NEW YORK — President Donald Trump’s suggestion that four activist Democratic congresswomen of color “go back” to countries “from which they came” has excited some in his political base. Yet in many of America’s workplaces and institutions, the same language would be unacceptable and possibly illegal.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal laws against workplace bias, explicitly cites comments like “go back to where you came from” as examples of “potentially unlawful conduct.”

Similar phrases routinely show up in lawsuits that the EEOC files against employers alleging discrimination, harassment or retaliation based on race or national origin.

Apart from its legality in workplaces, Trump’s language has ignited impassioned responses across racial, ethnic and political divides.

“It wasn’t Racist!” tweeted Terrence Williams, a black comedian who supports Trump. “No matter what color you are YOU can go back home or move if you don’t like America.”

By contrast, Rachel Timoner, a senior rabbi at a Reform Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn, said such language would never be tolerated in her congregation.

“I’d want to sit down with them and ask them: ‘Where that’s coming from?’?” she said. “If a person persistently degraded other human beings, I would need to say to them they could no longer participate. It’s really important for us to create an environment where people of color and people of all identities feel welcome.”

Facing an uproar from critics accusing him of racism, Trump has insisted that he wasn’t being racist when he tweeted last week that the four Democratic congresswomen — all but one of them born in the United States — “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.” Trump urged them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Rather, his message, the president explained the next day was: “If you hate our country, if you’re not happy here, you can leave.”

Yet Trump’s exhortation for the four minority congresswomen to “go back” to their countries of origin, if uttered by an employee in a workplace, could constitute a firing offense or cause for a costly lawsuit.

Sam P. Israel, a New York lawyer who handles harassment cases, noted that plaintiffs usually must prove that an offensive comment wasn’t made in isolation but as part of a broader hostile environment. If Trump were an employer facing a lawsuit, Israel said, there would arguably be enough examples to suggest a pattern of racially or ethnically disparaging remarks.

“The EEOC teaches that all of these things are bad and should be avoided, and the president is making a mockery of it,” Israel said.

In the aftermath of Trump’s “go back” tweet, a suburban Chicago gas station clerk was fired after a video posted on social media appeared to show him telling Hispanic customers to “go back to their country.”

Elizabeth Tippett, a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, suggested that Trump’s comments — and the resulting outrage and media coverage — would make it difficult for anyone to argue that a similar comment was made innocuously or out of ignorance of its racist connotations.

Most Republican leaders have declined to characterize Trump’s comments as racist. And a few supporters have parroted his remarks, including some at a Trump rally in North Carolina last week who chanted “send her back!” in reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Donna Givens, an African-American neighborhood organizer who leads the Eastside Community Network in Detroit, said Trump’s tweets were deeply hurtful.

“It immediately reminded me of being a child and being told to `go back to Africa, (n-word)’ — that got said to me repeatedly,” she said. “My grandmother used to tell me to tell them to ‘go back to their caves in Europe.’?”

In light of the inflammatory rhetoric, “I don’t think that we can pretend like the American workplace is a safe place for immigrants, for people of color or for women,” Givens said. “The president has a bully pulpit. And the president sets the tone. And so there are people who feel justified in their hatreds now.”

Andrew Pappas, a self-described conservative Republican who holds elective office in Anderson Township, Ohio, acknowledged that Trump’s language, taken in a vacuum, was “not appropriate.” Yet he expressed some understanding of it.

“I think that when you see Donald Trump react in a human way, it upsets a lot of people that are expecting maybe your true quintessential politician,” Pappas said. “But it also resonates exponentially with the common American who says, ‘You know what? I’d react that way too.’?”

The Rev. Tom Lambrecht, general manager of the conservative United Methodist magazine Good News, cautioned against any rush to declare certain forms of political rhetoric unacceptable

“The difficulty here is, who decides what is unacceptable?” Lambrecht said by email. “And how is that unacceptability enforced? Censorship?”

Chris Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, agreed that attempts to ban racist rhetoric “will never solve the problem.”

Instead, Finan said, “It has to be challenged and refuted wherever it occurs.”

Retired college football coach Bill Curry, who grew up in the segregated South, had some advice based on playing in the NFL under legends Vince Lombardi at Green Bay and Don Shula in Baltimore.

“One racist word out of your month and you were gone,” said Curry, 76. “It didn’t matter who you were. Period.”

During college coaching stints at the University of Alabama and elsewhere, Curry followed the same policy.

“When you put down those rules like those great coaches did, it doesn’t become a problem,” he said. “You cannot let that racist thing get started.