July 20, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - Pity Donald Trump. Even his racism is the most unsophisticated kind. Every black and brown person knows a “go back to where you came from” racist. For many of us who have never been migrants, to have this muttered at us was the first signal that to be a visible minority means to be forever perceived as an immigrant. And that being perceived as an immigrant is bad.

“Go back” racists are rarely intellectually capable of engaging with the question of whether the destination they deem so suitable for us actually exists. Trump’s latest outburst – in which he said four congresswomen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”, is a case in point. For the US president to say of Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, “if they’re not happy here, they can leave”, makes no sense because the women in question are Americans. Yet it makes perfect sense because they are not white.

The idea that Pressley, who is African American – a community which this year marks the 400th anniversary of having been forcibly brought to the US – should be driven out because she has a view that Trump finds inconvenient, is exactly the racism that bigots have always expressed.

It seems obvious to me that Trump knew his remarks were racist; they were intended to be so. Not only did he claim these congresswomen had other countries to go back to – when three of the four were, in fact, born in the US – he then characterised those places not only as “crime infested” but with governments that are “a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world”. After a short break from Twitter, a round of golf and a chance to see the reaction, Trump then reiterated his remarks repeatedly in person, at a press conference on the White House lawn.