"Go Back to Your Country!"

        Go back to your country! A phrase many immigrants, bilingual citizens, Muslims, people who speak with an accent, Hispanics, essentially anyone who is not white has been told at least once in their life by a white person. Go back to your country! A phrase a privileged white woman yelled to my mom while driving one day, all because she was not getting her way. One day my mom was driving my friend and I home from high school when a white woman who was trying to enter a lane when it was my mother’s right to move forward yelled “Go back to your country!”. All this unnecessary hate because my mom did not let her enter the traffic lane. My mother wears a hijab, a Muslim headscarf worn by women, and was targeted for her appearance and her religion. Go back to your country! A phrase the poor deli owner who speaks with an accent hears when his customers want to intimidate him. ​

    In specific, Asian Americans in this country have always felt like “forever foreigners”, always felt as though they do not fit in. They coined this term for themselves as they feel that no matter what they do, they are still looked upon as outcasts. The one thing they cannot change about themselves is what is keeping them from being “true” Americans: their appearance. North and East Asians have distinct facial features that separate them from others. Even second or third generation children are not considered “American” enough. A similar phenomenon occurred during World War II when Japanese Americans were imprisoned in internment camps.  Anyone of Japanese descent, regardless of being born and raised in the United States for generations, were thrown into these camps as only “Japanese”. The “American” aspect of their identity was entirely disregarded. They were wrongfully singled out and taken to these camps because the government was afraid that they were plotting against the United States. They were essentially told: “regardless of the fact that you are here, and you have created a life for yourself, you still belong solely to the country you came from”. It essentially destroys their American identity. 

This further proved to any group of people that they can never be considered “American” by society since they are not white, and the bigger problem is that this is the part of them that they cannot change. A person can try to imitate an accent or pick up a way of living but changing their outer appearance or who they truly are is impossible. 

The funniest part of yelling “Go back to your country!” to a person who was born here is the fact that this is their country. The farthest they go is back to the hospital they were born in. If a person was to go back in history, they would come across another ironic twist: this country does not belong to any single person, especially not Caucasians. The land belongs to the Native Americans and was forcefully taken to them. Therefore, if anyone were to truly try to claim the land, it should be them.