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Summary: President Donald Trump’s attacks on women of color in the U.S. House of Representatives have launched fierce debate about whether his meaning was racist. There is no doubt, though, that his words echo threats and insults that have been lobbed against perceived outsiders in America for generations, although there is little modern precedent for such language coming from a sitting U.S. president. To explore the painful history, NewsHour’s William Brangham talks to the University of Minnesota’s Erika Lee and UC-Berkeley’s Ian Haney Lopez.

“We have a political leader who, for his own benefit and for the benefit of his party, sees himself as leading the country further into division and hatred and violence,” Lopez stated, adding that, “At the very moment that this is so treacherous, it’s also an opportunity, because President Trump is making clear, through his actions, a dynamic that has actually plagued our country for the last 50 years since the civil rights movement.” Trump denies his tweets to the Congresswomen, which involved him saying they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” were racist. All four lawmakers are American citizens; three were born in the U.S.

July 18, 2019 video and resource materials from PBS NewsHour.

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