I have thought about this all of these years- but not often. Until now. And I never mentioned it again, even to my late husband. I never thought to do so. We were married for 42 years. Later in my life I realized that Israel and I were about the same age. I wondered how that boy new about Israel. I can’t remember his name, or what he looked like. I remember the dress I was wearing. Girls always wore dresses to school then. I think what is happening in this country is abhorrent. I am ill, and I do not want to die knowing Trump is our President.
40
I was teenager walking down the street minding my own business when a bunch of boys in a car yelled: "Go back to China!" I ignored it. I thought that's better than when I was 8 years old and would get verbally and physically bullied regularly for being the only non-white in small-town. If I can brush that off, I can certainly ignore such taunts from a few ignoramuses. And why would I take any such words seriously? I came from a country where my grandpa had been sent to jail for being foreign and educated, where my grandma was hounded by massive crowds whenever she appeared in public, where my uncles were sent to rural backwaters to do literally back-breaking work, where my parents were in fear of the lives and separated from each other and from me when I was one month old...My fait, if I had stayed in my own country, would at best have been a menial worker. Who knows where I have ended up if I didn't say and do the right things? Now, I am upper middle class with a job I love. This is the immigrant story. How can a few harsh words in America compare? What do even a few bruses matter? Maybe I was 2nd class in the West, but I was dirt in my home country. I cannot help but think that the people who complain about their treatment in the US have completely lost perspective. It is a privilege to be an American, to be treated equally before the law, to be unmolested by one's own government--not a god given right.
5
It is not a privilege to be treated like a second class citizen. You are either a citizen or you aren’t. If You have the obligations of a citizen then you should have all the rights that comes from being a citizen. Remember, no taxation without representation! People have died for that. Honor their memory and stand up for yourself!
5
@Jean, You have probably lived all your life in the US. For people like you, a discouraging word is probably a big deal. I don’t think I can persuade you otherwise. But for my fellow immigrants who struggled to come to the West, you may have another perspective. I encourage you to take that one. Be grateful, show respect for and do not betray the great though imperfect people who have welcomed you to the much better world their traditions helped create. You know in your hearts that America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. That’s why you came here and wanted to be a part of it.
1
As a young boy growing up, my mother taught me to not be prejudice.
Guess what? An an adult, I'm not.
8
I grew up in the 70s and 80s in a section of philadelphia that is and was predominantly African American; I’m a white woman (of Eastern European Jewish heritage, a few generations in). As was the norm for the time, I walked around and took public transportation by myself starting in elementary school. Once while I was walking, a school bus passed, and a young kid yelled out the window, “go back to your own neighborhood!” I remember feeling so hurt at the injustice— I live here! I wanted him to know. I told myself it wasn’t personal, but I still remember the horrible, helpless feeling in my chest.
My small handful of isolated experiences of being told to “go back” or similar are not at all comparable to a person of color’s life experience. So if I still remember that sting, 35 years later, I can only imagine the cumulative and generational trauma of dealing the constant threat of that sort of abuse. The cognitive dissonance alone, from being told to “go home” when you ARE home, is enough to drive a person mad.
12
Don’t think that these words are only said to persons of color. I personally had them directed at me, a WASP, because I moved to another state and dissenting views are not welcome. This country is coming apart at the seams. Perhaps it’s time for God to reopen the floodgates and try for a fresh start again. Maybe the third time will be the charm.
7
I've been told, almost in the same breath, that my family should go back where we (long ago) came from, and that that country had/has no right to exist.
5
This is possibly the most heartbreaking story I have read.
11
Very informative, thank you. I have forwarded this article to my progressive friends and family. Others wouldn't understand how painful the insults are.
Thank you sincerely to all who responded with their personal anecdotes.
I am wondering now, if I cause undue concern when I do, with curiosity, ask people who have obvious foreign accents, their country of origin.
And, yes, I always say "Welcome to America" when I meet new arrivals. For years I lived in a block with 17 different languages/countries of origin, and several "different" dress customs. A melting pot---a beautiful melting pot. That is the reason Buffalo, NY, is consistently on the list of most liberal cities in America. Buffalo is "The City of Good Neighbors" and I cannot imagine insults against anyone who looks, dresses, or speaks differently from oneself.
7
I am Mexican legal immigrant who was told to “go back where I came from” a couple of times during the 2016 elections. While I admit I found it scary at the time, after the anger, pitty and compassion came later.
I was lucky to have been raised by parents who always ensured that my siblings and I were loved, that there is joy in hard work and that the most wonderful virtues are humility and tolerance. And always, always encoraged me to be courageous to do the right thing.
I am afraid that, despite all that, at 50 I am highly imperfect. However, I have my mother’s reminder of Voltaire’s words tattooed on my forehead:
“I wholly disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
So whenever I hear Trump or any of his supporters, I remember this basic and universal notion of freedom and I thank my mother for her wisdom.
I just wish somebody would have teach Trump to do the same....
11
I think basically anyone who isn't white has had this happen to them (even if you're half white, like i am). Stemming from the same mindset, the seemingly innocent question of "So where are you from?" has the same assumption that non-whites don't belong here, and i often find it hurtful even though it's not the intention of the asker.
I have developed a way to answer this question, which gives surprisingly nice results. After going through the conversation, "I'm from new jersey." "Oh but where are your parents from?" "My mom is from PA and my dad is from Japan." "Ah I see." I then turn the question to them, "What about you, are both your parents from the US? What about their parents?" and so forth, and because I'm genuinely interested, they start talking about their great great grandparents from whichever countries they came from, and they often get excited talking about it. Then i ask them if they speak that language at all, they usually say no and i tell them "Well i don't really speak Japanese at all either, it's unfortunate we both lost some of our ancestor's culture."
At the end, it's a realization for them that we are both really the same, except for the color of our skin. And that we should be proud of our diverse heritages. And hopefully, the next time they will word the question differently.
33
I have very good memories during my 17 years living in this country, but definitely few very bad had stay in my mind until today. Hurting me every single day.One, when my then 6 year old daughter arrive from school asking where was she from. She was born in America, we in Venezuela. Her first grade teacher told her, she could answer a question about George Washington, because “she was not from here”.
Second time in Christmas, buying Christmas ornaments with my daughter, a lady told us, to speak english( between us), or go back home.
7
Actually, spare me complaints about what kids do. The reason is, kids try out every weapon at their disposal.
As a child I was deeply hurt by the other children making fun of my last name. Then I grew up and as a substitute teacher I saw the kids making fun of each other's last names. And each kid was deeply hurt by the other kids teasing them. But the children doing it were enjoying their new mastery of puns, synonyms, and allusions. And they were also enjoying their bit of meanness. Proud of being able to inflict pain with verbal warfare. And they didn't have empathy with the person teased. And didn't see that they were both hurt by others and hurting others. I explained to the two children who came to me crying that it was a common occurrence and absolutely silly because we can all be proud of our heritage. And they believed me... Two down and billions to go.
6
@analyst in SF Bay Area. Disappointing that you as the authority figure that the students look to for support as they develop their social skills (no it is not just about students learning to “enjoy” their use of language) basically encourage them to find other ways to find power to respond and defend themselves. If you teach in an elementary school then you should be TEACHING them empathy. You do them a strong disservice by not doing your job. First, they may decide that if they can’t keep up in the verbal war you encourage they will resort to violence or deception to win. Second empathy is an important skill that is encouraged today as a powerful way to connect and inform as we live and work in diverse communities. It is also the first step in using Design Thinking as part of the innovation process - thinking outside the box which is a key skill in the work force. Teach them empathy for their success.
1
These stories are why so many people in the rest of the world have become tired of the ‘American exceptionalism’ theme touted so often re: greatest democracy, most free country, celebrating diversity and opportunity. Underneath the very thin veneer of this ‘exceptionalism’ is the cold reality of a Trump voter.
24
As I read these stories my heart went out to each and every writer. I don't know you, but I value your presence as Americans. I am sorry that individuals who have absorbed twisted values from their families, friends, right-wing media, or evil public figures like Donald Trump, have made you feel unwelcome. You are part of our great country, which I hope will soon be resuming its path along the arc of justice. I wish you healing and well-being.
I mostly live in a comfortable bubble, but if I ever witness an event like those described here, I hope I will have the courage to speak up. "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good people to do nothing." [Edmund Burke, updated]
9
I was with my husband. We were crossing a street in East Nashville, headed to a bar to hear some music when a car careened dangerously close by and someone yelled out the window to "go back to your side of the river!"
4
Thanx for all the poignant stories. So many stories, yet, probably
just tip of an iceberg. I am left with the feeling
that human beings don't have the capacity for the ideals that
embody America.
3
@coloradok the same iceberg as in titanic...where to put exploited/frozen metoo clan in the huge iceberg?
1
My dad and I (my first week in the United States) were told to go back to our country in Davis, CA. I was going to get beat up at a bar for being South Asian but was saved my friends. I’ve lived in Virgina, Ohio, Texas, Maryland, and North Carolina and was never told the same until I lived in Notth Carolina by an African American. I love this country but see that there are a lot of resentment and grievances, what scares me is how vocal people have become. Even non-native Americans become aggressive rib America. Violence is the ultimate form of dehumanization.
6
All whites are the same?
Something in their genes?
Or there what is that word ah yes.
Constitution.
2
And who determines who is "White" -- for privilege or shame? Within memory, Armenians in America were not considered White by Whites, nor Jewish people, nor to an extent, Italians or even Irish people. (I saw official USA documents from decades ago that listed an immigrant's race -- yes, race -- as "Irish").
Essentially, if you weren't Northern or Central European AND Protestant, you were not granted all of the privileges of "Whiteness" and, in many parts of the country this is still the case, at least for religious minorities.
5
Apparently there are a lot of White Americans who believe they somehow own this country, kind of like the Afrikaans who actually taught their kids that they were in South Africa before Africans.
When I went to college at Colorado School of Mines in 1975, right out of high school in Fort Collins, I went to financial aid office to pick up my documents, the lady looked at me and said you can’t get this, you are a foreigner. I asked why she said your name, I asked her to look at her name, it is Polish and no one can pronounce it.
Later I was asked by the receptionist at my lawyers office where I am from, I said Coloraturas, she went on to say how foreigners come to America and the government gives them money to start businesses. I then told her that I just got of the plane, the government gave me an oil company, a house and a wife.
There are a lot of stupid people. Trump is just worse
63
I love this one. I hope to remember it forever.
4
i don't know why you capitalized "White" but the word is not a proper noun but an adjective and w is not capitalized. Actually light skinned people are not really "white" Anthropologically white people do not exist. Even the term caucasian to refer to white people is wrong. Do you get that now?
Haha. Very good. I’m an immigrant (England), my wife is an immigrant (Vietnam) and we are completely accepted as Canadians.
10
It sickens me that this blatant racism is taking place in America in 2019 which has increased since Trump took office. Have we learnt nothing from the Holocaust where Germans demonised jews years before they were sent to the gas chamber. How can self proclaimed christians approve of this immoral behaviour?
Trump is not making America great again. It is immigrants, our ancestors, who made America great to begin with.
28
Some people are jerks.
I am blond, pale green eyes, pale skin, flawless no accent mid western, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) english. I parked my car with Quebec license plate in an area I thought was permit in Gladwyne Pa, I misread the indications.
Some late sixties, pickled, dressed as if just off the golf course, pink faced jerk came up to me and screamed, I guess what he thought was an insult;” Get out of here, go back to Canada”.
It not fun and makes you feel little at the moment, they are sad unhappy grotesque people.
I don’t know what to say, I know people visibly not of Northern Europe descent are harassed on a regular basis but a decent well balanced person would never say or think such things as it’s ridiculous.
There are bad people everywhere who will say absurd things everywhere. I think of them as impaired.
I walked away, thought what an old jerk, and to think this sorry excuse for a human being probably has a wife....long suffering.
Thank God its not me.
Sadly these impaired people do get to vote.
31
The only thing that surprises me is that he knew Quebec was part of Canada.
7
This has been a rather painful week for a lot of us who are minorities living in America. I usually don’t like to talk about my own experience with racial epithets. I have so many positive experience living in this land of opportunity. To me, America has been home for 42 years and counting. But the Twitter comments came from the WH has really struck a chord over these past several days. How do you stop the overt and blatant racism in this country or any Western countries for that matter? For me, it goes backs 44 years ago living in London as a nursing student, I had my first encounter. I was riding in a double decker bus with my classmate, she was from the Philippines. A white woman sat across from us, looked us in the eye, with her high pitch tone of voice, “ you foreigners, why don’t you go back to your country?” Yes, we were foreign students, we felt petrified, yes, we immediately got off the bus on the next stop. This incident scar me forever among other overt racial slurs such as the derogatory term “ chink” or making fun of my eyes shape.... on campus while in college here in America.
Racism is ugly, ignorance and hurtful. Sadly, it begins in the family with the parents or grandparents! Indeed, the apples do not fall far from the tree.
We, as Americans regardless of race, somehow will have to reflect what has just happened this past week. There are laws to protect us, are there not? Can we turn the waves? Can we get along?
20
I’m too White-looking to get “go back to where you came from,” but I have gotten “This is America! Speak English!” while speaking Korean on my cell phone in a department store (with someone in Korea who didn’t speak English). To be fair, though, they were having a White Sale.
44
My husband just said that these mean comments were from ‘insecure people who aren’t thinking about the feelings of others’. He’s very correct.
The nytimes didn’t post my submission. But, I see it echoed over and over in these comments.
8
Yes. Happens to me all the time. Makes you wonder about impartiality.
@Kristin Johns That sounds more like a defense for bad behavior to me.
Wow this is powerful- wish Fox News would publish something like this.....
21
One of the many comments have been about the ignorance of many of those racist people. Unfortunately we can write and talk about on this newspaper, but 99% of those ignorant racist never will read this newspaper. Besides all of us that we have been hurt by these comments and racist attitudes need to push back. There is the only way how these ignorant bigots will end their attitude. I believe strongly it is something very ingrained in the British culture where they feel superior. This has been demonstrated once more with their Brexit approach. We are more than them and we need to act soon, for the benefit of the future generations
21
Thank you. Finally someone has said the operative word. This idea of “white” being a race is not accurate. What most of the racism in the USA comes from is the arrogance of British Empire. It festered mostly in South, was bolstered by slavery imposed on Africans and distrust of anyone “colored.” It led to the Civil War, to Jim Crow and it’s terrorism, to the the taunt “the South will rise again.” Make no mistake, most “Yankees” who came to the South and objected to segregation were told to “go back where they came from.” What they are really saying is “don’t try to change our ways. We’ve been taught we’re better than you and we’re going to keep it that way.” Someone please comment on how someone who has “white” skin can be distinguished from the tribalism of Anglo-Saxons (and I include the many decent WASPS in this question).
2
Interesting. I would agree more if it weren’t for the example of Canada, which remained tied to Britain when the US broke away, and still has many cultural ties, but where racism and intolerance seem to be somewhat less prevalent than in the US (though I’m sure there’s still plenty of it to go around). This leads me to think that there are doubtless other factors involved as well. I’d guess that the legacy of slavery might be one of these.
2
Use this anger to make sure every person you know VOTES! Voting is how you change things, if you sit at home or make excuses, you have no one to blame but YOURSELF!
23
@Marc R
My vote as a New Yorker is worthless due to the electoral college system. New York will go to whomever secures the Democratic nomination.
The way to change things is to abolish the unfair electoral college system, and to make every vote count.
3
America's President regresses to a middle schooler's mentality once again......
You would think - hope? -- the POTUS could act like the POTUS at least once during his tenure.....
Our President is irreconcilably immature and demonstrates it with embarrassing regularity.......
Why can't this man, the President of the United States no less, act like an adult at least a small part of the time?.......Is that too much to ask?......
13
The one thing I learned about racism in America is that their comments have nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. It is hard not to internalize their hatred but you have to realize their ignorance stains them, not you. They are petty, small, cruel and pathetic people who gain emotional satisfaction by hurting others. Understand that their words are nothing, their hatred is nothing, THEY are nothing.
46
For centuries, European whites lorded it over the planet with an arrogant sense of entitlement that went largely unchallenged. Trump and his neofascist personality cult are reacting to the dawning realization that the party is coming to an end, no matter what they chant and how many guns they buy. The demographic train has left the station, and there will be no turning back. White supremacy is destined for the garbage heap of history, where it belongs.
22
A frequent comment from those who have been subject to abusive insults about their presumed ethnicity is a defensive statement that the abuser has accused them of the "wrong" ethnicity. Adding to to the deplorable assault on humanity, the abuser demonstrates profound stupidity.
10
This article makes me lose hope in America. When I immigrated here from England over 30 years ago, I naively thought that racism was something that had been brought into the open by the civil rights movement in the 60s, and that steady progress was on the cards. I feel stupid. It’s endemic. Not everyone. But more than a few. And they’re mean and nasty. And evil.
36
May I share a story I posted a few days ago in the Washington Post?
WaPo carried an essay by Air Force Officer and Member of Congress Ted Lieu. I responded with:
"Rep. Lieu, thank you for an articulate and forceful statement.
As a Native American commissioned officer and combat veteran, I have been told by white Americans that I should go back to from where I came.
I am reminded of a story well known in Indian Country but little known in white America. It occurred in the American Southwest about two years ago.
A woman was speaking on her cell phone in a language the white man behind her in the checkout line didn't recognize. When she finished he yelled at her that she was in America now and that in America we speak English. If she wanted to "talk Mexican" she should go back to Mexico.
She responded "I was speaking Navajo. If you want to 'talk English,' perhaps you should go back to England."
Since significant minorities of white Americans are so unhappy, perhaps they should go back to whatever countries from which their ancestors came. They're contributing nothing constructive here.
We embrace our white fellow citizens who are as committed to the Constitution as we are...we have a lot of work to do. These other white parasites we would just as soon went away."
My belief is that no one of us is innocent. But Caucasian Americans really take the cake when it comes to willful ignorance and blindness about their own behavior.
101
It's not always whites saying stuff to blacks. 30 yrs ago I was in Richmond VA walking on the sidewalk in a strip mall. Two young black men ran up behind me, cursed and threw their container of soda and ice on my back. I was shocked. Did I say anything? No- I couldn't articulate what I felt then and still can't to this day.
7
me too the same thing happened to me in liberal Berkeley Calif.
Now you know how we feel.
So you are equating 2 people being mean to you with deep seeded racism?thats actually the definition of white privilege
1
To me, the most remarkable example is the Native American being told "to go back to where she came from." This illustrates very well the level of ignorance and arrogance we are dealing with here...
34
I wonder how many of these people who are/have been told to "go back" have fought for our nation in one of the many wars we've had; perhaps they could ask President Trump: I fought for our country, did you? You, President Trump, dare to tell them to "go back." Leadership or Stupidity?"
8
My parents immigrated here in the 1970s part of an immigration policy inviting educated foreigners to America. They were spit at when walking on the streets of their new home. But they persevered and worked endlessly to attain the American dream - education and promise - for their girls. We moved to a house in a Long Island suburb. As a school aged child I played with the other kids on our block. As we grew into teens, the same kids I had shared summer nights with catching fireflies, playing baseball or riding bikes, threw rocks breaking our dining room window, screaming “Go back to where you came from!” Our family was eating dinner. I was in disbelief that the same people I grew up with were filled with hatred. They had lied to me about who they were, they were not my friends, they were racists.
21
I am sad and shocked to read all of these stories. And it is just a minor sample of thousands.
Who are these shameless people saying these horrible words to their fellow Americans? Such hate, negativity, and meanness. I really feel sorry for them. They must lead lives without joy, love or positive thinking. Pity.
12
As a white American who also came from somewhere else - face it racists, we all did - I wish I could apologize personally to each person who has dealt with this kind of small-minded hatred. I make an effort to smile and simply say “hello, how are you?” to strangers, but I know it doesn’t make up for the nastiness.
22
These stories made me sad but did not surprise me. I was in Wisconsin and inadvertently visited a store that sells hateful bumper stickers, t-shirts and buttons. Clearly there is a market for hate.
11
Instead of being heartbroken ...
It should be pointed out that the American
Industries that are still globally dominant like tech biotech and defense are largely staffed by people who have been told to “go back to where you
Came from.” The ones saying “go back to where you came” from are ill prepared to compete in the global economy. It is highly likely if not assured that those who were told to “go back” will be the employers of those that said “go back” and I’m not banking on those employers to be so forgiving.
Remember what Steve bannon said about the tech industry
9
I wish every member of this administration would be forced to read these stories. Not that it would make a difference, empathy doesn't seem to be their strong suit.
It's about time we became better than this. We are after all a nation of immigrants.
Melania, how about starting a BE BEST campaign and make this unacceptable, or as a white wealthy woman have you never been told to go back?
13
1) One day soon after 9/11, I boarded the D line in Brookline, MA wearing a salwaar kameez. I sat down in front of an older African-American woman who then proceeded to glare at me and express her disgust by way of her facial and body language. I had no idea what I had done to her, but I realised that racism, bigotry and prejudice has no skin colour, religion or any logical reasoning for that matter.
2) I run every day and I often run through neighbourhoods in West Roxbury, Newton, etc. and sometimes wave to show that I'm not some weirdo. To have to do this makes my blood boil from humiliation. There are a few people who live on some of these streets who have literally fled, hidden or have quickly run into their homes ushering their kids - while looking back at me to see whether I was coming to eat them. Some of them have peeped through their blinds to see if I was still there. These experiences have only been compounded by the fact that a White woman (who was one of the few who previously exhibited the above behaviour) who I asked whether anything was wrong, blatantly told me, "I run too...It's a little unusual for runners to do sprints on a street." I didn't show it, but I felt that my intelligence had been insulted (didn't she claim to run?). I am Asian. I am educated. Maybe I look ugly or terrifying in her opinion? I do not know. What I DO know is, a lot of educated people (liberal and conservative) think that they can hoodwink others by being disingenuously "nice."
9
Actually, I wave too. I drive around slowly and people think I'm a crook, casing houses. I'm usually looking at the landscaping. Waving is an "I belong here" behavior.
4
This is not "American". We are a diverse people. We came from every country on the planet to live here. That's what made America so great. This hate is taught at home and hate mongers are emboldened by Trump's words and actions. How does he not see what he is doing? (Rhetorical question).
10
I'm sorry for all of the pain that these individuals felt when they were verbally and psychically abused by bullies. I wish I was there to yell at the bullies and defend our compatriots. When people lash out with brutal words it doesn't help to heal the world. Just because someone doesn't look just like you do it doesn't matter. What matters is that we acknowledge the divine light that is in each of us. Speak out against abusers; they should have no power.
9
To all the immigrants and children of immigrants in this article: You ARE what makes America great. You are the result of this beautiful experiment, this amalgam of humanity at its best. Be proud, stand tall, speak up, and vote for a better future.
21
It's 2019 and yes, I "speak English well," especially for someone born in Norman, Oklahoma and raised in Texas, educated in the Denton ISD school system, Baylor University, medical school at UTMB Galveston and voted Chief Resident at Texas Tech University. I also speak Spanish very well, but my Cantonese is pretty horrible unless I am ordering my favorite dishes or talking to my grandmother. Yelling "Ching - Chong - China" does not make cheer me up when I am a teenager walking out the mall after a fun day of shopping with my family in Dallas, TX in 1987. These stories break my heart. I only can hope there are many of us who will keep spreading light into the darkness.
27
I was told to go back to my country right after I married my American husband and moved here, almost 11 years ago. The person was educated, and she reacted to the fact that I told her that the healthcare here is awful compared to the universal healthcare in my home country. I felt as if she excluded me from her humanity. It hurt a lot. For a moment I felt as if I lost my husband and my family. She was reprimanded by a friend and by my husband, but today she would be proud. Except that today I can go vote in 2020 against people like her.
20
Why is one group consistently "othering" everyone else? Why is one group trying to push everyone else into the oceans and away from our country? This article left me with many questions and no answers.
9
And it's the same group whose predecessors originally came from, primarily, Northern and Central (Christian) Europe. In other words, hardly Native American.
5
Tears rolling down my face at the story of Gary Granada. Sweet childhood innocence meets cold raw evil.
Racism and hatred are not innate they are taught to children by adults who learned as children.
10
My wife speaks Japanese and I speak Korean. We would like to impart both these languages on our future children. Right now we live in Hawaii, where no one would care, but we will be moving to the US Mainland in the near future. I dread the day that I am almost certain will come when someone yells at our kids or in front of our kids to speak English or to go back where they came from.
10
This is all very sad.
It is interesting though, we live close to a Native American reservation where my husband has taught for 40 years. Native Americans, who were here before ANY of us, are treated with discrimination, too. They haven’t been asked to go back to their country of course, but they had their land taken away and herded to reservations......
Now, explain that.
19
Only on the internet and not before Trump. My dad is Gallego, an ethnic minority in Spain. We look kind of nondescript so we’ve noticed that we sometimes get different reactions from people based on whether they know our surname or not. I participated in an anti-Trump march just after the election and posted a picture on Instagram. A Trump supporter found me through a hashtag and posted, “Get your passport ready. You’re going home soon!” It really shook me but then I realized it was nothing compared to what POC deal with every day.
13
Everybody in America knows that this is part of life in America as I spent six years in the 1980s in New York and Chicago. The less educated and the less thoughtful are throwing out insults simply because they are a majority. This is not limited to the States. Many Koreans are doing the same to foreigners such as Japanese, Chinese, Pakistani and Philippines with anonymity even on campus. The leadership should denounce such behavior. DT is problematic as he is becoming part of such crowd as President. It is deplorable.
18
I could not finish the stories.I feel sick to my stomach. All my great grand parents immigrated from Ireland. I heard the stories from my grandparents "Irish not need apply" in Boston.
To the brave people that shared their stories, please know that so many of us welcome you and would never think of making such statements.I'm hoping the millennials will change this hideous culture.My 2 sons 22 and 29 have many friends of different heritages.I love when they visit with their friends.Their goals,their idealism,their compassion give me hope. Again to anyone that has experienced ignorant, mean verbal assaults, I am so sorry you had to experience this and I'm glad you are part of our country.
24
It’s either laugh or cry. The best exposition I have seen on this is Kumail Nandjani’s opening monologue on SNL.
6
My own "go back" stories pale next to the ones I read here. I was nine years old and part of a soon to fail "voluntary" school busing program on Long Island. The words were hurled at us too often to count, but each blow hurt then and hurts now.
Hats off and sincere thanks to the New York Times staffers who waded through 16,000 so very painful life events, often in the lives of children. No combat pay is enough for taking on that kind of battle. I crumbled after reading only eight. It just hurt too much.
31
The experiences of these people who are told to “go back home” is despicable. I am white but grew up in a multicultural part of Los Angeles before multicultural was even a word. I am now the father in a multi-racial family. I and my daughters were racially profiled on a ferry going to Cape May, NJ. The toll of these experiences are huge, especially for young people.
13
Try being a white 64 year old man in Los Angeles who still lives within walking distance from the hospital they were born in, only speaks English and owns their house. Talk about feeling like an outsider. People can say and feel some really cruel and hateful things about that too, which is all envy is. It’s my opinion there’s plenty of anger and frustration to go all around, which is more the problem I think than where anyone’s originally from.
4
These stories are so heart-breaking, I'm actually sitting here with tears in my eyes.
I don't have a "go back" story because I'm a late-middle-aged white woman who is horrified by my deeply racist extended family -- they all lived in Missouri, while I grew up on very diverse military bases all around the world. It was upon meeting them in my teens that I even understood what racism was.
I guess I want to apologize somehow, and say this -- my family sponsored immigrants when we returned from overseas and I know them to be brave, resilient, idealistic people with visions of a better life. I deeply admire them and the courage it takes to start over in a new land.
You all and your parents/grandparents are truly what makes us great, and I feel true sorrow for the people steeped in fear and ignorance who can't see that.
20
I’ve read many of these comments and have posted a couple myself. The one thing I haven’t heard (and I must admit, I haven’t read all of them) is the we have a president who actively encourages this behavior. Never in my life has this happened. It’s a travesty. If I was to cull the shortcomings of Trump’s presidency to one sentence, it’s that he has never been a president to all the people who live in this country. This will be the way he and his administration is remembered. Divisive, not uniting. Add to that, the GOP’s lack of a spine, which has allowed him to remain.
13
Children behaving in this manner are repeating what they have heard in their homes.
Adults behaving in this manner are demonstrating that they were never socialized properly as children, their educational system failed them, an incredible lack of emotional maturity, and an absence of good manners and common decency.
13
Actually, I don't think all the children are expressing what they learned at home. Many of them learn it from other children at school.
I learned about temper tantrums when I saw my neighbors child throw one. My son was watching. A couple of weeks later my son threw his first temper tantrum , spreading his fingers wide, just as she did.
1
Having lived in Japan, Malaysia , Thailand and China most of life (as a Caucasian) I have heard this sentiment more than once from someone. It isn’t unique to America, unfortunately.
10
I so appreciate this article and apologize from those of us in this country who don't say these things, and / or even embrace other cultures, foods, languages, clothing and ideas.
I appreciate that the Times is trying to document this sort of racism and am afraid that the "other" half of the people in this country don't care, and in fact agree with Trump.
I fear we have to do more.
Impeach this man and this party.
9
I read every heartbreaking story here. As an American whose family history goes back to the Mayflower, I celebrate the immigrant heritage I share with all the Americans who told their difficult stories. We all came from somewhere else, whether thousands of years ago or yesterday.
The bold distinction that makes America great is that there are supposed to be no restrictions on who can become a “real” American — not race, creed, color, origin, sexual orientation, gender, political affiliation, lifestyle, looks, none of it. At least that’s the America I grew up believing in. But I’m as WASP-y as it gets, and I’ve never had to experience the unspeakable indignities described in these stories.
I wish to apologize to each contributor here for the hurt that’s been done to them. This kind of hateful prejudice is a sickness, and obviously we haven’t found the cure for it yet. But we certainly can make a start by working to deny positions of power and influence to those who inflame and exploit prejudice for their own gain. This whole collection of stories just leaves me sick at heart. I wish you all the best. Be strong and hold your heads up.
12
I've had it in both directions. As a Jewish kid in the Bronx being taunted by the local Irish and Italian American kids. And losing a summer job in a supermarket because the Irish kid needed the job more than I did.
But I also spent the better part of 10 years working in developing countries, including a stint living in Pakistan in the late 1980s as an advisor on energy efficiency. I never knew what the word "gora" meant until recently when a Pakistani friend told me it was a derogatory name for white people used in Pakistan.
And I have been told to go back where I came from by people in the street in several of the countries where I worked.
Not much fun when the shoe is on the other foot.
6
I was 9 months pregnant with another child in the stroller, walking around my neighborhood to help myself with labor. There stops a car with few people inside yelling those words. In that moment, I wasn’t worried about myself, I was worried about my kids having to live in a country were there is a possibility of someone asking them to go “home”-just because they look different. What do you even respond to these people.. “ yea I’m going home, it’s right around the corner”
15
I’m a garden variety middle class brunette white gal, so usually am not the target of people trying to figure out if I “belong”
But I got an idea of what it is like the day a third party needed to call mall security to get rid of an older woman who insistently accused me of being a Mexican kidnapper because there was no way a blond haired blue eyed baby could be mine. (That would be the baby I was nursing in the ladies lounge at JC Penney because of course that’s what kidnappers do.) It was definitely hurtful and a bit frightening.
Ironically, I’m fairly sure she was Latina herself.
12
Even though I am a white U.S.-born citizen, I am not immune to being told to go back to where I came from. White native Californians are also nativist bullies not only towards immigrants but also towards American-born citizens who are not from California. On at least three occasions during my first three years in San Francisco in 1992-95, I’ve been told to my face by white native Californians that they are sick of “people like me” moving to “their state.” Even when I’m not told to leave, I found white native Californians to be very snotty and cliquish. So it’s not just people of color. Even white Americans from other parts of the U.S. are subject to discrimination and rejection.
9
Growing up in a segregated middle-class Jewish section of LA, , it seemed normal and safe in the 50's to a little kid. And then, I went on a Saturday School field trip to Catalina, and as we disembarked, a guy said "those are Jew kids." Clearly they wanted us to "go home." Chilling and scarring.
7
My daughter invited a black friend to her fourth birthday party. This was in 1980. Another four year old , said “This party is for whites. “ My four year old daughter immediately responded, “My party is for everyone . “
I was mortified as the black child’s mother, my friend, grimaced. The rude child’s mother acted as if nothing happened. Four years old.
21
I am Jewish. It was 1972. I was a junior in high school. President Nixon had just started bombing Cambodia. Within a couple of weeks of the start of the bombing, the NJ Republican party decided to hold a fund raising cocktail party at the town synagogue. This was prior to a fund raising dinner at the local armory that Saturday night. A few days prior to Saturday night, my friend and I decided to organize a protest in front of the synagogue during the cocktail hour. We called the local press to announce what we would be doing -- in addition to calling just about everyone on the youth group phone list and every adult we knew in town. By 4pm the day we started making the calls, WCBS radio reported that the Republicans canceled the synagogue event. They recorded the head of the NJ Republican party saying that they [the people who organized the protest] "should just get back on the boat from where they come from." Ha! Since I was originally from NYC, I guess he wanted me to row back across the Hudson. Josh Moritz
11
I disagree with whoever said this is us on our worst day.
I have never felt the urge to be so cruel for cruelty's sake to say "go back" to anyone. And I am hardly out there seeking a "woke" trophy.
This is who fundamentally mean people are.
6
Sadly, it happens to me practically once or twice every year on the subways, always from teenage minority kids causing trouble.
4
Man. There should really be more Italians chiming in here. First and foremost, because no Italian-American in their right mind should be okay with anyone hearing 'go back where you came from'.
We've heard it an awful lot. Italians were readily used as the 'poster children' for the Immigration Act of 1924.
We're certainly more Latin than any Iberian -- you're welcome for the use of the name, lol -- and even still, folks, not really well meaning, feel compelled to ask about our 'criminal' heritage and such things.
Sad that some are still so sick.
Count me as one Italian that's never gonna be down with the bigots.
trump and his minions can take a hike.
15
These stories sadden me and make me feel ashamed. I hate to think that by virtue of my white skin and English surname I would be lumped in with the ignorant people who are described in these narratives. I hope that if I ever witness something like this i would not be so intimidated by the offending party that I wouldn’t speak up to defend the person being victimized. This really just makes me sick to my stomach.
7
The ignorant hatred expressed by adults does not surprise me, even though it infuriates me and saddens me. We are a great country but, unfortunately, many of our communities are isolated and our culture dismisses education as irrelevant for American greatness. And, the divisions that caused the Civil War still exist.
What does surprise me is the vitriol expressed, and felt, by young children and teens. I am saddened that the parents of these kids are teaching them to hate. They are depriving their kids of their childhood and making for them a legacy of unhappy, dissatisfied adulthoods. What a shame.
7
As an elementary and junior high school student, i was called a “commie” and told to “go back to Russia” or to “go back to where [I] came from” so many times it had to have been in the dozens if not the hundreds.
My mother’s first American boss would hover over her head and chant, “Rush this is not Russia”.
Honestly, if thats the worst thing that happens to you, you’re life is pretty good. I wish our leadership would focus on substantive issues and not school yard taunts.
2
So now the story line from Trump is the racist chants from the crowd was patriot. They are all patriots with Trump as the Patriot-in -Chief. Well Mr. President I was in the service during the Vietnam War. Where were you? I've paid my taxes for the last 45 years. How much taxes have you paid? I've paid all my bills and have never claimed bankruptcy. If you are the model for a patriot then our country has fallen far lower than I ever thought possible and that goes for all your chanting followers.
17
I’m an Asian-American who moved to the US from Canada as a child. I’ve heard the “go back” slur and too many others to list. As an Asian hockey player (yes, all Canadians play) in a time when few Americans played and no minorities played, I heard it every day I stepped onto the ice. First, I would see eyes widen and then some of the opposing players and even a few parents would shout insults to “get into my head”. Luckily, I had great teammates who always supported me.
As a child, I had many adults ask me where I came from. Naively, I said “Canada”. Not giving up, they would ask me where my parents came from, to which I also replied, “Canada”. They tried a third time and asked me where my grandparents came from. Again, I told them “Canada”. To be helpful, I told them, so did my great-grandparents. Exasperated, they’d say something under their breadth and walked away. I finally told my dad about this question and he explained to me that everyone assumes that I recently immigrated from Asia since we were new in town. I still get the same question from insensitive adults and I still tell them, “Canada” just to see the look on their face.
I applaud your project but am also cautious that this doesn’t create a new news cycle and take the focus off of the conditions at the migrant detention centers.
13
I would really love to see all these comments compiled into a coffee table book and reading them from time to time. It serves as a constant reminder of not to be judgemental and have a little more kindness towards fellow people.
10
These stories are very painful to read. My heart hurts for all the people who've been, and still are being treated like this. I'm so sorry.
11
These stories brought tears to my eyes.
5
All of these are deeply affecting and horrifying to hear. Allen Malik Easton's comment sticks in my mind. I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and "know" that area and those people so well.
Our recent presidential election and the events of 9/11 may have pushed divisions to the surface, but this story reminds me that this kind of ugliness, this burning desire to separate, label and stratify, is not new.
And the almost comical irony in an area like Pittsburgh, of course, is that the population there is nothing BUT immigrants. I still follow the local newspapers on their websites, and one man in particular writes vociferous, angry letters to the editor about immigrants, immigration and "those people". His Polish last name is unpronounceable to me, but I can't imagine myself - or anyone else - asking him to "go back" to his ancestral land. It's a shame he couldn't extend the same courtesy to fellow Americans and others who want to make the tapestry of our country as rich as his ancestors did.
11
I recently asked an Uber driver where he was from.
He had a deep French accent which I thought sounded beautiful, and a very interesting name.
I was interested in his heritage and in striking a conversation about his personal journey.
He took offense at the question, which could not have been further from my intention.
I thought about trying to explain, but decided I was not confident of navigating further difficulties and remained silent for the remainder of the journey.
11
The first time I remember being told to “go back where I came from,” I was standing at the Stop sign at the corner of Columbia Ave and South Street, literally *feet* from where I was born at the Community Hospital in Morris, MN. I was probably nine years old.
All I could think was that my house was three blocks away and why would they want me to go back there when I was on the way to school?
11
One of the truly sad things about this thread is how deprived we all are when any inquiry about someone’s ancestry or assumed home place regularly precedes an insult. That progression prevents others of us from learning about other cultures, much less sharing our appreciation of a new acquaintance’s home country and saying how glad we are that the person is now here.
Since I am from a part of the country where conversation with strangers is more acceptable, a long taxi ride with an Eritrean taxi driver has been passed with an exchange about how some Eritrean refugees made a Christmas at our home 35 years ago our best Christmas ever. Indian drivers are open to comparing Indian wedding processions with New Orleans second line parades. Most recently, an MD finishing his training at MD Anderson was meeting with me for a post-cancer checkup. I recognized his name as Palestinian. We were able to talk about the generosity of the people in Jordan where he grew up (and where he will return to bring quality healthcare to his people). We compared notes on my favorite restaurant in Amman and, ultimately exchanged cards and promised to contact each other when we found ourselves in Jordan, Atlanta or New Orleans at the same time. Good Lord, this country would be so dull if we were all pasty white people, all speaking English, with progressively worse and worse grammar.
35
I think I've always been immune to this question because in early grammar school we would all explain where we came from to each other and brag a little about it. I had cachet for coming from states far away. Some of the Mexican kids chould explain how they could eat meat on Fridays, because the Pope has given their ancestors a dispensation, because if their ancestors fighting in the Crusades. I don't know how it got started but we all had our few moments of fame.
3
My father was a Cajun whose forbears arrived in the New World in 1632, and in Louisiana in 1755. Still when he was born in the early years of the 20th century, his family was speaking only French. But Cajun schoolchildren were so severely punished for speaking French in school that the dialect was nearly extinguished.
The irony was not lost on me when, leaving a family wedding in Acadiana, I passed a man wearing a “Welcome To America, Now Speak English” T-shirt, got in my car, and listened to a Cajun DJ speaking French and playing Zydeco and Cajun music all the way back to New Orleans.
Don’t we ever learn anything about embracing our differences?
9
As a retired teacher I thought about how this article could be used by other teachers. I hope it will be.
32
This is one of the best articles I have read. I thank everyone for their brave commitment to speak out and tell their story. I saw many who wish to help combat the prejudice these people have experienced and I for one would love to see another article with the stories of those standing up for the basic level of decency everyone deserves.
47
A few weeks ago, I was at an ice cream counter with my kids when the woman in front of us came up 25 cents short. I gave her a quarter and she asked me where I was from. When I said, “Santa Cruz,” she said “No, where are you really from.” And when I said New York, she said, “but where are you ‘really’ from.” My daughter (a blonde with blue eyes) and my son (a brown-eyed, brown-haired kid) could not understand why the lady, whom I had been nice to, would not simply take the answers I had given her. But I understood. I’m indeterminately brown, the legacy of my naturalized American dad of Indian descent and my mom, whose grandparents emigrated from Germany in the 1800s. I’ve been told to go back to my own country (usually misidentified as Mexico) so many times I’ve lost count. But it broke my heart to have to explain to my light-skinned, Elementary-age daughter the reason behind the question.
72
I am a naturalized citizen. I came from Germany to marry my American husband in 1971. After Mr Trump became president, I was asked upon returning from a cruise by a fellow traveler if I had a green card. Never happened before. Times have changed.
40
I have lived in different parts of the world and so I am very interested in learning about other countries and cultures. I have had many wonderful conversations with people who came from around the world all from me asking what is their cultural heritage. I’d like to ask readers if that is an acceptable way to ask.
19
I too love to learn about people and other cultures. I usually just try to have an extended, sincere conversation before asking where someone is from.
4
close your eyes. listen to the person's voice. then decide whether to ask the question.
1
If you are having a real conversation, I think asking someone what their heritage is, instead of “where are you from?” opens the door for both of you to share if you want. The problem with asking “where are you from?” is that the question itself assumes that you are not from here, wherever here might be.
3
Thank you NY Times for this article, and thank you to all who contributed their own deeply personal and painful stories. I am increasingly convinced that racism is a form of mental illness. It is learned, yes, but can become so deeply immersed in a person's psyche that I believe they can be classified as mentally ill, and in need of treatment.
22
@Stop Caging Children
Effective treatment for sociopaths is elusive.
3
Being a minority in the country that I was born, and minority in the country that I am. I am fortunate enough to not experience anything close to most of this experiences, but mostly subtle alienation. I really struggle to hold my tears back and keep my anger in bay to see how much close minded people can be to not see similarities that we have with each other as humans and even with the whole universe. Life is too short to spend it on hating each other.
16
It is heartening, I suppose, to know that I am in good company as an Asian-American (born in the Bronx) who was regularly told to “go back” to where I presumably came from in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts... These are bright and talented people; these are Americans. I consider myself lucky to be counted among them.
17
When some Americans ask some other Americans to go back, it looks pretty odd to me since America is an immigrant country. Unfortunately many Americans are either ignorant of the fact or deliberately ignore it.
If these Americans ask some other Americans to go back, what will the natives have to say to the rest ?
All of this is unnecessarily being given too much importance mainly because those who have said these words and those who have had to face them haven’t faced the real problems in life such as what a number of cancer patients are going through in their lives on day to day basis in their fight for survival and such as what the special children and their parents are going through in their lives daily.
I request those people, who have had to face certain abuse such as mentioned in the article not to consider it as a permanent scar but should take it only as some kind of aberration and move on since they must have had many memorable periods in America by now.
We all tend to highlight the negative at some point of time but it takes us nowhere. As such we should simply move on.
2
I thought all the articles about the president were tough to read. This piece literally makes me feel sick to my stomach.
My father's parents both came from Sicily in the 1890s as little children and met in NYC and married in 1910.
My mother's families came from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Her Mom was born in New York in 1884.
I'm a second generation American on my father's side and a third generation American on my mother's side.
I've been to and love both homelands. But because I'm a person of no color, no one has ever told me to go back.
I hope all the people whose words are featured here take some comfort in Maya Angelou's words, as posted by Representative Omar:
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
-Maya Angelou
52
Unfortunately, this is a human not just an American tendency. I am American and moved to a foreign country at one point. Several times I was sneered at or told to go home. Closer to home, I lived in an Alaskan village where the minister and his wife had lived for over two decades. When she died, the elders refused her burial in the cemetery because she was white and not born in the village. I have come to believe that, basically, all humans are jerks.
25
@fireweed
Agreed. This happened to me quite frequently as an American living in Europe when someone detected my accent. I was told among other things that most of American and the people in it are a “waste of space” and had similar anti-American invective hurled at me.
2
Reading these stories made me sad. And ashamed - ashamed of the vile racism that tarnishes and degrades us all.
20
I've been told to go back. A very small part of my identity, would never let such small minded people define my existence. America has allowed me and my family to become successful beyond our dreams. Folks need to stand up to hate but also grow thicker skin. And more important than either - vote. Obsession with psychic injury becomes a crutch and does not advance our society. Move on.
3
While having dinner one evening in a fairly upscale restaurant in Leesburg, VA, I had a brief conversation in Spanish with one of the employees, a Latino. I’m a white U.S. citizen. A guy at the bar shouted to me, “Are you a U.S. citizen?” I replied just as loudly, “No, I am not, I am a criminal alien here to terrorize you.” That shut him up. Not a single person said a word about this exchange. Had I been the manager, he’d have been told to leave.
58
Sadly, because of our POTUS, if the NYT requested submissions again 5yrs from now, you will probably receive 160,000 submissions vs the 16,000 you received this time. The saddest part is, to so many, including the GOP, these stories don’t really matter because in their eyes they’ve accepted or allowed the misconception that we’re not real Americans anyhow.
22
“You do not have a right of citizenship in a country for which the laws weren't followed to obtain your citizenship. That's unfortunate for you, but your citizenship was most likely gained through fraud. We can only hope that Trump gets elected and fraudulent citizenships are overturned.”
Told to me online a month before Trump’s election in 2016, after I attempted to explain how I had become a citizen a decade earlier though a high tech work visa, then green card, then citizenship. His claim on my “illegality” rested on his belief that people like me should have never been given any high tech jobs. Nothing of what I said about my background, experience, job, made a difference. I simply had no right to be here, according to him.
I was astonished, but figured his predicted future was highly unlikely. Fast forward almost 3 years, and now I'm astonished at how many more steps this country has taken towards insanity.
32
The scene: a suburban cul de sac home to a nebulous group of eighth grade boys doing summer boy stuff. One day, the atmosphere and participants changed. Parents are somewhat mystified but not too aware. Later I found out that one boy, and his family, taunted a younger brother of the eighth graders as a Chink. He was Korean adopted and one of the cooler younger brothers so he was tolerated by the oldsters. From that day on, the taunter and his siblings were totally shunned. When I heard the whole story, I didn’t know If my tears were sadness, or pride at the boys’ response.
13
People suck. These stories make me despair for our country.
19
As I read every one of these stories, the commonality of this mean-spiritedness seems to be rooted in ignorance, anger and fear. The problem with believing your country is superior to all others is that it gives license to slap down everyone else based on their how they appear, especially on home soil. Add someone like Trump to the mix and t becomes open season on visible minorities.
Having travelled much of the world, I am open to differences, to learn and to experience other cultures. During those travels I have met Americans who believe Canadians are ‘less-than’, that we are an odd bunch for supporting things like universal healthcare, that we are socialists.
As I walk down the busy streets of my big city, seeing all the different faces, the people who make up our country, I think, they chose Canada to build a better life for themselves and their families. I know they are here to make Canada a more diverse, interesting country and will contribute to our society in a positive way. Embracing their own cultural roots while weaving Canada into it is what makes us such a rich country.
To all of those who shared their stories of hurt and feelings of shame, remember how strong you are and continue to stand tall.
12
I’m fro Northern Ireland and, in the parking lot at the local Costco, someone yelled at me
“Why don’t you go back where you came from”.....
I had taken a parking space that was open to anyone but she objected.
( I didn’t steal a spot she was was waiting on)
I then proceeded to tell her to do something anatomically impossible and went in to do my shopping.
20
I have been in USA since 1969 mostly in New York and vicinity.
I was in retail business for number of years and had exposure to thousands of people from all walks of life. I have never had anybody telling me to go back to India.
7
The Democrats need a slogan that is a positive spin from this episode. The president and his minions are so negative, "go back". Why not, we welcome all Americans, let's move forward!
6
@bt. Andrew Yang’s (one of the 20 running to be the Democratic nominee) already using it, “Not left. Not right. Forward.”
7
I was born in Texas. It is amazing how many times I have been told to go “ Back to Texas”, and have had people who have never been there go on and on about how barbaric and backwards a place it is. This has obviously never occurred in Texas - but happened occasionally in Hawaii, and frequently in the Bay Area in California. Usually, it was when I tried to explain some aspects of Texas history that might account for its perceived eccentricities.
It is a lovely place, full of lovely people - and much like many Islamic nations, it does not currently have a political reality in harmony with the best of its culture.
8
Were these people policy makers with power looking to completely reshape the country’s social and economical situation by attempting to turn over individual freedoms to the gov and rack up trillions in debt?
No.
Certain members of the squad share ancestry and or are from country’s/ commonwealths that are complete failures currently. Particularly Somalia and Puerto Rico. Read yesterday’s times article about Puerto Rico’s governor. When they try to impose similar gov functions of those country’s here, why is it called racist when their opponent points that out to them in an effort to prove a point about socialism?
Suggesting they try to fix those problems in country’s where some of their ideals have already failed before they try them here isn’t racist, better wording could have been used I will say. But not racist, this is fake outrage. At best an attempt at party unity.
1
But these women all grew up in the USA. I agree with them that our taxes should be invested in our health care and in our children’s education. This would bring far greater dividends to our nation than throwing more trillions at our bloated military industrial complex.
Why can’t Americans have what citizens of every other first world nation have had for decades?
5
Puerto Rico is not its own country, which simply shows your ignorance about people from there. Puerto Rico IS the US. It is a territory and has a governor, the people are US citizens and vote in national elections. I understand you meant to say something nasty about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but it goes over like a lead balloon. She was born in NYC.
But to people who think like you, facts and reality don’t seem to matter. It is just about trying to get some nasty, yet meaningless, jab at someone in order to make yourself feel more important.
And by the way, where did you come from? No really. Where?
6
Reading each experience recounted by these 67 individuals, I wasn't exactly surprised. But the searing specificity of the abuse each person described left me aghast and often near tears. The vicious cruelty, rejection and cold hatred they have endured is horrible. But what makes it even more horrifying, is that Mr. Trump has stoked the fire of racism and white nationalism since he campaigned for the office of President. He and the cruel Americans described by the 67 women and men, cloak their malevolence as patriotism. In truth it is the opposite of democratic ideals and values enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
20
My daughter really shocked me last week. "I'm so sick," she said, "of white people asking me where I'm from." She mimed them: "No really. Where are you from? Where you born? Where are your parents from?" My own mixed marriage is now three decades old, and we live in the most progressive zip code in the country, in a blue state and a bluer city. And yet this happens even here. How could I have been so oblivious? Well--the answer's obvious. I'm the parent who looks white. Let's finally just fix this already.
54
I’ve been told many times in many countries to go back to where I came from. No one cries for me and those like me. And no, not military.
2
Play the song Carefully Taught from the musical South Pacific. It has all the reasons racism exists. Even better, watch the movie and then read Tales from the South Pacific by James Mitchner on which the musical is based. Racism is not new.
9
This cuts both ways. I grew up the only Asian in a small New York town in the 80's and I was on the receiving end, certainly of teasing and racist remarks. At the same time, I was very proud of my identity and when people made ignorant remarks, I just brushed it off. And, for every ignorant remark, I found plenty of people who asked me questions about my culture and background out of sheer interest and curiosity. People only know what they know, and sometimes they sound naive and clumsy, in trying to learn more about things they don't know. I honestly this heightened sensitivity is a bit much.
I have noticed that over the years, the racist remarks have decreased, but so have the most genuine, direct questions about my background and experiences. No one asks about my very unusual name anymore - probably to not sound "rude" -- I'll often just offer up my background just to put them at ease and so they know it's OK, I don't need all this "we're all the same" stuff. And with all the political correctness, I have been siloed into Asian-American-female, and lost control and agency into how I define myself. Not sure this is really the best trend.
6
As I read every one of these stories, the commonality of this mean-spiritedness seems to be rooted in ignorance, anger and fear. The problem with believing your country is superior to all others is that it gives license to slap down everyone else based on their how they appear, especially on home soil. Add someone like Trump to the mix and it becomes open season on visible minorities.
Having travelled much of the world, I am open to differences, to learn and to experience other cultures. During those travels I have met Americans who believe Canadians are ‘less-than’, that we are an odd bunch for supporting things like universal healthcare, that we are socialists.
As I walk down the busy streets of my big city, seeing all the different faces, the people who make up our country, I think, they chose Canada to build a better life for themselves and their families. I know they are here to make Canada a more diverse, interesting country and will contribute to our society in a positive way. Embracing their own cultural roots while weaving Canada into them is what makes us such a rich country.
To all of those who shared their stories of hurt and feelings of shame, remember how strong you are and continue to stand tall.
7
This is, perhaps, one of the most heart-breaking stories I have ever read. It shatters my image of my country, it wakes me up to the fear and hatred that governs so many of my fellow Americans that they feel they must attack and bully their neighbors. The absence of love in the daily interactions of my fellow citizens is clear and will eventually bring this country to its knees. So very sad.
7
I can’t explain how much this infuriates me. It reminds me of the sixties when those of us who marched for peace were told “America love it or leave it.” But this is so much worse. I love living in a community that is diverse. What is wrong with my fellow Americans? I am ashamed of them and I apologize for them.
7
In the world we live in, love is too weak to defeat hate. Love is weak while hate is active.
3
I’m a white woman in my 60’s. I realize my experience is nothing compared to what these folks have endured.
But I have felt uncomfortable/frightened just because friends of mine and I speak French to each other in public. We’ve been doing this for years. We know another language and like to use it.
Until Trump was elected, I never noticed angry stares from others or felt uncomfortable. PA is a conceal carry state. Lancaster County is home to many Trump supporters who also hunt and own guns. I worry that someday one of these folks will shoot us just because we’re not speaking English.
21
Donald Trump’s statements are definitive proof (as if we needed it) that he will never be a legitimate president.
10
I remember once when I wanted to tell someone to go back to his country, but of course, didn't.
I was talking to a young pregnant woman when we were in line to get or renew drivers' licences. She seemed to have no support, so I gave her my number.
As she and I exited with my woman friend, we met her husband, who asked me and my friend, in a really nasty tone, where our husbands were.
I told him that in America women did not have to have husbands to go out in public, and that I did not have one.
Then I realized that with his level of hostility, he would probably beat her when they got home for talking to me. I wished he would go back to Algeria, and leave the wife and baby here to have a better life. She was so lonely.
It does go both ways sometimes. The moral: there are hostile people everywhere, and it is the (public) hostility to strangers that is unacceptable. It is a tiny hate crime.
10
I am white and my "go back home" experience happened in the UK, but it helped me to understand what people of color must feel whenever they are insulted like this. I was working and paying taxes as a legal foreign resident in the UK, as I had taken a job at a consulting firm just after graduation. I was about 25 years old and on my way to a party in London one night, when I got into an argument with some security guards at an underground station because they alleged that my train ticket was "illegal". At one point one of these security people shouted at me "why don't you go back where you come from!", as if to imply that "foreigners" caused all the trouble in London. This was a good 18 years before Brexit, but you could already feel the xenophobic sentiment in many people who resented "foreigners in their land", regardless of whether these were Europeans, Asians, Americans, white, black or anything else.
I remember reacting quite angrily to this person's comment, at which point a dark-skinned policewoman came to my defense and rebuked the security guard quite strongly, and settled things in a peaceful way.
I am happy that I stood my ground against the imbecility of xenophobia in the UK, and I urge everyone to do the same in the USA. There can be no middle ground with these people.
24
I am a convert to Islam, originally from the US (NY). I wear hijab and have definitely been told to go back where I came from more than once. Trust me the “send her back” chanting is utterly and completely unsurprising to many of us. If it is surprising to anyone out there - I guess it’s good you’ve learned something about people in our country and what we deal with regularly.
17
See, you had to be in Downtown Brooklyn to get a different perspective.
In 1959 at the age of six I came to live with my brother and father in Downtown Brooklyn, where there were blacks, Jews and all kinds of mixed kids who looked like Little Richard.
I spoke no English, I was white and the only thing that was the same as the old country (Lebanon) was numbers.
Alphabets, language, people even the taste of the water was all unrecognizable.
I was soon accepted by everyone in the gang, but for years , because they saw me learn English week by week, they called me Frenchie for ever.
5
I know a couple who are Indian-American. He was born in Georgia and she in New York. Because they are Sikh, he wears a turban and has a short beard. Most Americans don't realize that Sikhs are not Muslims. Like me, they are in the medical profession. He's had patients tell him all sorts of things with "go back" being one of of the milder comments. This is despite his having participated in saving their lives or alleviating their suffering.
On the converse side, I have two other friends who look as All-American as you can get: big, strapping, blond-haired, blue-eyed men. One of them is of English origin but was born/ raised in Mexico City and didn't come to the US until he was 18. The other is actually of Italian background whose grandparents were immigrants. Since Trump's election, they've been subjected to racist comments from white strangers who assume they must agree with these comments since they look white. In the former case, my friend intentionally replies back in fluent Spanish that he's from Mexico.
9
I cannot fathom people behave this way. No excuses!
4
The problem, of course, is that this article will never be read by Trump's supporters, who are firmly ensconced in the Fox News propaganda bubble. Fox News keeps 35% of our country in a constant state of rage and anger--just take a moment to go read the front page of their website, it's all stories designed to provoke. Because of Fox News, empathy and compassion no longer have a place in red state voters' minds.
7
Year: 1980's Location: Flushing, NY subway station
A person said to me: "Go back to your country."
I was a recent immigrant and a high school student back then. My first reaction was a moment of embarrassment, but it quickly turned into a regret for his ignorance. The good news -- I have not heard that phrased uttered since... that is, until last week when Trump said it. Feeling a deep regret for his ignorance.
6
Circa 1951-1954, Wyandanch Long Island New York
I spent my childhood and much of my my teen-age years in this then-farming community. I was born after my father, a German immigrant, returned as a US. soldier and US citizen after WWII. My mother was Hungarian-American, born a USA citizen. Blonde hair, blue-eyed, the chants directed at me by the young Irish and English children of our community were Hitler-related, ending in "Go Back to Germany." They must of learned it from the dinner table lessons of their parents as the chants ended as they got older, then able to think better on their own.
There is some irony to this, as Wyandanch then was in the middle of a great transformation from it's rural past to a Black suburbia community for NYC middle-class blacks and WWII Black veterans, then-forbidden to buy in Levittown and the like. Most of my friends were dark-skinned Americans, some with living ancestors who experienced slave-times.
7
I recall my cousin telling me how she was yelled at by a young black man "go back to China!" while crossing the street some years ago (she's not Chinese). His face appeared stunned when she quickly retorted "go back to Africa!". It just doesn't occur to some - no matter the color - that we are all from somewhere. You can teach this at school, but the lesson is really learned in the home.
8
My wife is Ilocano Filipina, and very proud of her heritage. As manang in her family, she lived in Kuwait, Hong Kong, and Great Britain, working overseas to put her brothers and sisters through college, before we met, married, and she moved here and became a United States citizen. This incident is tangental to this conversation, but I believe it does fit in some way:
We were out one evening at a business holiday function when some guy with a buzzcut came up to me and asked in a scornful tone "Why did you marry an ASIAN woman?" I paused, then asked him "How many times have you been married?" He looked at me funny, then said "Three." I asked, "And they've all been (Caucasians)?", to which he cockily responded "Of course." I said "You just answered your own question - I've only been married the once."
16
I am so grateful we are able to talk about the hate and the pain it has caused. I am also aware that my father who is black man and grew up in the time of Jim Crow could never utter any of these statements in public. If my Dad did ever speak of the virtual hate in the times of Jim Crow what would possibly happen is terrorization , torture and even death to him and our family.
11
I can only offer negative confirmation. In the USA I am put into the "white" box whether I like it or not, and can testify that I have never been told to "Go back to Europe" by anyone.
6
Thank you NYT and thanks to all these writers. Reading these letters and comments really brought home how terribly hurtful and how terribly divisive is the phrase "go back to...". Most of the writers talk about how they have been affected for their entire lives.
The chants of the crowd, egged on by Trump, were cruel and scary; perhaps "it can happen here".
For those of us who are "white", or who appear to be "white", this is a reminder that we cannot avert our eyes when these kinds of incidents happen in our vicinity. We must do our best to let our fellow-citizens know that we're on their side (and I must admit that this frightens me). The alternative is cowardice.
12
These first-person stories of experiencing racism are all too common. I'm of Asian/European heritage and have experienced this myself, though only in subtle ways.
The scary thing is that if Trump were to read these shared stories, he would feel no shame, no remorse, and no empathy whatsoever. Zero empathy, but a whole lot of ego. That's about the definition of a sociopath, isn't it?
And even scarier is that there are people who will still vote for him.
15
Someone was feeding ducks at a small zoo. I pointed out a "Do not feed the ducks" sign. "Go back to your country!"
Another time, in line at a copy center, I told a guy that he (and I) need to pick the copy machine we're in line for. My line advanced, his didn't. "Go back to the old country!"
Both times as a teenager. I remember it being traumatic.
Didn't know how prevalent this was, before reading the article.
94
So sad, I’m sorry for all the unnecessary pain. You all belong.
238
@Peggy Greco
I sincerely appreciate your sentiment.
But I think part of the point here is that we already gave on the battlefield and on the picket line; we don't need anyone's stamp of approval. We are Americans and better patriots than many native-born white people...like the victims of epidemic bone-spurs, for example.
23
WE all belong.
2
@Peggy Greco
Thank you Peggy. From the bottom of my heart.
I am a European immigrant who is most commonly racialized as White in the U.S. ... I too have been told quite a number of times to "go back to my country." When this happens I am sad, scared, angry and also perplexed as I can only wonder what it must feel like for someone who is racialized as Black, Asian, Hispanic, etc.
97
construct road billboards displaying where to drive to for drive-through FREE-BIRTH CONTROL.
Animals get agitated while confined too closely. Way too much traffic.
When one says to go home, they need more space! It is not personal.
Ford car co. would love to sell you more cars!
Wonder why they help support financing South Americans to flood the US?
Money, dear.
I haven't been told to go back where I came from (Brooklyn). However, I've heard reports that in our city, right after the 2016 election, white kids told black kids they had to go back to Africa now that Trump is in the White House. My neighbor had adopted an Ethiopian orphan. She was understandably distressed, so she asked me to teach her children self-defense.
I don't think there's much we can do to change the racists. One reader comments that this article should be read by all our legislators. Some of them understand already. Others don't care because it doesn't affect them personally. And the rest--mostly GOP--are perfectly happy to stoke the flames of racism as long as it keeps them in office.
What we can do is unite with our neighbors against this evil.
19
If there is one good thing about the Trump presidency it has laid bare to the rest of the world how racist America truly is and in that regard it is strangely refreshing to this 4th generation American and person of colour. To people like myself, this racism (that many seem to think has just suddenly appeared since Trump), is not shocking, it is what we must live with daily; day after day and generation after generation. My father, a WWII vet who fought on the front lines in some of the bloodiest battles in Europe, used to tell me that America would change someday, but I knew better. I looked around the schoolyard at all the ignorant little bullies (who are now Trump’s base) and knew that wasn’t going to happen and I was right. Read these stories….they are a mere tip of the iceberg. This is your America.
27
Here is a recent example from our local newspaper today:
https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/07/tim-hortons-employee-tells-ann-arbor-muslim-couple-go-back-to-your-country.html
5
Try saying "You Too" when someone tells you to go back to anywhere or somewhere and see the confused look on their face. Or when someone says "You speak good English" - say 'you too' or take it as a compliment and move on! That'll quieten a basically unsolvable situation.
8
@NParry-That strategy has worked for me!
3
I am heartbroken and disturbed by these stories. And frightened for the whole country. I apologize for this hateful ignorance. I do believe that these “go back where you came from” screeds are from undereducated and poor, mainly white, people. And they have been empowered by this — their — president. But President Trump is the first president I think who has indulged such hatred openly. God help us.
6
“Please bear in mind that the problem with producing bile is that there’s always the danger you may have to swallow it at some point. Been proven time and time again.”
4
There's no sense in trying to understand the racist for most of us. It's some primal, deep rooted stuff that goes on in the brain, like a child who isn't taught to wash his hands before eating, so will the bad hang of a racist perspective take hold in the mind if not actively discouraged from birth. To exemplify the meaningless-ness of racism, I'm white, descendant of settlers (there's actually a letter somewhere from Calvin Coolidge or some other old-timey president, "congratulating" my grandparents on their heritage - not like that means anything to me), I come from a tradition of armed services, and I've still been called ethnic slurs and been told to go back to where I come from. The KKK has always shrouded itself in secrecy because most people believe they are vile. And yes, Trump does come from a tradition of racism and his dad was indeed arrested at a KKK riot on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, NY back in the 1930's - his beef was with all the Catholics on the police force, typical Know Nothing Party, Silent Majority, KKK, jingoist, white nationalist evangelical angst. These people are the same as they've always been, they've only been hidden the last few decades. But remember, they're more outnumbered today than they've ever been.
9
I grew up in a bigoted white family in the South. I have been constantly told that I was "different," for which I thanked God! I always found people of color and other nationalities friendly and interesting, for they are all children of God.
I thought that the Southern blacks were the only persecuted people in the world until I had a Jewish friend in my first job. She was such a beautiful girl, with excellent character and a sweet disposition. Knowing about Jewish persecution elsewhere, I asked her if she had ever experienced it. She told me that when she was young, "the neighborhood boys called me names and threw rocks at me." I was saddened and shocked!
My first friend was a sweet little black girl whose mother helped us when my mother was ill. When she came to visit me one day, my father told her, "Claire is busy. Go back home where you belong!" I hated him then and at other times when he was mean or cruel, and for seventy years I have wished I could find that "little girl" and tell her how much I loved her, but I never saw her again.
My heart aches for all the victims of bigotry and hatred, and I
pray that the persecutors will recognise the pain they cause so that in time our country can truly be the "Christian" nation that we claim to be. Sadly, we have a long way to go.
"Forgive them , Father, for they know not what they do."
15
My grandparents came as teenagers from Poland. Raised 12 children. My father was their youngest. There are 5 children in our family. My father worked construction for large companies in our state. He came home covered in cement in the cold winter and sweat in the heat of summer. I can’t remember a night he fell asleep after supper when in his sleep he wasn’t calling out dirty ethnic slurs he lived with day after day. Dirty Pol ...., lazy Pol....., curse words. We knew them all. I wasn’t ever proud of my heritage though with our name there was no denying it. The French/English was more to my liking. We had no less than 5 nationalities on our street there were never any disagreements. We were all too busy trying to survive. Everyone worked hard, minded their own business, but would help each other if needed.
6
These are horrible stories. I taught many Somalian children who had immigrated to Ohio. They didn’t fit in. They did look and act different. Thankfully I never heard any insults made to them. When 2 fifth grade girls make guns when they first handle clay can you imagine why they would not want to go back to Somalia?
Perhaps the native Americans among us should have their own rally chanting “Send them back.” That might give us a better perspective on this issue.
6
I read these stories and my guts twist. This xenophobic behavior has always been here, sometimes just below the surface and other times fully exposed in hateful speech. The children who spew this stuff learn it from their parents and marginalize those they consider "different". I just don't get it. I cannot fathom the hatred and ugliness that people carry in themselves and use to tear down others. I am feeling so hopeless about America.
8
I feel extremely saddened by these stories and sickened at the ignorance of those spewing the hateful phrases. If I ever heard anything like these being said in my presence, I wouldn’t tolerate it. It’s unreal to me that we are living in the 21st century and people still don’t understand that we are a country of immigrants. Only the Native Americans can truly claim this land as their own.
7
These accounts simultaneously break my heart and enrage me. The current state of affairs makes me fear for the future of our country, as well as for the well-being and safety of my beautiful daughter-in-law and my grandson who will never look “American” enough to some horribly racist people.
6
I heard that Yankee go back (I am white) ,lot's when I moved to the South from NYC in 1961 and marched with Dr. Rev, Martin Luther King in Atlanta.
6
How does it go? Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Not to suggest we are immune. When people ask me where I’m from, I say I’m Australian with a passport to prove it. Standard response, “No, where are you really from?”
6
okay, try being an American of Lebanese descent right after 911 and going forward. Not fun, really heard a lot of nasty stuff. But America is my birthplace and I kind of understood the hurt. People are human. They just get scared.
4
How to deal with such an injury?
"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him."
"Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit."
I have never yet succeeded in convincing a fool by means of reason, so I have to come to think the second course of action is the only one.
Before anyone is a citizen of this country or that, we are all citizens of the planet. People who tell Ilhan Omar or anyone else to leave America should be told to leave our planet first.
3
Spoke to a Sikh cab driver who spent $54k and a dangerous journey to get here. Traveled through Honduras where he was jailed. Someone was offered 5 dollars to kill him. Was sick from walking through filthy water for days in Colombia. The story blew me away. This 27 year old is missing half of his head from being beaten in Punjab (Sikh’s are persecuted) and left for dead. Prince deserves to be here. Send them back? No way.
10
I don't recall anyone ever saying "go back to Africa" to me but I have been called the n-word and other race-based insults. I grew up in NYC and respond with "excuse/pardon me" and a look to "where in NYC are you from" questions, especially if the questions are preceded by "you are so well-spoken" or "you don't seem to be from the ghetto," which were actually said to me.
It can be helpful to have a few neutral words or phrases handy, along with a blank stare, to deal with hate-filled people. Of course, sometimes it is better to say or do nothing, these things are always situational and people should always make their safety a top priority.
6
It is hard to tell an Alaska native to 'go back to where you came from', but as a white person here, I hear plenty of derogatory and racist remarks about native (indigenous) Alaskans. I've heard a lot of racist remarks targeting people of color. It is shocking and disgusting. I've tried to speak against such behavior when it happens. Racism absolutely makes no sense to me. I'm sorry that people have to endure such terrible behavior.
3
This story is being framed as if it's from a Trump and white nationalist angle. How does one interpret the same type of comments from another minority/immigrant class? I would like to read comments of this variety as well. I've been spat at through a window while walking to my family's and called "chino" in a derogatory manner. Are only white people capable of racism or are we all?
I was called a white honky b in a restaurant in DC once just because I accidentally bumped into someone.
Truth is, I have been a diversity facilitator for years. Pretty ironic, eh?
VOTE to change this in 2020.
8
My cheeks still burn with shame remembering my cowardice when I was in college. At a party a fellow student with whom I was having a nice conversation asked for a ride home, as I had a car. I gave him the ride, and parked in the lot by my dorm. He asked if he could walk me to the door, very gentlemanly. Because I had no courage, I said no. He was African-American and I was a coward. It was 1969. I’ve tried very hard since then to be a better person than that.
12
To the person saying "Go back...":
The government of the United States made me a citizen - who are you? Who are you to tell me to go back? If you don't like it, take it up with the government. They make thousands of people citizens every year.
9
I was on the New Jersey transit train from New York to Philadelphia with two friends. One of us was wearing a kippa, I have a beard and was wearing a hat. A white man aggressively began calling us Muslim, insulting Islam, telling us to go back, etc. for a good 15 minutes between stops, while he menaced us. We are all white in appearance but were called Muslim for wearing Jewish headwear. I’m sure this has happened to other visibly observant Jewish men with beards. We didn’t want to get in a fistfight on the train so we just kept a step away out of his range and kept quiet, as did the man directly in front of us reading an Arabic newspaper. The white conductor physically threw our attacker off the train at the next stop, which was a heroic act.
35
I’m in my 60’s and am Asian American and have heard that phrase a lot, but it’s still shocking when a co-worker, who is a lawyer, say “people like you don’t look like they belong here.”
96
Shocking. I am an immigrant to Canada and have never once in 60 years been told to go back to the old country.
5
For a supposedly educated man he sounds really ignorant. Has he been living under a rock?
3
@db an insensitive remark but he is right factually if he means Asians don't look like the majority white people. White people need to be told to go back to Europe but we don't hear stories about that - mayne the native Americans did say that and got slaughtered.
1
Frankly, those p’s me off. In a country where we, or our ancestors, all came from somewhere, even Native Americans if the scientists are correct, why should anyone have to wonder what someone else thinks about them. Or be treated like this.
It is the actions of small minded cowards like our “president”, caps because he sure does not act like one. And considering his grandfather and wife, who definitely doesn’t look American whatever that is, are immigrants he should shut up.
It makes me so angry that people have to be hurt like this. There is absolutely no reason for this and to keep stoking those fires will ultimately lead to trouble.
5
I am a white Italian American ,son of an immigrant. In the sixties ,when I was in High School, college, and the Army, I was passionate in my defense of the Civil Rights movement. I can't tell you how many times friends, co-workers, relatives, even a girlfriends father , would say about people who were simply trying to get the right to vote, or eat at a restaurant, or some other form of justice, that "they don't like it here , they should go back to Africa". Many of these people were children of immigrants themselves. Oh yeah I was also called an N-lover.
6
I submitted my story to the NY Times. It hurt to write it, to relive it again. I forgot about the incident until I read about Trump's tweet. Filed in the back crevice of my brain only to be triggered by the ignorance of our President and his supporters. This Administration has triggered a lot of painful memories (racism, sexism, physical abuse, gaslighting).
This entire country will need mental health care when this Administration is over.
16
If it can be done, I wish the NYT would open this article up to non-subscribers, so we can share it on Facebook.
3
People need to put things into perspective not knee jerk reactions, jumping on the bandwagon, and yearning to be part of the media/Dem feeding frenzy.
The immigrants and political/asylum seekers crossing our borders have nothing in common with the millions that preceded them. Back then there was a process, an orderly system that was respected and honored. Today its a free for all that is pure lunacy, idiocy.
So, for those that are the ignorants citing what they know absolutely nothing about then I must cast my vote for sending them back too. Let them learn how reality is really measured, not stupidly perceived.
@Nick DiAmante
You missed the point. These incidents are experienced by those who are legally here, naturalized citizens, and even native born Americans.
8
@Friendly His point is that people that he calls "illegals" deserve the treatment described. He's clearly identified himself as a Trump supporter.
So many times I've heard people around me make anti-semitic jokes.Evidently I "pass" very well, especially when I use my married last name. They generally say I don't -look- Jewish .' 'Odd, you don't look ignorant' is my usual reply.
24
Good for you!
5
I just tell them if they don't like it here then they should go back to where they come from.
With Ancestry.com, they can easily find out where they should go.
2
I’m Australian by birth but have lived here for 26 years. I’ve heard “go back to where you came from” usually when exercising my first amendment right in some political or social argument. I find it the most infantile of all responses and any chance of a mature discourse on any topic comes to a screeching halt once uttered.
16
The only people who can rightfully say "Go back to where you came from" are native Americans. I don't see too many of them with MAGA hats.
8
I noticed that almost all the accounts of people describing being told to "go back to where they came from" ended in the person who was harassed not standing up to the ignoramus who spoke to them and then they felt horrible about it, even years later.
Now-- in cases where one feels physically threatened, or there are children, I understand walking off, and I do understand the shock people feel when they are harassed like this and how difficult it is to react.....
But I would like to propose that we ALL stand up IN PUBLIC to these totally stupid, ignorant, uneducated, untraveled, uncultured people. STAND UP TO THEM! Tell them they are ignorant yahoos. Tell them they are INFERIOR because they only speak one language. Tell them to go back TO SCHOOL since they are obviously under-educated. And anyone witnessing this must STAND UP and make this totally unacceptable. SHAME these people! And truthfully, anyone who supports TRUMP is in this category. SHAME on anyone in the TRUMP party. The stain of TRUMP will follow you forever.
8
The "where are you from?" question is the one I get the most - I think it's most common for Asian-Americans. Often, it's an innocent enough question, particularly in our mobile society where people often move multiple times over their lives. I usually try to take it as innocent and answer it honestly: "Tokyo, but I've lived here since I was just a few months old."
In December 2016, I was on a skiing trip with some girlfriends (all of them white). We were lining up for the lift when two guys elbowed in front of us. Never shy about speaking up, I told them we were there first. They glared at me, and one, in a thick New Jersey accent, told me to go back to China. My friends started telling him things like "You can't say that to her!" The lift operators, whom I knew from being on that mountain all the time, glared at him. I just stared back and said "I'm Japanese, moron." Outnumbered, the two guys backed off. We had a great rest of the day skiing, though I admit I did keep an eye out behind me.
18
When and if confronted by the racist and nativist "go back to your country", the appropriate response is "after you, unless you are a Native American."
4
As a recipient of my fair share of "where are you from" and its variants, as well as the occasional "N*!", I can really empathize. It was entirely predictable that Trump would become president, given how much traction his "Obama the Kenyan" story got. Turns out the pocket or seriously aggrieved white people is much bigger than I thought and they *still* resent busing, affirmative action, voting rights and all the other PC stuff they've had to tolerate.
What to do about it? On the one hand part of their position can never be ameliorated - they are losing the white privilege they were somehow raised to expect. Add to that Trump has blessed their disaffection from the highest office in the land.
Bear in mind though, his mentor's previous protégé, Joe McCarthy, was eventually defeated. His mentor came to an ugly and ignominious end.
Fundamentally these people feel lost, unloved and inadequate. This is the way they channel that ill will. The big question is how to address their corrosiveness. I don't have any answers, but holding them close seems better than pushing them away. On the evidence, they're breathtakingly ignorant of history, but how to educate them when public education and free libraries did not?
Would a talk and a hug have prevented the Holocaust?
3
The stories shared here break my heart. I want to say to everyone that shared their story that YOU BELONG HERE. Please don't let people with evil words of racism, meanness and idiocy define who you are as a person or as an American. Praying for healing.
6
What I did not read in any of these comments and what I think needs to be said is that the people who make these unkind stupid remarks are absolutely pathetic creatures , none of whom has a modicum of self worth. All of them without exception are so lacking inn any good feeling about themselves that they try to keep themselves a boost by trying to demean others who are not white. But they do not succeed. After saying "go back where you came from" they are still the same miserable persons they were before. None of you should feel the least bit bad about what these pathetic creatures say. Even Trump, way down in the secret part of his heart, knows that he is a miserable sorry excuse for a human being, but to admit it would kill him. People who have to bolster their pathetic fragile egos by demeaning others are hollow, they are nothings, and deep down they know it.
9
When I was a student at the University of Denver Law School, a white classmate posed during a class, for all to hear: "Is there a right to go back somewhere? For example, can black folks go back to - the boat?" (Referring to ships used to transport black Africans for chattel slavery in the Americas). He and a couple other white students then shared a chuckle, while the white instructor and other students remained silent.
Formulating the racist trope as rhetorical question did not obscure its hateful nature. Nonetheless, it seemed taken as acceptable, even normal.
The experience was for me an example of how racist ideology and rhetoric, if not confronted, progress to increasingly violent extremes. When later in the semester the same student (now a member of the CO bar) was addressing the class, he angrily ejaculated the statement: "I think we should just nuke them!", openly calling for extermination of an entire people, also known as genocide.
These events occurred in an international human rights law course.
6
And then Democrats wonder what is the harm in condoning allowing thousands of illegal foreign immigrants to enter across the border with complete impunity and then once here be afforded all of the same scarce public services and amenities many who have been here all their lives are struggling for access to themselves?
I especially appreciate the comments from those who have hurled racist insults and grew to regret it. I too feel shame and remorse for a comment I made 40 years ago about a friend, who was within earshot. I wish I hadn’t. I feel so sorry. I wish I could make it up to him. I still burn with shame.
I wish that my apology here helps someone who was on the receiving end. I was a jerk and you did nothing to deserve my insult. I’m sorry.
256
@Peter Thank you. I forgive you.
13
@Peter Thank you.
@Peter Same here. If you are still in contact with this friend, please let them know, and then tell your children too.
The worst part isn’t the insults or the jerks who make them, it’s all the people who listened to you say that and didn’t call you out.
6
I’ve been threatened with lynchings, punched in the stomach because the boy didn’t like how I looked, shut out of playgroups, games, told no one wanted me here, my mother is a dog and we should go back to Africa. All before 7th grade. And it didn’t end. Guess what - I’m not Black. I’m from India. And then I told people “you should go back to class, you flunked social studies and geography”. And then I realized how ignorant and uneducated these people are. And then I knew I was better than them. And I didn’t care what they thought because the world is so much bigger than the USA. And I can go where ever I want BECAUSE I don’t look American and no one will assume I’m obnoxious and arrogant. (Cause that is what the American stereotype is).
276
@RS
Don't forget that you are superior linguistically as most Indians speak the national language (Hindi), their local language e.g. Gujerati and also English. Plus in my extensive experience of travelling (11 times) to India, most Indians can tell a past participle from a gerund and know the terminology better than English First Language speakers. Tell them that as they threaten to lynch you. I am really disturbed by the lynching threat but guess what? I believe you.
16
Thank you NYT for this humbling and tragic look at the impact of our human instincts toward tribalism and xenophobia. The pain expressed by each of these Americans, will stop my habit of asking the question "where are you from"? My question is always out of my interest in learning about other peoples' heritage and life journeys. After reading this piece, I now realize my presumptiveness and insensitivity in even asking the question that no one asks me as an english speaking American of anglo heritage. To anyone I have inadvertently offended, I am so sorry. And if I ever overhear the phrase "GBTWYCF"used against anyone, I will muster the courage to confront the offender.
10
I second the experience of the Boston pair at the bar. Despite being home to the best universities in America, it is a place of vehement hate that seeps into everything you experience here. It has gotten better, but I will never forget my experience In Boylston street that summer day in 1999–it was with a police officer who yelled something similar to me.
You could imagine how much the local civilian population resents dark skinned people here.
The movie Departed is a pretty accurate description of the mind boggling insularity of this town.
2
It’s hateful, jealous behavior. We moved to Utah in the early 80’s for my husband’s career. I also found a wonderful job in my profession. He worked for a large international company and my employer was a local firm. We relocated from Pennsylvania. I was constantly confronted with comments that I was taking a job away from a man who needed to support his family - despite my defense that I had a college degree and was more than qualified for my position - and frequently told that I needed to move back to “wherever it was I came from”. I’m an educated, white, CATHOLIC woman. Prejudice is everywhere. I ultimately had a very successful career here but I learned to avoid the haters and find the best in most people.
7
Its just so sad to read these stories. They really underscore the divided nation that we are today led by a President who doesn't think about the consequences of his hurtful words. What the world must think of us. I am not only sad for us, but for our children and what they must have to endure if we go backwards and not forward in bridging the racial divide.
7
@Penny W. This is universal, not just in the U.S. Tribalism is alive and well, and the more economically insecure people get, the more it rears its ugly head.
3
In 1980's as a student in Nashville, TN, I had a minor verbal traffic dust-up with an older Asian man. Upon hearing my accent (I grew-up in Poland) he immediately resorted to "go back where you came from" with a very pronounced Indian accent. I guess it works many ways, although I never encountered anything like that again despite working for decades with tons of Asians around me.
A more politically motivated "argument" I heard more recently from a conservative European implant. When I argued for more ...European-type concept of society and safety net, his trump argument was that "if I don't like it here I should go back," as if advocating for a change is verboten.
3
These stories are heart breaking and should be part of a civics or inclusiveness program. We need to teach our children that the contents of your heart and mind are more important than the colour of your skin or how you speak.
As I watch the hate and anger throbbing at Trump campaign events I wonder what they are angry at? Can they truly be angry at people they have never met, or are they angry at how their lives have turned out and are seeking someone to blame?
Perhaps the NYTimes can do a similar piece exploring the hurt that is driving the anger in flyover America? As they say, understanding is the first step toward reconciliation.
4
I am a white American all of whose family arrived in the US before the Civil War; my son is half-Indian. For many years we lived in Germany. I can't begin to count the number of times I was told when we were on the street car and other public places together that I should not speak to him in English. After a while I gave in and sometimes spoke to him in my ungrammatical German just to be left alone. There were also comments when I carried him in a front pack rather than a pram, when he kicked off his socks, and was thus barefoot in his pram in the summer, and on and on.
4
have become increasingly alarmed by the increase in publicly expressed, belligerent racism since the election of Obama through Trump's election. I used to frequent a local bar/restaurant and witnessed a popular white man openly advocating an uprising to expel or kill others who were not white or were immigrants. Quite a few of our acquaintances (all white) in the bar voiced muted approval of his denunciations and his means. I was incensed and decided to publicly confront the man advocating what seemed to be a call for an ethnic/racial purge and overthrow of Obama. I told him, so all could hear, that what he was advocating was treasonous. I asked if he were ready to confront the police, army, FBI and others . . to face arrest, humiliation and imprisonment for such a plot and conspiracy to these ends. All of the surrounding acquaintances quickly turned away from him, and he said nothing in return.
I returned to this bar for a year or so afterwards. Nothing of the sort was ever repeated in my presence again, though I suspected several of the people who had turned away when confronted, still secretly harbored these views.
I remain convinced it is important to confront such public displays of racism and the like, to resist these acts of coercion and harassment when encountered. I believe we should not wait for elections and remain otherwise publicly silent . . . especially if one is white, given the historic locus of this racial animosity and current political climate.
7
I am so disheartened by the failure of good people to speak up in these situations.
Please, always be prepared to show solidarity with people who should NOT feel vulnerable and isolated when attacked this way. They should feel well-defended and embraced against un-American acts like these.
16
@Miller
Very good statement. One must not hesitate to act in situations that need our attention. I’ve sometimes “hovered” in the background when something feels unjust - surprisingly, when they see someone is attentive to what’s happening, it defuses the situation and people go their own way.
We cannot turn our heads from injustice.
10
My husband and two young sons were near Riverside Park here on the Upper West Side. The boys were riding their scooters, perhaps a bit loudly down the street, when an older lady yelled, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from!” It took my husband, who was born in this country and served it proudly as an officer in the Army, all his strength to keep his cool in front of our children.
They are still too young to have realized the meaning behind the lady’s comment, but I imagine we will have many discussions about race, racism and what it means to grow up as a person of color in the US. Thankfully having lived abroad for much of our lives as well as the children’s lives, we are able to see the beauty and value of our heritage and appreciate people from all over the world for who they are.
7
These stories and comments have brought me to tears. We all knew this went on in our country, but now it's being condoned and encouraged by the president. My belief that our government, our Constitution would protect us and prevail is being shredded daily.
7
More similar than different:
I read Eddie Torres comment and thought you’d printed mine until I got to the name! I am a senior, white, Jewish female born inNYC. Every time I say something critical of the US someone will tell me to leave. Haven’t they heard about New York women? I’m not going anywhere.
5
As much as I feel the hurt that I and countless others have felt from this shared experience, I do have to add that my other indelible experience of non-white otherness was in the 70’s, rural Ohio, at McDonald’s. My parents, brothers and I (as small children) were in line when an elder, white gentleman came to my father, a physician, and said he wanted him to have this and put a $20 bill in his hand. My father said thank you and later told us something to the effect that he meant well and we have to appreciate it, however unnecessary it was. Putting aside the misplaced and seemingly race-based pity, there are people who embrace otherness with generosity.
5
@Mike B. For context, I should add that my parents are naturalized Filipino Americans, and my brothers and I are born Americans. As kids in a neighborhood playground, we were told to “Go back to Chiny” by other white kids our age, whose compound demonstration of ignorance was too puzzling even to be offensive. This man’s gesture to what I assume he thought was a refugee or otherwise disadvantaged family has stood out to me as equally as the “go back” remarks we’ve endured.
1
So important to hear these voices of real people going about their daily lives. It is also painful because people ask me where I am really from and down a rabbit hole as if my parents, grandparents origins are made up (California, New Mexico, Texas). It is also super annoying since my family served in the military and are patriotic. Super neat lawn with an American flag in front yard. You spend so much time/energy to prove you are ultra-American. Trying to win the American history bowl contest in junior high. I spent a summer in Jamestown, Virginia at the National Park. Was selected for an US State Department internship. Working for Disney. My family loves baseball. Funny thing, when I studied abroad in the UK, nobody ever asked me where I was "really from or my family", totally assumed and fascinated that I was from California.
10
The history of immigration to America has been of refugees and the dispossessed escaping their former homes. If we now introduce a system that attracts only "qualified" people, the hostility to new immigrants who would likely be better off then the existing population may exacerbate the hostility towards immigrants. I think even now we see some of this vis-a-vis new Asian immigrants. Civic lessons in school and opportunities to share meals and conversation are mechanisms that can help a heartfelt of integration of different peoples.
3
My wife is Hispanic, parents from Puerto Rico. In 3rd grade she was put in a closet by her teacher, presumably for not speaking English. It negatively shaped here education for years. And that is just one of the many experiences she has had.
I am white and have never understood how skin color makes any difference in the we treat one another. I have experienced a small slice of it in other countries-- so it is not a unique aspect of life here in the US by any means.
4
I am a Southeast Asian originally from South Pennsylvania. Sometimes my family would be refused service at restaurants and markets, but most of the time we were subjected to more subtle - if you can even call them that - reminders that our neighbors did not think we were real "Americans." Our achievements in class were attributed to our race, rather than our work ethic or ambition. We were constantly asked "where we were really from." Even our teachers - as well meaning as they might have been - would refer to my sister and I when they taught the class about "our country." Sometimes it felt as if we were foreign exchange students rather than American citizens.
3
This is also said to and about people who are homeless. It is a common myth in every city across the country that most of the homeless have come from "somewhere else" to live off the generosity of their new host city.
The underlying thought is that if the homeless would just 'go back where they came from,' the problem would be mostly solved.
In truth, the housed population moves around only slightly less than the homeless population. It's also true that if the homeless all suddenly returned to where they are "from" (however that's defined), most would stay right where they are, and the others would just switch places, and nothing would be solved for anyone.
Instead, maybe we should quit worrying about where anyone is from, and start treating people with dignity and respect right where they are.
6
When I went to high school in Galveston, Texas, schools were still segregated. I went to a private school, all male, all white with the exception of four or five Mexican Americans and myself, a Filipino foreign student. I was told to go back to where I came from because I was breaking the curve. I did skip two grades in high school and I did go back because my father finished his residency training and his visa required that we all go back to the Philippines. Our family later immigrated to the United States and we became naturalized US citizens. When I sat for the oral exam for certification by the American Board of Radiology I outscored my white fellow residents. I passed while they conditioned or failed and had to take part or all of the exam again.
2
Reading these stories makes my blood boil. As a Chinese American woman (who is 5’10” with a black belt in karate), I don’t think anyone has ever told me to go back to where I came from. But reading these stories makes me think it’s just a matter of time before it happens. And I am going to spend the next few days thinking of a proper response that won’t involve hitting someone.
10
This has come up in so many ways that it's hard to mention them all. I lived in Texas for 30 years. The first question people would ask is "where are you from?" If you were from many places they would then ask "where's your kin?" If you asked why they were asking you that, you were told they were asking because they assumed that's where you would be going back to. Of course, few went back. There was also the expression "Texas State Highway number X goes both ways." They were clearly just saying "if you don't like it here, leave. Sure you came here for a good job but don't think that gives you the right to have a voice and how we run things."
Then there was the Canadian version during a time I was living there. They would ask, "are you staying?" I often felt like responding "if you keep asking that, probably not." But if they thought you might not stay your invitations were probably limited.
My point is this phrase "go back to where you came from" is not just about location, prior nationality, heritage, religion and other obvious bigotries. It can also just reflect something on the level of middle school clique: we're here first (often not true), you should not delude yourself into thinking you have any rights.
Humans seem to do this. It is not acceptable (except perhaps when it is correctly dealing with one individual not a group stereotype, a condition I have never seen.) Make of that comment on the human condition what you will.
2
My son and I were in Vancouver recently visiting my daughter and we stayed at an Airbnb in Richmond, B.C.
We went out for a walk and discovered we were the only white people within sight for quite awhile. We are born and raised in Toronto - a very cosmopolitan city - but were both shocked to find ourselves completely in the minority in another large city of Canada.
Unlike the heartbreaking stories retold here, we did not feel threatened or unsafe. (Mind you, we felt a little poor, given the Maseratis, Lamborghinis and McLarens all around us.) But it gave us a very small taste of what it means to be a minority. I would not want to experience that feeling every single day.
7
Like so many others, I'm not totally surprised by these stories, but I am sickened that it is so pervasive, and especially that bystanders did not do anything to help. Confronting a bully is scary and dangerous, as shown by the killing of the man on the Portland train, but at least people could have spoken to the victims afterward. And when the witnesses were people in authority (teachers, e.g.), there is just no excuse for letting it go. Is this the country we want?
If not, we must find a way to speak out against this intolerance. To all who have endured this hatefulness, I am so sorry.
10
I am Jewish, and while I've never been told explicitly to go back where I came from, it might as well have happened.
Someone I know through a mutual activity and I were driving back (a several-hour drive) from the activity and she said "There's something I've been meaning to ask you for some time. Why did you choose to reject Christianity?". I looked at her in shock while I discarded several answers, and settled on "I didn't reject anything to practice the religion my parents raised me in; their parents were Jewish too, and so were all the ancestors I can name." She was from the Bible Belt, and I was the first Jew she had met - she sort of stammered her way through trying to explain that she hadn't meant it to come out that way, and finally gave up.
The part that really bothers me, I think, is that I still see her occasionally - and based on comments she's made to me and others, she's totally forgotten she ever said it.
13
When seeing footage of any of Mr. Trump’s rallies, I cringe when I see young children in the audience. Who in their right mind would bring a child there? As for the teenagers in attendance, I wonder what percent are there for that “Instagram” moment, not realizing when they go for a job later on in life, that this photo will show up. As for their parents, please remember what is said in the house, travels outside.
5
One thing that is often forgotten when reading these horror stories is that the perpetrators do not represent the majority of "white" Americans. If that were the case, we would not have made the current amount of progress. As an older gay man, I have certainly seen a fair share of bigotry and hate in different forms. I choose to remember the support I have received from family and friends as well as those who paved the way for me to be able to write this letter.
6
I recently asked a co-worker, in a relaxed lunch setting, where her family was from. My tone of voice was friendly and I was curious -- I love the different cultures. She explained where her parents were from and that, in fact, the spelling of her surname indicated that (if one was aware of such details). Now I wonder if she thought I was being racist? I hope not. I am second generation American. We are all from somewhere else.
4
"Go back to where you came from."
But some of us have nowhere to go. Many tens of thousands of Americans are simply not able to "go back to their countries". My family are Assyrian Christians from Iran, although I was born in this country. As an ethnic and religious minority, even if the country's leaders let my family in, we would be targeted constantly.
Continuing harassment of non-Muslims in Middle Eastern countries continues unabated. And in recent history, thanks for Dubya's disastrous foray into Iraq, that country has lost the vast majority of its Assyrian Christian population.
So understand that many of us don't have a country, and no place to go. We are literally stateless people. And now we are targets in this country because we have Middle Eastern ethnicity, coloring, and features. But we are targets in the countries of our ancestors' birth, because of our religious background.
And this is why so many people in my situation here in America are terrified. I'm in my 60's. I was born here. I never thought I'd feel unsafe here. That all changed in 2016.
Now our family thinks of nothing more than where we might be able to go. Because we might very well need asylum in Canada, Australia, or any other country in which we're not literal targets.
12
Thank you NYTimes so much for sharing all of these stories. The one thing that I can take away from reading these similar experiences is that the people that say "go home" really don't care if you are a citizen or not. They don't care how many generations your family was in the US - even if it is more than theirs. It is just about race. You are perceived as different from them, and they have a need to exercise authority over you. I believe that people that choose to make this their country often become better citizens than those that have 'always' been here and take everything for granted. To all of the people that had the courage to share their stories, you are indeed worthy Americans.
9
To all of the readers that shared these stories, please know that this American is so very sorry for your experiences. This is not what I want our country to be known for and I'm going to be very conscious of doing kind acts, acts that encourage inclusivity. I also pledge to stand up for you when I hear such discriminatory words.
4
These stories make me so sad and even more emboldened to treat all as equal.
4
In Dayton, Ohio Goodwill has a large outlet store. It is a real melting pot of socio-economic and world ethnicities, as we all search these big bins for undiscovered treasure. One day last winter after another horrible news cycle about immigration, I was shopping. There was a woman wearing a hijab holding a baby, also shopping and it looked like she was uncomfortable, so I said, “ I know you are hearing a lot about immigration on the news, so I want to tell you that not everyone feels that way, and I am glad you’re here.” She said thank you, and we kept shopping. I hope for that moment I helped in some small way.
9
One of my earliest memories while growing up in an affluent, predominantly white, Chicago suburb was of my mother and aunt arguing with a neighbor about something trivial, but suddenly they came bursting into the house, livid that the neighbor told them to "go back to China." It was at that moment that I started to get the sense that people didn't necessarily see me as an American, even though I was born and raised in Illinois, grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons, and ate my share of McDonalds.
Not only can people maliciously imply that I'm not American, but they can do it in the most well meaning-ed way, by asking "where are you really from?" Although they just want to get into a conversation about the time they traveled to China, it still makes me feel like I don't belong here, and it's still offensive.
This phrase is not about socialism. Those who say it is are just deluding themselves into thinking that they don't share America's ugly track record when it comes to race.
5
It's heart breaking to read about small, narrow-minded people making other people feel even smaller for no reason other than they look different.
And to what benefit? How does making someone feel small make the other person feel big? What is being accomplished?
Please, don't answer - I'd rather not know.
2
I am a Chinese citizen who went to college and grad school in this country and is currently working in NYC. I have been agonizing on whether to stay here or return home for a while now, but a person in the streets of Manhattan told me to go back to China in a completely unprovoked comment. The incident helped me to make my decision in going back. I realized there that I might become an U.S. citizen, but I will never truly be an American.
7
I'm American-born, of primarily European ancestry; my family has been in the country since well before the Revolutionary War. Predictably, I'm usually seen as white. But I have just enough non-white ancestry (mostly Cherokee) to look vaguely foreign to some people. I've gotten random strangers asking "Where are you *really* from?" and "Do you speak English?"
It's a pointed reminder, in a life that's otherwise been marked by tremendous white privilege, of how little it takes for some people to see me as "other". And, since those experiences are rare for me, I can be thankful for them-- I've never been tempted to see race as anything but a social construct, or to minimize the daily indignities heaped upon people of color.
3
To all teachers who are deeply concerned about the offenses
mentioned in this article may
I recommend an important
organization called Facing History
and Ourselves. It provides excellent teaching materials for
all grade levels. To everyone else
I highly encourage you to support
and donate to this and any other
organization that works to end
racism, bigotry, and nationalism.
5
These stories touch a nerve. Growing up Chinese in a predominately Caucasian city in Southern California, I knew I was different and did everything I could to blend. The feelings of not wanting to be different were so severe, I was embarrassed when my parents spoke Chinese in front of my friends. That's because inevitably, as soon as my parents were outside of range, my friends would begin to mimic them... "hong-ching-chow-ping-wong" while stretching their eyes into slits, and they would all laugh at me and my parents. The shame was so great, and my not yet mature self was unable to deal with it, so I just laughed along with them hoping it would be over soon. Later, still a child, I rejected every effort my parents made to teach me Mandarin, which I regret deeply.
5
During World War II, apparently, one of my ancestors who was from Germany but a citizen here, was told, "Go back to Germany". Of course we were at war with Germany and that is part of the problem. When our country has a bad relationship with, or is/was at war with a particular country, (think Japan, Viet Nam and most recently Iraq) any people remotely related to that country is oppressed because of the unfair association of the conflict with the nationality of the person. AOC most likely reminds some others of illegal immigration, even though there is no correlation. Any Islamic person, or person from a Mid-eastern country can remind people of Isis, 9-11 or the war in Iraq. As our world becomes more international, nationality does not represent allegiance; this is what many on the right-wing end of the spectrum just don't seem to get. I am not sure if it is lack of education or just a local, historical bias. Whatever this bias is about needs to be educated out of the minds of our young people so this version of crazy blaming stops.
6
What really gets me is when people claim that the recent immigration horrors aren't based on racial prejudice and the ideals of white supremacy. I'm a white Canadian immigrant to the U.S.A, and nobody has ever told me to "go back" even though my accent is odd and I regularly tell people that I'm not from here. My white privilege means that people are more likely to ask my Asian American husband where he's "really from" than they are to ask me. If that doesn't illustrate that it's a race issue, I don't know what does!
34
I was in Texas for a very large tech conference. Great topics and smart folks. I joined a table of strangers during lunch and a woman asked with scorn what country I was rooting for during the Olympics. Ha! Game on! I told her that I was more American than she was and gave her my most charming smile. She looked surprised and then said angrily that her family had been here for many generations. Then she challenged me to say I had been here longer. I replied that my entire extended family lived in the US and that we loved our country for its peace and quiet. I told her that she seemed to take America for granted and didn’t understand its history. E pluribus unum.
That’s what happens when you hear, “Go back to where you came from” over and over because you live in a border town with a lot of inequality and resentment. It stops being surprising. Then you figure that the best thing you can do is fight for your beloved country. We lost the battle in 2016, but we will win the war in the end.
12
I was at the Navy Exchange store with my parents standing in line waiting to pay for groceries. The guy behind us remarked, "I wish you people would go back where you came from; you need to get back on the boat." I was shocked and aghast. My father was a 20+ year Master Chief and he had the presence of mind to say, "You mean the U.S.S. Roosevelt?"
22
This is the real America, what immigrants and locals of color have always known.
24
I have never felt offended or hurt when some people tell me to go back to where I came from. Only very idiotic people can say something like that. I don’t pay much attention to idiotic people. I tend to look down on them.
4
It's not about race, religion, or ethnicity. Rather, it is about The Other, he or she who is "different." This really isn't new. The well-documented Peloponnesian War was all Greek. What is new is that America is an experiment in a consciously multi-whatever society, and we judge our successes and failures by that standard.
"Go back to...." is nothing new. In the 60s people would come up to me, often spit at me, not infrequently start a fight, and/or simply scream in my face, "Go back to Russia you EXPLETIVE commie!!!" A variation had me going back to Cuba. This was all because I had a beard.
Life is largely a Rorschach blot. People tend to see either what they hope to see or what they fear.
Earlier generations could tell their own stories. As bad as this all is, which is very bad, let's not give the xenophobes and others who hate and/or simply are fearful the power they do not deserve by making it a defining contemporary issue or by letting them make you feel humiliated. When an idiot acts like an idiot, it's about them, not you!
Yes, discrimination and threats are objective realities you have to deal with in a concrete manner. However, humiliation and other such feelings are subjective. You are whoever you are. Others may wish to, but they cannot demean you in your own mind. Only you can do that. Don't let them push you into it. That will be your strongest response, the best role model for your kids, and absolutely frustrating (to put it politely!) to the idiots.
6
It's not about race, religion, or ethnicity. Rather, it is about "The Other", he or she who is "different." This really isn't new. The well-documented Peloponnesian War was all Greek. What is new is that America is an experiment in a consciously multi-whatever society, and we judge our successes and failures by that standard.
"Go back to...." is nothing new. In the 60s people would come up to me, often spit at me, not infrequently start a fight, and/or simply scream in my face, "Go back to Russia you EXPLETIVE commie!!!" A variation had me going back to Cuba. This was all because I had a beard.
Life is largely a Rorschach blot. People tend to see either what they hope to see or what they fear.
Earlier generations could tell their own stories. As bad as this all is, which is very bad, let's not give the xenophobes and others who hate and/or simply are fearful the power they do not deserve by making it a defining contemporary issue or by letting them make you feel humiliated. When an idiot acts like an idiot, it's about them, not you!
Yes, discrimination and threats are objective realities you have to deal with in a concrete manner. However, humiliation and other such feelings are subjective. You are whoever you are. Others may wish to, but they cannot demean you in your own mind. Only you can do that. Don't let them push you into it. That will be your strongest response, the best role model for your kids, and absolutely frustrating (to put it politely!) to the idiots.
2
all i can say is that we have a lot of work to do in this country. i have never been told those cruel words, and never in a million years would i actually say them to anyone else...hatred is taught, and somehow, somewhere, people must be shown how to turn this around...first things first, though, we MUST dethrone the racist-and-hater-in-chief. VOTE VOTE VOTE and get everyone you know registered and voting.
15
I have practiced this line over and over, just in case: “are you Native American? I suppose not. Your ancestors could have been the ones who raped and decimated Native Americans. YOU go back to your country.”
13
Moral of the story...there are an abundance of people Trump can appeal to. Not the victims, but the victmizers.
9
Only Native American Indians can tell me to go home
10
These are heart breaking experiences. People who are mean and heartless often don't realize the hurt they are causing others.
These stories should be required reading in elementary school, middle school, and high school.
If you can still say racist things to others after reading these stories, you must be living in your own hell.
7
I was told many times as a teenager in the late 70's to "go back to where you came from" when I lived in Southern California - I was born in Michigan. I was also called a “wetback,” a “beaner," and told to go “back to Tijuana where you belong” and I had note even set foot in Mexico at that point. My wake up call to US racism.
5
A naturalized citizen for few decades by now I never had this experience. Few times, always outside large cosmopolitan areas, and always coming from people of lower socio-economic status, I sensed that somebody was doing bit too much of my accent and them having hard time to understanding me.
On the other hand, I was many times asked by native Americans, always white and well off types, how being an European I felt about this country being so horrible on account of racism, or killing all the Indians, or healthcare, or inequality. I always demurred. Total opposite from Europe where the locals will volunteer about the glory of France, or the German free higher education system, or the social net in Denmark and etc. Recently, on a harbor cruise around Stockholm I was outright struck how nationalistic the voice over on the optional headsets was. We won this battle, ruled over these countries, started the 30 year war, than won this battle and ruled over these people and so on. I realized I was listening to it with an American ear and that Europe was always that way. Americans will tell you the educational system sucks while their kid goes to Yale, Europeans will tell you how historically superior it is while they try to send their kids to USA to study.
3
Thank you for sharing these stories with us, and I'm hopeful that ya'll will find a way to preserve all of the submissions you received, because these stories are part of the American experience for so many of us.
Shakespeare summed up the human experience in the Merchant of Venice,
" Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
Hopefully future generations will not bear similar stories of the American experience.
7
My mother, who was born in the US, to two immigrants from Slovenia in 1929 used to tell me a stories of her and her sister walking down the street as young girls (5 or 6 at the time) or in grade school classrooms, in Brooklyn, NY and being called “greenhorn”, “stupid P**^^€@&” and other terms she could not repeat. At the time she did not even know what those terms meant. Even into her 70s this was still painful memory.
5
I’ve been here for 30 years. Over the years my accent has given away my “not-born-here” identity. When I was going to college in the early 90’s, I worked as can driver in SF, one of the safest and open-minded places. On one Christmas Eve’s I picked up bunch of 20-year olds. They were tipsy. As soon as they got in the cab I asked them what their destination was. In no time they asked me where I was from. My mind began evacuating circumstances. I thought if I told them I was from Iran they may disrespect me and find an excuse not tip me. So I said I was from Italy (I am fluent In Italian). They laughed in disbelief and commented that I must have been a sorry-ass Turkish trying to look cool.
I smilingly began speaking Italian to them and lavishly gave them piece of my mind in Italian. They loved it, even though I called them low life racist bastards raised by messed up families.
I got the highest tip from them that night.
I’m still sad about the incident: I had to put on a mask to be worthy of their kindness. I played their game.
I could have kicked them out of my cab, but that would have definitely given them more ammunition to hate others.
It’s so hard to change people’s opinion when emotions are calling the shots. I’ve learned to go for human connections first. Opinions should always be treated as our outfits: Wear them, routinely wash them, toss them.
30
I got this all the time as a Brooklyn born Arab American growing up in Staten Island. My parents decision to admit me to Karate school at a young age gave me a slight advantage over bullies. Most important, it taught me how not to fight -even when I felt these bullies deserved to get their noses punched in. I always thought this ignorance would die out as our society became more open. Now I worry my 4 year old would go thru the same crap I didn't deserve to deal with.
19
There was a time that these stories would break my heart. Now they just enrage me.
The next time somebody says that to somebody in my presence, they better have their insurance paid up.
246
@George Peng
I agree. The stories I liked best were the ones where the person making the vile racist comments was put in their place. I can understand the avoidance (particularly when it is a child who is targeted) since none of us want an altercation with a stranger but I would not feel humiliated. The person who should feel ashamed is the person who is vile and hateful. I'd say something back, depending on the taunt and who was doing it.
20
@George Peng
Or just speak up when you hear racist bike being spewed. I do. I live in two far-from-cosmopolitan states and I hear racist asides quite often since I’m white and so people who make them assume they’re safe making such comments within my earshot.
Slapping them instead is tempting, though, I admit...
18
My mothers parents ended up stranded in the US after WWII. They were both students studying abroad when communists came to power in their homeland Czechoslovakia. Both had intended to return after their studies. They never got the chance. I grew up listening to my grandmother tell me how she wished she was back home in Prague.
A decade ago I decided to move to Prague myself. I had to learn the language and many customs. When you tell people like me to "go home" you have to realize that we cannot do so. I'm not really "home" in Prague. Despite my Czech roots, I am a foreigner here.
All my friends and colleagues refer to me as being an "American". I don't share the experience of growing up under communism and/or the years following the velvet revolution. Simultaneously, having lived here all my adult life, I wouldn't feel at "home" in the US. I would be a foreigner there too.
I have always been interested in various political positions. I have explored liberalism, and read the works of conservatives, played with both libertarianism and socialism. I could choose any of those views if I found them convincing. Nativism, however, is forbidden me. I can never be a nativist because I am native nowhere. I cannot even empathize with these people. There philosophy suggests a world in which I cannot exist. And yet by birth, I am more American than Trump. My fathers side traces back before independence.
I tried to go home. What I learned is that you can never go home once you've left.
114
Seems to me that the origin of racism in our country is ignorance. Plain and simple, lots of it..
A good solution? Travel to foreign lands and get to know other cultures, it's a good start. I was in the military and found much less racism there, specially within those who were stationed in other countries..
71
that's not the origin. ignorance, hateful heart, a love for violence, stupidity and depravity combined.
3
@Jgrauw Agreed! Additionally, it would help if the media uses correct terminology. I believe it can go a long way in correcting long held assumptions or conflations that all non-white people are from "elsewhere."
I do not expect the "average" person to know USCIS terms, but with the media, I do. Certain terms have a government defined definition. Nomenclature is critical, and I have expectations for the media to adhere to it, as they are the "news." Some terms are not interchangeable with one another.
Like the word, "immigrant," for example, is so loosely used that so many are confused by what it actually means. Per the USCIS website, "Any person not a citizen of the United States who is living in the U.S. under legally recognized and lawfully recorded permanent residence as an immigrant." That is not up for debate. It is someone who holds an unexpired Green Card.
A NYT op-ed referred to Elaine Chao as an "immigrant," which is categorically incorrect. She is a naturalized citizen, which by USCIS definition is, "The manner in which a person not born in the United States voluntarily becomes a U.S. citizen. Even though the writer of that article did not seem malicious towards Ms. Chao, he "othered" her. Moreover, the link he provided in the article about immigrants voting for Trump was antithetical to the point he was trying to make. Because immigrants are not eligible to vote, but U.S. Citizens are. Even with good intentions, this othering of people consistently happens.
2
You shouldn’t need to travel to achieve basic decency in your interactions. The issue is white supremacy, not the number of stamps in your passport.
7
I agree with the actor Borat, who did an episode where he approached several white supremacists groups (many who admitted being racists) and asked them why? His conclusion was, besides being ignorant, that they feel threatened and left behind by non-whites who have done so well with their lives in America.
153
I know my own indirect encounters with racism could never be as hurtful and damaging as the direct attacks others have suffered. But they're still disorienting and offensive when, as a white person, another white person assumes you share their bigotry. When my husband and I lived in Phoenix, there was a city park down the street slated for renovation. The families who lived on the streets surrounding the park were mostly white, but on the weekends, Hispanic families from nearby would often gather to use the soccer fields or have picnics. A neighbor of ours with whom we were good friends and who seemed to share our (liberal) politics was talking to me one day about soliciting neighborhood input on the city's plans for the park renovations. "Because, you know, it really is our park," she said. Stunned, all I thought to reply was, "I don't know. I kind of like how it comes to life on the weekends." It sounded lame when I said it, and a decade later, it still sounds lame. I wish I'd been more direct or at least asked her why she assumed "our" for me didn't included our Hispanic neighbors.
55
@Jason Best I had one of those shared moments when visiting Boston. I asked a wait person where to find a particular area of the town. Another waiter came to my table and asked me why I wanted to go there. I said because it's an old part of town, and I'd like to see it. She said, "You don't want to go there. That's where the black people are." I'm Hispanic, but I guess I was looking "white" enough that day for her to feel comfortable enough sharing her bigotry with me. I didn't find Boston a very welcoming place in general; unless I have business there, I'll never visit that city again.
5
These memories brought to mind a conversation I had with my father, who was an African American sailor who fought in Vietnam. He spoke about the irony of defending a nation that treated you like dirt.
I'm sorry for everyone who has endured this, but especially for the veterans. If someone is willing to take a bullet for you, their heritage shouldn't matter at all.
302
@Afi
It shouldn’t matter anyway.
18
I've certainly been told that on many occasions, it just seems so silly, it's never bothered me
Silly angry person: "Go back to where you came from!!!"
Me: "Queens?"
Silly angry person: "Go back to where your parents came from!!!"
Me: "Queens?"
Silly angrier person: "Go back to where your grandparents came from!!!"
Me: "Queens?"
Silly angry person getting even angrier and sounding even sillier: "Go back to where your great-grandparents came from!!!"
Me: "New Jersey?"
415
I love this!
20
I’ve always said New Jersey is the cradle of civilization :)
32
I take issue with the first story in the "But where are you really from?" section. I have periodically asked a non-white individual with particularly well-spoken English a variant of this question, but certainly not because I thought they should "go back to where then came." On the contrary, it was more out of jealousy and admiration, coming from a monolingual speaker, that they were so fluently bilingual. It would be the same if I discovered that a concert pianist was also a skilled guitarist (when I can do neither).
15
@Occams razor I'm sure you are a nice person but you are totally being racist without even knowing it. How do you know that a non-white individual who speaks fluent English is a) bilingual or b) from a foreign country?
And you live in Vancouver, you can't seriously expect to be impressed every time someone can speak a second or even third language.
12
@Occams razor, why did you assume a non-white person would not speak English well? Please think about it. Thanks
10
@Occams razor
I also regularly enquire about a person's ethnicity if I detect an accent because, as an immigrant with an accent myself, I am genuinely curious. But if it's a person of color with an American accent, I would NEVER dream of asking "Where are you from?" let alone "Where are you REALLY from?" That's just plain insulting. The way the question is phrased, and of course the tone, makes a crucial difference.
6
Consider this: Most of what we know, we learned at home.
Racism and bigotry are TAUGHT, they are not part of our natural makeup.
There is HOPE for America in its future composition of multi-ethnic families, this is the brilliant mosaic of diversity that will define our country, not the current trend of angry GOP whites and their feelings of entitlement and superiority.
55
I was told to “go home” in a cruel manner like this, once. It wasn’t for any racialized reason, but for a personal one.
It still hurt.
I think it is as one of the respondents wrote, above: This isn’t who we are most days, just our worst. Many of us have been cruel, most of us have been harmed by cruelty.
If we are of a mind to do better, there are things we could do, and in the past I think Americans have frequently done them.
The problem is that the person sucking up all the oxygen is encouraging us to be our worst.
He is doing real harm to us all.
53
This is a heart-breaking article to read, simply because of the hurt that all of these people suffered in this country. As a teacher, I’m left pondering how I can use these first-hand experiences of the writers to help my students build a better future for this country and make sure that we are not the perpetrators nor the silent bystanders, but rather the people welcoming others with open arms.
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These essays should be a teaching moment in every school this fall. I’ve been retired for almost 20 years, and this is the first time I wish I were still in the classroom.
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@Barbara Gupta I teach 5th grade and I plan to bring it up
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@Chantal Collins
Thank you! You made my day. This is why i love this country. Thank you. A million times.
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As an Asian American and baby boomer I experienced questions about why I spoke English so well as well as disparaging comments about my looks. Having been raised in an overwhelmingly white environment it was not easy being different. Nice and friendly people outnumbered the bad but it certainly made an impression on me. I felt great relief moving to Japan in junior high school, Thailand in high school and Hawaii as a college student. I was among people who looked like me. Ironically it was my white friends who felt marginalized outside of the United States. Later as a graduate student I went to Oregon and saw some classmates being stopped "while driving Hispanic" or black. I did not have any negative experiences in Oregon but I did know of unhappy Hispanic and black friends who were verbally attacked for their ethnicity. In our current political environment I am glad to be living in Hawaii - numbers matter. Yet there are instances of mostly white military personnel and families that experience culture shock upon transferring to Hawaii because for the first time they are not in the majority. Their discomfort is palatable and their centric view of the world has always been a source of amazement. The real world does not revolve around white people.
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I love Hawaii. The rest of the country, with our hyperactive work ethic and narcissistic attitudes could learn a thing or two.
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@Mahalo I loved moving to Hawai'i; I was appreciated its multifaceted culture. I knew that I'd be in the minority, but that was just fine.
I grew angry when a (white.male.formermilitary) colleague tried telling a group of youngsters that Jews killed Jesus. Now that was intolerable.
Ignorance is everywhere. Thankfully, most people are good.
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These stories are heartbreaking. I want to find a safe home for my family during my short time on this planet. I am ready to give up on the US to preserve the mental and physical health of my own black American teenage sons.
These events have absolutely gotten worse since the 2016 election. I do not anticipate their improving; rather, when the economy sours, I anticipate the animosity to become entrenched and possibly physical.
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I'm applying for Canadian citizenship. The white people there are racist too, but white Americans are so much worse. obviously not all, but it's really not worth your mental health. I'm dying every day under these conditions.
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@GFF Certainly we have pockets across the country, but in Toronto, where most newcomers settle, everyone understands that we all "come from" somewhere - usually just one or two generations back. I have found there is no "us" vs "them" mentality in Toronto, no sense that this country "belongs" to any one group. We have no generational tensions among ethnic groups, as the Americans do with the Mexican and African Americans. Good luck with the move!
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@CM Please come to Canada! Toronto's multiculturalism is the real deal. Good luck!
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My maiden name is Rodriguez. A bully in grade school used to call me "S_ic" when I was younger, and he and his friends pushed me around...later on while on the phone with a landlord expressing an interest in a rental, she sounded very enthusiastic about it right up until I gave her my last name. It was so obvious, she might as well have been carrying a sign.
We all know where Trump first heard "America First" - from his father. His father was an isolationist bigot who marched in with the Klan down the streets of NY. He was pulled in for questioning by the police. It's sketchy as to whether or not it was because a riot broke out, or that he didn't abide by the requirements in the permit which required that no items covering the face should be worn during that march.
But honestly I can't imagine anyone in Trump's family past or present actually getting involved in a real fight. Trump is "brave" as long as he has a half-dozen bodyguards he can hide behind. Hiding behind a mask seems more likely.
My grandfather came to this country when he was 8 years old, and he fought in WWI, losing a hand and suffering lung damage. My father fought in WWII with the 101st Airborne, Yankee Infantry Division and earned the Silver Star.
What do you do with people who like to push girls around and call them names while claiming this is THEIR country and not yours?
You do everything in your power to get them out of OUR White House.
VOTE.
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Some years ago, we invited a Japanese American priest who was assigned to our church to dinner at our house. His pager beeped during dinner (it was his turn to be on call for a nursing home). When he called the nursing home, the person said a resident has requested to see a priest, but that resident wanted a white priest. He answered, “There is nothing I can do about my ethnicity, but I can be as priestly as possible.”
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These stories are making me cry, they are so heart breaking. Why doesn't everyone feel this way? Who are we raising and what lessons are we still teaching them (incorrectly) after all these decades? This country is big enough to fit so many more beautiful people. Everyone of them has the same heart beat as me. The same dreams and the same rights. So simple, inalienable and indelible yet so lost on too many.
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Unfortunately, my accent is unmistakable, so it's clear I am not from "here". Sometimes when I find myself griping about conditions that could be improved in America (like healthcare), I am telling myself to go back where I came from before anyone else gets the chance to say it.
Trouble is, when I do the same back "home" in my (prosperous) native country, where not everything is hunky-dory either, I have been told on occasion to "go back to America".
Maybe we should all complain a little less and instead appreciate the privilege of living in relative peace and prosperity.
And perhaps visit "home" more often.
Thinks could be a lot worse.
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Thank you NY Times for sharing these first-hand accounts. It puts a face on hate rather than letting it fester in the shadows. We think we've come so far as a nation when in reality, we have so far to go. It takes strong leadership to get us there. Here's hoping we turn a corner in 2020.
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@JKN. Yes, thank you, NY Times. We needed to read this
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This article is so necessary but so heartbreaking. The number of people who responded is just devastating, and I have to imagine those 16,000 are just the tip of the iceberg. I am so sorry for the indignity of what they had to endure.
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As a parent of brown children adopted from Guatemala, now adults, I worry every day. EVERY day. How can we stop this assault on our democracy?
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These are moving, heartbreaking accounts. Thank you for gathering and publishing them. It's time to put Native Americans in charge of US immigration policy.
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isn't it time for America to harshly crackdown on this unamerican behaviour? this can't go on anylonger in a democracy. is America a democracy or an anarchy?
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While visiting the Getty Museum, Observed a woman ask a young lady whom she did not know where she was from. The young lady was Asian. Her response was, " Anaheim". End of inquery.
My Grandparents emigrated from Europe. I am asked what I am. I always respond "American". That is never good enough. i refuse to go further.
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It happens to white people, too. My blond, blue-eyed eastern European father immigrated to Canada as a young teen and suffered the same torment. He worked diligently to learn to speak English without any trace of an accent, then never spoke the several other languages he knew in public again. He was turned down for military service in WWII because he came from an 'enemy' country as a child. It pained him until his death.
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While I am very deeply moved by these stories, only one man needs to read them.
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@ScottC
Sadly that man can't / doesn't read.
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@ScottC
Reading them would not change his views, or actions, one bit.
Vote in 2020!
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@ScottC While the idea behind your sentiment is plain, I think that you may have missed the point of gathering all 16000+ stories. These situations, sadly, are innumerable and have been happening for as long as humans on earth have drawn breath. Much can be improved about our society and America's future, and it starts with everyone.
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Amazing and thought-provoking. I have been with people who have made anti-Semitic comments - they did not know I am Jewish.
All US elected politicians (Federal, State, municipal, etc) should read this article. Gives us all a lot to think about.
I wish the 2020 election would be tomorrow so we could all move on from this sad time in US history.
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This is a great story. It can be used as a starting point for discussion on how to respond to racism. Now that Trump has revealed how much work we have left to do its time to pull up or sleeves and get back to work. He broke my illusion that racism was finally going to be limited after my generation. We need to give the next generation the best opportunity possible for an inclusive healthy society.
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I am heartened by this article. I have a bi-racial daughter and am very concerned about how she will be treated. When she was just a toddler, my twin sister recounted an incident that occurred at her sons basketball game in a fairly privileged high school in Southbury , Ct.
She said that when her sons team started losing to the team from Bridgeport, Ct, people in the stands started chanting the N word. I asked her what she said to them and she said nothing.
I told her about the saying that all it takes for evil to flourish is a few good people who say nothing.
She is a trump fan, and I have cut off communication with her.
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@Mary Susan Williams
Do not let an evil man ruin your relationship with your sister. Let love conquer hate. If she had a paralyzed leg, you wouldn't blame her for not walking with you - you would help her. She has a moral failing and needs your help. Hopefully you can help her improve by being a good example.
@Alan @Mary Susan Williams
I am biracial and I applaud Mary for doing the right thing. An evil man didn't ruin the relationship. Racism ruined their relationship.
Mary modeled the right behavior by taking a stand. She spoke up unlike her sister who stayed silent while others chanted. Speaking from my own experience, as a mixed race child it is confusing to watch white relatives stay silent in the face of racist comments, or worse, make racist slurs in your presence. Is it fair to expect a child to navigate racism on her own? To tolerate it for the sake of keeping the family together? Mary supported her daughter and has shown her that racism has no place in their family. Now it's up to her sister to reflect on her own behavior and decide if she wants to be part of a loving, inclusive family.
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Well as a 3rd generation American, white, male, over 60.
We have so much to correct and improve in our society. But we have trump going backward and in the wrong direction. He may have the ability to ruin both our economy and what we mean at the same time.
Whenever I think of him as a child, I think of the boys who pull wings off flies, just because they enjoy cruelty.
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I am fourth generation Japanese American married to a white man whose family came from England and walked across the Canadian border to farm in Montana. My family has been in America much longer then his but because he is white, he is considered the "American."
As a college student I traveled across the United States in the 1970s with my girlfriend and often encountered comments that I spoke such good English. Then again, these were the same people who thought that those of us living in Hawaii all lived in grass shacks.
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Many times, if not every time, comments of that kind are thoughtlessly intended as compliments. I realize that this doesn’t make them less hurtful.
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Thank you for this article, sickening though it is. I’m of Swedish ancestry and have never heard such slurs. My theory is that Trump has made it acceptable to a lot of people to take off the filter and say any hurtful thing they want, but many of these stories pre-date him.
22
I don't want to embarrass my Dad, so am not giving my name. Like a lot of the people who have given their stories, I am first generation American born and raised here - I am half-Middle Eastern and half-European. But I have never been told to go back to my own country because I look white - going back to your country isn't about being an immigrant, it's about being beige/brown/black or looking different. No one tells Trump to "go back" to Scotland and Germany because he's first generation, but if you're 3rd generation American and look too beige then you're fair game. It's so heart-breaking - we are all immigrants here, some more recent than others, but unless you're from a tribal nation you have no more right to be here than anyone else.
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These stories are quietly devastating examples of man’s inhumanity to man. Truly. I am only stunned at the number of stories the involve adults wreaking this havoc on or in the presence of children. I somehow find that more horrifying because it is a double show of force, an act of terrorism.
And what has become of the notion of kindness to strangers? And of reaping what we sow? If the other party looks different, those go out the window? No. A thousand times no.
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I am the child of an immigrant. My father, living in a country experiencing severe economic and political turmoil, saw opportunity here in the United States and left behind everything he knew in 1980. Soon after, he married my mother, started a family, and was naturalized in the mid-1990's. Since then, he and my family have never heard anything resembling the hatred that has been thrown at my fellow Americans in this heartbreaking collection of stories.
Why?
My father moved away while his home country was experiencing what is now known as the Winter of Discontent. That country is England. To our neighbors, his accent has been nothing but quaint, his presence never an affront to their American values, his otherness all but nonexistent. And that makes me sad. Sad for all of those who want exactly what my father did, and has since received, but have been denied it by their fellow Americans. I feel conflicted and angry while reading this article, knowing that my situation could very easily have been similar to the other Americans that shared their stories, yet the only thing that kept me from being a threat to my peers was the color of my skin. I, too, am a first-generation American. And you, too, deserve the right to live in peace in a country that you love, whether you were born here or not. I'm sorry for the abuse that you have heard. That's not what America should sound like. If you are here, you deserve to be welcomed and accepted.
And I'm glad that you are my neighbor.
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As we grapple with the current landscape of heated rhetoric, racial strife and xenophobia, we should all be reminded of what happened in the summer 1919 in the United States:
"The Chicago race riot of 1919 was a major racial conflict of violence committed by ethnic white Americans against black Americans that began in Chicago, Illinois, on July 27, 1919, and ended on August 3. During the riot, thirty-eight people died (23 black and 15 white) and over five hundred were injured. It is considered the worst of the approximately 25 riots during the "Red Summer", so named because of the violence and fatalities across the nation. The combination of prolonged arson, looting, and murder made it the worst race riot in the history of Illinois." (source: Wikipedia)
One would hope that we can avoid a similar conflagration, although the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric is leading many to believe that once again we will experience a "Red Summer".
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The adoption stories ring so true for me. Shortly after our son joined our family through international adoption, a neighbor boy spotted him in the front yard and screamed, "Go back where you came from!" The kicker: The boy's dad is a lawyer who specializes in immigration. Our son really didn't understand the words, being new to the United States, but he certainly understood the tone of voice. The neighbor boy, now grown, has long since moved away. The dad, however, still lives there, and we step very carefully when in his presence.
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@B You should wait until your neighbor is asleep, get a container of Round Up Weed Killer, and spray the word RACIST across his front lawn,
In a week or two, he'll get the message.
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@Todd
WOW. Though I abhor vandalism and RoundUp,
I have to admit I chuckled deeply.
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@Todd
I fear that someone may read your comment and spray a swastika or racial slur onto someone's lawn, instead of the word :"racist."
4
When I was a teenager, my family driving back home from a weekend trip to the nearby snowy mountains. My dad was driving our family van, with me, my mother, and my young siblings all inside, down a narrow road and suddenly a vehicle cut our van off. We were in a state of confusion as to what this car wanted, possibly assistance for their vehicle, did they need to inform us of some repair our car needed?
The driver and occupants of the mysterious car emerged, with one of the individuals holding what appeared to be a crow bar in hand, and he at my father- a gentle middle eastern man and yelled, "Go back to where you came from." Due to my dad's quick thinking he was able to maneuver around the car and its occupants down the narrow road and speed off.
We were silent the for what felt like a lifetime. Adrenaline and fear coursed through my veins. We had done nothing wrong, we were on a family vacation! How could we have provoked such a response? I met the reality of the hate for otherness face to face that day and felt very uneasy that such an interaction would occur in California of all places. I worry for my relatives who aren't white passing as I am. The lightness of my skin and lack of accent affords me privilege and protection that some of my relatives are not as fortunate to have.
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Wow! That is horrible. It is hard to imagine such behaviour. There are millions who know your worth.
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Here's one: My mother's family has been in this country since the early 1600s; my father's family immigrated from Japan at the turn of the last century. I look Mexican, or Filipino, or Middle Eastern or East Indian; any of the brown ethnicities. I have worked hard in my life to achieve what most would call a very privileged status, professionally and economically speaking. I am in my mid-50's.
I worked at a global company in a leadership role a few years ago. A newly hired white man who is half my age for some reason believed I was not deserving of my role and challenged me constantly and openly on practically anything I would say. Eventually, he started calling me, "my personal poster child for diversity" and said I didn't deserve my degrees, was not qualified to do my job and that I should think about "going back to where I came from" rather than "taking the jobs and degrees that belong to more qualified people" (read: white people).
I informed this young man - and my company's HR - that he should be respectful and professional. Our HR was not equipped (or didn't care) and let this person harass me openly in front of others for months . It was the most humiliating experience of my life. Even as a child, people had been cruel but this was more. It was pure, unadulterated hatred - and yes, he wore a MAGA hat.
I never gave this man the reaction he wanted and I left for a better opportunity. I will forever wonder how a person can be capable of such deep hatred.
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@E
The sadder thing for all of us is how that gets tolerated at work or school. I know they are not thinking, but is that really how they would want to be remembered?
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@E I would think about talking to an employment attorney and sue that company. I'm not normally like that, but this is outrageous.
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@E
...."I will forever wonder how a person can be capable of such deep hatred"
Believe me, from a person past my mid-eighties, they are out there and even pop up in a church parking lot.
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I am African-American. I grew up on Long Island. My parents moved out here in the 1940s. When our neighborhood became more suburban in the 1960s, white children who had just arrived suggested that my brother and I should go back to Africa.That was over 50 years ago. I will never forget.
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@William Ford
I grew up on Long Island. It is still one of the most segregated areas of the country IMO. Maybe because so many Brooklynites (in the 1940's and 50's) after WW 2 started families in the "country". The young marrieds from Brooklyn tended to find housing with similar ethnic groups (Czech, Irish, Italian etc). We lived in a WASP neighborhood. We were Irish American (descent) Catholics. I felt different but never experienced anything overt. I can't imagine how hard that would be. It makes me furious just reading these stories.
34
My son was in second grade. We were at soccer practice when a white couple brought their dog, without a leash to the place. Some kids were nervous, and when the couple were told to leash their dog, they got angry. They told us while pointing to our kids to go back to your country. My son remembers that. My daughter was in fifth grade, when a student told her that since she was a Muslim she must be a terrorist. On the morning that Trump won the election, my children were too scared to go to school. They asked if it was safe for us to go outside the house now.
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Thank you NYT for this article. It is the best antidote to the hate unleashed by GOP/Trump.
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I am a white 64-year old man and I am absolutely appalled by what I am reading here. The only times I even remotely had something like this happen to me, I was a long-haired teenager in 1970 when I would feel the eyes of store managers on me. More recently, I was followed in a music store as I browsed the merchandise. I was not happy about this but did not complain to store management (a mistake). Both times I did not like how I was made to feel. I can only barely imagine what these citizens have to endure. America is exceptional? Nonsense.
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@casablues
I was banned from participating in all school sports in 1971 in State College, PA, for the same reason. I was 11. The gym teacher who made that decision laughed in my face.
Not even close to racial discrimination, but the feeling of exclusion due to differentness was there.
My Mother, half Italian, was slurred against as a child, and it was, thankfully, instilled in my psyche that everyone is equal, regardless of their appearance, wealth, or ethnicity.
However, now I was The Other, and got a minor taste of what it is to be discriminated against. I do not tolerate racist, bigoted speech, and when I hear it, the speaker is shut down, and shut up (verbally).
1
These stories are so hard to read - I wish I could tell every one of these people that had I, or my family been present when these hurtful things were said, the speaker would have gotten an earful.
No doubt racism is at the heart of it, but it seems that it's also just plain old meanness. Watching the segment of trump's NC rally when he was making fun of Pete Butigeig's name as well as Pete himself, the people behind trump were laughing. Not at trump - with him as he made fun of Pete.
This was hateful and cruel, and those two traits seem to define trump's supporters, just like it defines him. Like the time trump mocked a handicapped reporter - his supporters laughed.
During the run up to the Iraq war, which I was very much against, I was called an America hater and a Saddam lover. I am a plain old vanilla white lady. The person calling me these names was my husband, who happens to now be a trump supporter. He got this way listening to fox & limbaugh.
I know racists have always existed, and naively thought they were dying off. But with Obama's election, fox, breitbart, hard right propaganda and a president who's also a racist, they're out and proud.
My parents taught me that people who like to put other people down do it because they think it lifts them up, they have a need to make themselves feel superior. What a sad, sick lot they are.
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@Deb
Where’s the husband now? I’ve heard many stories of relationships and friendships breaking up after the election.
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@Oliver - We've been separated for over two yrs., trump was the finale to a 25 yr. marriage.
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@Deb
Thanks for that post. Most racism is a form of 'Up via Down' based on insecurity (worst at times of major economic change).
And this very basic defence mechanism is in turn based on 'Looking after No. 1': selfishness or what you call meanness, that is the root of all sin in most religions and moral codes, but also in some ways itself a core element of The American Faith, or Faith in America.
That such 'understandable' but pathological kneejerk hateful selfish Racism, pure and simple, is so closely associated by many Americans with a distorted version of a Religion of Love whose basic principle, supposedly, is to put others before oneself, is to many outsiders utterly shocking, not to say a glaring example of Christ's primary target, sinful hypocrisy.
Relatively declining neocolonial America, like a lot of declined old Western colonial masters (notably America's old colonial master) currently needs self-diagnosis and hopefully some redemption rather than any further iterations of mean selfishness, individually and collectively.
Good luck, and God save America. Please.
5
I’ve just read through the entire article and am heartbroken. To this American who has been living abroad for 25 years, it sounds like racism has gotten so much worse. That’s not what I expected — until Trump was elected.
If I hear anything like these racist comments during upcoming visits, what are helpful ways to support the target of the comment? Do I just step forward and say to the attacker, “Hey, that’s not ok to say”?
I would also like to hear stories of how victims of racist comments have been defended by strangers.
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This article has some good suggestions about how to be an ally. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/13/how-do-i-respond-racial-abuse-public-transport-onlookers-silent
4
Thank you so much for this!
2
I thought I might actually vomit when I read the woman’s story whose little granddaughter was told she should have burned to death in the Twin Towers. Unfortunately, as someone who has been told to go back to their country as well, none of this shocked me. America the Beautiful!
38