To the editor:

Thank you, Republican Party leaders, for making it acceptable to tell people of color to go back to their own country. A comment usually yelled from a speeding vehicle.

Soon it will be okay to use the n-word, too, and joke, as Congressman Jim Hagedorn has done, that the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

Just what we need, more racism.

It’s what the Republicans need apparently.

According to a study of the 2016 elections published this year, white voters with high levels of racial resentment were likely to vote for Republican candidates. Even without Donald Trump on the ballot.

Carlos Algara and Isaac Hale, political scientists at the University of California-Davis and co-authors of the report, “The Distorting Effects of Racial Animus on Proximity Voting in the 2016 Elections,” found that “Not only did Trump’s frequent invocations of race in the 2016 campaign prime voters with high levels of racial animus to evaluate the presidential contest in racial terms,” but the increased salience of race in the 2016 campaign “percolated to relatively low-information congressional contests as well.”

“The president and the Republican National Committee know that if you prime racial resentment attitudes among Democrats, you’re more likely to win their votes,” Mr. Algara said in a subsequent interview. “It’s a very effective strategy.”

So we can look forward to more race-baiting, more name calling, more bullying, more use of stereotypes and coded language. More references to non-white Congresswomen as “dark elements” who represent “the dark underbelly of people in this country.” And yes, more violence.

But they’re not being racist, Republicans insist.

No, they’re just making America great again.

Elly Zaragoza

Mankato