Assertion: yours. I am saying there is more than one way for this phrase to be interpreted. Just as individual words have a variety of connotations, the phrases we are discussing can have different meanings. Context matters - you claim skin color is the context, I claim the anti-American positions of "the squad" are the context. I have stated which versions of the general sentiment I believe are most likely to be interpreted poorly.
OK, I think you agree with the fact that the near UNIVERSAL theme actually, is
white people telling
ethnic minorities to "GO BACK!!" And we know Trump directed his comments to ethnic minorities - blacks, Hispanic and Muslims. Bigotry of the kind that's nearly universal in the "GO BACK!" statements is common as dirt against all those groups. We see it, and they hear it.
So maybe when you say something that's not even a dog whistle for dumbass racists everywhere, but straight up expressions of bigotry/racism/xenophobia, complete with the sentiment of '****hole countries' perhaps when POTUS says it it's not unreasonable to ascribe to it the common meaning, because that's what people hear because they hear it all the time from those dumbass bigots. And if you don't want to be confused with those people, don't parrot their language and racist/bigoted insults. He is the President, what he says matters, he sets the bar in some ways for the acceptable, and he's dragging that into the ditch and you're defending him every step of the way.
I was specifically talking about one case for my analogy. The thread is about one case.
But you can't divorce the one case from society. Perhaps in some case it's acceptable to call someone 'nigger.' I can't think if the case, but maybe it exists. The point is you can't ignore how that toxic word is used in society in virtually every case, and then say, "But I didn't mean it THAT way!!!" And that's especially true when you call a black person that word.
And in the critical sense it doesn't even matter. If you use bigoted tropes, target them to ethnic minorities, they WILL HEAR bigoted tropes. Doesn't matter what you meant. So don't use them, especially if you're POTUS, and when POTUS does, we should all roundly condemn it.
I was not trying to compare them, I was talking about generic sentiment for the phrases as a whole, then stating what versions I thought were inappropriate. In the example you provided above I agree with your general assessment. 1 is OK, 2 and 3 are bad.
You compared two sentiments that are entirely different in every way. "I'm moving to Canada!!" is different in every way possible than, "GO BACK TO MEXICO!!!" That target of "GO BACK" doesn't want to move, he or she is here, has given no indication of wanting to leave.
You are guilty of extrapolating to extremes. I don't have a problem with differing viewpoints, or differing solutions to problems. I think some ideas are better than others, but there comes a point where the essence of this great country becomes lost in the discussion of ideas. In this case skin color becomes the topic when that was never the point in my view. There are plenty of racist things to say, these phrases are not "dog whistle" racism to me.
President directed the remark to Congresswomen who were elected to make the country better, that's their goal, what the people who voted for them tasked them to do. There is no good way to defend that comment directed to those people, unless you believe those you REALLY disagree with should leave, and I bet they might share that view, but would want YOU to leave. So, a crap sentiment all around IMO. It's just a way for stupid people to try to shut down debate.
There are reasonable, moderate changes to be made in this country. There always have been and always will be. The opinion and language used during the discussion of change is not inherently racist when a subject of criticism happens to have a skin color other than white. I am in no way claiming that anyone who suggests change is un-American, I am suggesting that it is possible to have un-American sentiment and for one to verbalize that they don't like it.
OK, what do you think the South believed was "American" sentiment in the era of Jim Crow? We know what that is because they told us, and anyone who came down there to impose their communist, liberal, etc. ideas was UNAMERICAN!!! So should those civil rights leaders have deferred to the demands for "reasonable, moderate changes" which meant leaving Jim Crow in place, or should they have just gone to the USSR or China or somewhere that appreciated their commie ideas?
