This is not intended as a post about President Trump’s recently reported remarks about “s**thole countries,” but about what a Catholic cardinal, Timothy Dolan, said in response to those remarks. The Cardinal tweeted that Martin Luther King Jr., were he alive today, would remind people that “no country is a ‘hole,’ no person unworthy of respect.” In this post, I’d like to explain why I think the Cardinal is perfectly right on the second point and absolutely wrong on the first. I’m also going to try to define a “hole,” and make a tentative list of countries which I think would qualify, at the present time. Readers are welcome to disagree, of course.
Background
Claims that President Trump, in a meeting with lawmakers last week, described Haiti, El Salvador and various African nations as “s**thole countries” have been described by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham as “basically accurate.” Let me note for the record that Senator Graham, unlike Senator Richard Durbin, who was also present at the meeting, stood up to President Trump directly when he asked why America was taking so many immigrants from these countries instead of countries like Norway. “Diversity has always been our strength, not our weakness,” declared Senator Graham. Trump has since walked back his comments, saying that he wants immigrants to come to America from everywhere. Not being an American, I have absolutely no desire to lecture Americans about which countries they should accept immigrants from, or how many people they should take. I’ll just mention in passing that about 60 million immigrants have arrived in the United States since the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, and that of the 1,051,031 immigrants who became new legal permanent residents of the U.S. in 2015, just under 10% came from Africa, compared to 42% from other American countries, 40% from Asia and 8% from Europe. I should also add that of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, 19.1% reside in the U.S., where they make up 14.5% of the population, compared to just 10.3% of the population of Europe (2015 UN figures). In short: claims that America is not pulling its weight do not seem to be warranted by the facts.
Frankly, I was baffled by the U.S. media’s characterization of President Trump’s reference to certain countries as “s**thole countries” as racist. Have they forgotten what the term means, I wonder? OxfordDictionaries.com defines racism as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” Trump’s angry outburst was (a) directed at countries, not at “someone”, (b) directed at nations rather than races, and (c) completely devoid of the ridiculous claim that some races are “superior” to others. Likewise, Republican Rep. Mia Love’s vehement insistence that people in struggling countries are “good people” was perfectly correct, but beside the point: good people do not necessarily make a good country. A country, like a cake, is more than the sum of its constituents. Culture matters. Systems of government matter. Good people can have the misfortune to live in a country whose culture is toxic or whose government is tyrannical and evil. That doesn’t reflect on them as individuals, but it does reflect on their country.
There seems to be a strange idea circulating about that if you insult a country, you automatically insult its people. Nonsense. If you insult a country, you insult its government, not its people. The Soviet Union was a terrible country. That doesn’t mean the people living in it were terrible; it means that its government was terrible (in fact, downright evil). The same goes for Mao’s China.
So, how should we define a “hole”?
After reading about Cardinal Dolan’s response to President Trump’s recent remarks, my first reaction was: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” So North Korea is not a “hole”? Seriously? You must be joking, Your Eminence.
But then I started thinking, “How would one define a ‘hole’?” The definition which first sprang to my mind was an intuitive one: a “hole” is a country that you would never want to visit, even with all expenses paid (including plane fares, food, accommodation, trains and buses and time off work). However, I soon realized that you might be willing to visit any country, no matter how awful, if you had a nice enough hotel and plenty of armed security guards accompanying you, to protect you from danger. So I decided to stipulate that if you were visiting these countries, you had to take your family with you, and you could not travel as part of a guided tour, or take a bodyguard with you, or stay in a luxury hotel. That would be cheating – as would spending all your day hanging around inside expensive stores, museums or churches, or riding around in a chartered taxi. Instead, you had to spend as much time as possible outside, in the company of the local people. Also, you could take a guidebook, a phrase book or an electronic dictionary with you, but not one of those fancy smartphones that spits out whatever you want to say in the local language (how lazy is that!) How many countries would you cross off your list then? And which ones?
There were some countries I was pretty sure I’d never want to visit, even if you threw in some extra cash: North Korea, Afghanistan and El Salvador, to name a few. But I realized that despite my travel experience (I’ve been to over 30 countries), there were a lot of African countries which I didn’t know enough about to be able to decide whether I’d want to visit them or not. Would I want to visit Nigeria, for instance? It’s a vibrant, go-ahead country with a booming economy, but it has also been subjected to raids by the militant group Boko Haram in the north. Hmmm.
Crime and violence
So I did some digging around. I looked at the list of countries by intentional homicide rate, and I found that of the top 20 countries, a total of 17 were either in the Caribbean [US Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Trinidad & Tobago, Bahamas, Anguilla, St Vincent & the Grenadines, St Lucia and Montserrat], Central America [El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala] or South America [Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and Guyana]. Just two of these 20 ultra-violent countries (South Africa and Lesotho) were in Africa. One (Tuvalu) was in Oceania. Topping the homicide list was El Salvador, with a homicide rate of 108.64 – over 22 times higher than America’s and nearly ten times that of the Central American nation of Panama (11.38). The intentional homicide rate for number 20 on the list (Guyana, in South America) was 19.42 per 100,000 or about four times that of the U.S. (4.88), 20 times that of Australia and the U.K. (0.98 and 0.92, respectively) and over 60 times that of Japan (0.31). But if one is going to draw a line, it shouldn’t be an arbitrary one, so I decided to make an intentional homicide rate of 20 per 100,000 my cutoff point, leaving me with 19 countries, since Guyana was the only country on the list that fell just below that threshold. I would regard the level of violence in these top 19 countries as unacceptably high, meriting “hole” status in my book. Poverty does not account for it: as we’ve seen, as the very poorest countries in the world (which are mostly in Africa) don’t even figure on the list. Culture seems to be a more likely cause, when we consider the geographic distribution of the countries in question.
In all fairness, however, I should mention that there are plenty of Latin American and Caribbean countries which are not “holes” by the definition I’ve proposed above: in South America, Guyana, French Guiana, Bolivia and Suriname (with rather high homicide rates of 10 to 20 per 100,000), as well as Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and Chile (with fairly moderate homicide rates of less than 10 per 100,000); in Central America, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama (homicide rates all between 10 and 20 per 100,000); and in the Caribbean, 14 countries with homicide rates ranging from 17.39 (Dominican Republic) down to 2.78 (Martinique). Haiti belongs in this group, with a homicide rate of 10.04.
I was not successful in finding an online ranking of countries by their overall crime rate (which, by the way, is hard to measure, as international statistics are not always reliable, so it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges), but I finally came across an article by the insurance company Clements Worldwide, which listed the five countries with the highest crime rates (excluding theft) as South Africa, Honduras, Venezuela, Belize and India. The Wikipedia article on crime in South Africa is pretty sickening:
Around 49 people are murdered in South Africa every day.[6]… In the 2016/17 year, the rate of murders increased to 52 a day, with 19,016 murders recorded between April 2016 to March 2017.[11]…
The country has one of the highest rates of rape in the world, with some 65,000 rapes and other sexual assaults reported for the year ending in March 2012, or 127.6 per 100,000 people in the country.[14][15] The incidence of rape has led to the country being referred to as the “rape capital of the world“.[16] One in three of the 4,000 women questioned by the Community of Information, Empowerment and Transparency said they had been raped in the past year.[17] More than 25% of South African men questioned in a survey published by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in June 2009 admitted to rape; of those, nearly half said they had raped more than one person.[18][19] Three out of four of those who had admitted rape indicated that they had attacked for the first time during their teenage years.[18] South Africa has amongst the highest incidences of child and baby rape in the world…
Kidnapping in South Africa is common in the country with over 4,100 occurring in the 2013/2014 period, and a child going missing every five hours.
In the light of these facts, I find South Africa’s recent protest against President Trump’s “s**thole” comments to be disingenuous and hypocritical.
Regarding crime in India, the same article notes:
Sexual assault is a major concern in India. More than 33,000 rapes were reported in 2014.
The rate of these assaults is increasing. Rape is one of India’s most common crimes against women.
When evaluating whether a country is a “hole,” one obviously needs to consider whether it is a safe country for women and girls to visit. At the present time, India fails to meet this criterion. See also here.
The Safety Index and the Global Peace Index
I also had a look at the Safety Index developed by the travel company SafeAround. Of the 34 countries identified by SafeAround as dangerous or extremely dangerous, 19 were in Africa (actually, SafeAround lists 20, but Yemen is actually in Asia), 12 are in Asia, 2 (Ukraine and Russia) are in Europe, and 1 (Venezuela) is in the Americas. The 12 Asian countries are Syria*, Yemen*, Afghanistan*, Iraq*, North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikstan, Myanmar and Uzbekistan, while the 19 African countries are South Sudan*, Central African Republic*, Somalia*, Democratic Republic of the Congo*, Libya, Sudan, Burundi, Mali, Eritrea, Nigeria, Mauritania, Cameroon, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Rwanda, Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire), Egypt, Djibouti and Guinea. I’ve asterisked the 8 countries which are very dangerous (deep red) and have a Safety Index of 20 or below. By comparison, Denmark’s is 94.7 (at the top of the list), the USA’s is 67.6, and even El Salvador’s is 50.7, while Mexico’s is 45.8 and Haiti’s is 41.9. I would unhesitantly classify the 8 asterisked countries as “holes,” and some of the remaining 21 dangerous countries as well. Since Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Pakistan all have a Safety Index of well below 30, I’ll count them as “holes” and make 30 my cutoff point. The remaining dangerous countries are more closely bunched together, and have a Safety Index of 30 to 40, so I won’t count them as “holes.” Actually, I’m being very lenient here: countries such as Burundi, Ukraine, Mali, Eritrea, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia, Iran and Lebanon all fall on or slightly above the cutoff point, with values ranging from 30 to 35.
The Global Peace Index, in its 2017 report, lists 14 countries which it defines as having a “very low” state of peace: North Korea, Russia, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, Central African Republican Republic, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria (in descending order). A further 19 countries were listed as having a “low” state of peace: Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Chad, Eritrea, India, Philippines, Egypt, Mali, Burundi, Mexico, Venezuela, Israel, Palestine, Colombia, Turkey, Lebanon and Nigeria (again, in descending order). Two African countries (Botswana and Sierra Leone) received a rating of high, as did five Asian countries (Bhutan, Singapore, Malaysia, Qatar and Taiwan) and two Latin American countries (Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay). Interestingly, the United States’ ranking was 114 out of 170 countries, while China’s was 116. I think it’s fair to categorize countries with a very low state of peace as “holes.” That includes Russia, Ukraine and Pakistan.
A list of “holes” that we’ve identified so far
So where are we now? Using intentional homicide rates, the top five crime rates, the Safety Index and the Global Peace Index, we have arrived at the following list of “holes”:
Europe (2 countries):
Russia and Ukraine.
Asia (7 countries):
India, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Pakistan.
Latin America and the Caribbean (16 countries):
Caribbean: US Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Trinidad & Tobago, Bahamas, Anguilla, St Vincent & the Grenadines, St Lucia, and Montserrat.
Central America: El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala.
South America: Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia.
Africa (8 countries):
South Africa, Lesotho, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya and Sudan.
Oceania:
Tuvalu.
Why poverty makes more “holes”
Are we done yet? No. Extreme poverty can also make a country a “hole.” So I had a look at the Wikipedia’s list of countries by GDP per capita, as measured by PPP. Actually, there were three lists, put out by the IMF, the World Bank and the CIA. In the end, I decided to use the CIA’s list, because it contained the most countries (198 altogether). I then pondered where to draw my cutoff point. Some useful reference points were provided by the following countries: North Korea 1,800 dollars, Afghanistan 2,000 dollars and Zimbabwe 2,100 dollars. I think most people would consider these countries to be economic hellholes, quite apart from their political systems or their lack of safety. But then again, Uganda’s per capita GDP in PPP terms was the same as Zimbabwe’s. I finally decided to make 2,000 dollars per capita my non-arbitrary cutoff point. It’s a pretty modest cutoff point, really, when you consider that Bangladesh has a per capita GDP (in PPP terms) of 3,600 dollars. That of Africa as a whole is 6,136 dollars. India’s is 6,200 dollars, that of the Philippines is 7,300 dollars, while even El Salvador’s is 8,500 dollars. Of the 26 countries with a per capita GDP of 2,000 dollars or less, 22 are African countries (South Sudan, Benin, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Mali, The Gambia, Ethiopia, Comoros, Sierra Leone, Togo, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mozambique, Guinea, Malawi, Eritrea, Niger, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Central African Republic, Somalia), two are Asian (Afghanistan and North Korea) and one is in the Americas (Haiti).
So the bad news is that Africa now has 26 “hole” countries: South Africa, Lesotho, Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, Benin, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Mali, The Gambia, Ethiopia, Comoros, Sierra Leone, Togo, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mozambique, Guinea, Malawi, Eritrea, Niger, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Central African Republic and Somalia. That’s nearly half of the countries of Africa. (These 26 countries have a combined population of around 523 million, or around 43% of the total population of Africa.) Also, Haiti has been added to the list of Caribbean “holes,” on account of its very low GDP per capita.
There is some good news on the horizon, however: real GDP growth rates per capita (PPP) for many African countries are spectacularly high. Here are the World Bank figures for annual growth rates for the period 1990 to 2014: Equatorial Guinea 17.79%, Cape Verde 7.81%, Mauritius 5.72%, Ethiopia 5.43%, Uganda 5.41%, Ghana 5.09%, Lesotho 4.88%, Tunisia 4.85%, Burkina Faso 4.76%, Chad 4.74%, Nigeria 4.71%, Rwanda 4.71%, Morocco 4.61%, Seychelles 4.53%, Egypt 4.24%, Namibia 4.22%, Tanzania 4.17%, Zambia 4.07%, Malawi 3.61%, Mali 3.45%, Sierra Leone 3.36%, Benin 3.26%, Mauritania 3.26%, Algeria 3.21%, Swaziland 3.00%. That’s 25 out of 54 countries in Africa with a real GDP per capita (PPP) growth rate of 3% or more. [Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn’t list any figures for the CIA.] [Updated – VJT.]
What that means is that many African countries which are “holes” now, because of their very low GDP per capita, won’t remain that way for very much longer. In ten years, the list of “holes” will be much shorter. (For example: a country with a current GDP per capita (PPP) of 1,228 dollars, which is growing at 5% per year, will reach 2,000 dollars and climb out of “hole” status in the space of just ten years.)
UPDATE: The bad news, however, is that if we look at the world as a whole, we find that its GDP per capita (PPP) grew at an annual growth rate of 4.34%, which was exceeded by just 14 of these African countries. Also, if we look at the 42 countries whose GDP for per capita (PPP) grew at an annual rate of less than 3% for 1990-2014, we find that 19 of those countries were African countries: South Africa 2.82%, Senegal 2.79%, Kenya 2.76%, Republic of the Congo 2.59%, Guinea 2.18%, Cameroon 2.14%, The Gambia 2.14%, Togo 2.08%, Djibouti 2.05%, Niger 1.98%, Gabon 1.89%, Cote d’Ivoire 1.88%, Comoros 1.54%, Guinea-Bissau 1.48%, Madagascar 1.23%, Burundi 0.53%, Zimbabwe 0.39%, Central African Republic -0.07%, Democratic Republic -0.39%. What’s more, nine of these countries belong to the 22 countries identified above as having a GDP per capita (PPP) of 2,000 dollars or less.)
Low freedom ratings make three more holes in Asia, and one in Africa [UPDATE]
A country may also be described as a “hole” if it is totally unfree. Freedom House, in its 2016 Table of Country Scores, gives 10 countries (not counting disputed territories such as Tibet, Crimea and Pakistani Kashmir) the worst possible rating (7) in all three of its categories: political rights, civil liberties and freedom rating. The countries are Syria, Somalia, Eritrea, North Korea, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Saudi Arabia. Most of these countries are already on our list, but four are not. Three of these (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia) are in Asia, while one (Equatorial Guinea) is in Africa.
So, what counts as a “hole” and how many countries are “holes”?
We now have two European “holes,” 10 Asian ones, 17 from the Americas, 27 from Africa and one from Oceania, making a total of 55, out of 200-odd countries. (Updated) That’s about a quarter of the world’s countries. A “hole” can be non-arbitrarily defined as a country which:
(i) has an intentional homicide rate of at least 20 per 100,000 people; or
(ii) has a very high [top five] overall crime rate (excluding theft); or
(iii) has a Safety Index of 30 or less; or
(iv) has a Global Peace Index of “very low”; or
(v) has a GDP per capita of 2,000 dollars or less in PPP terms; or
(vi) has the worst possible rating (7) from Freedom House in political rights, civil liberties and its Freedom Rating. (Updated)
Whose fault is it, and does it matter?
Finally, I’d like to reiterate that calling a country a “hole” doesn’t necessarily mean that its misfortunes are entirely, or even principally, its fault. Some countries are innocent victims of meddling by foreign powers; others are victimized by dictators that seize power.
Nevertheless, if we’re really being honest, I think we’d have to admit that in today’s world, most countries’ troubles are largely home-grown, being generally caused by dysfunctional cultural values, religious bigotry and political corruption. It is easy to point the finger of blame at outside forces: the legacy of Columbus, or of slavery, or of colonialism, or of Pax Americana. And let us acknowledge that tens of millions died as a result of the conquest of the Americas and the slave trade, not to mention the awful toll of colonialism in the Belgian Congo and in British India.
But let’s face facts: Columbus lived 500 years ago, slavery was abolished in most countries well before 1900, and the majority of African countries have been independent for at least 50 years. There has to be a time limit on blaming past injustices for present misfortunes. If 50 years isn’t enough time for a country to turn itself from a “hole” into a thrifty but economically and politically stable country, then I ask: what is?
“What about poverty in Africa?” you ask. Surely the West is principally responsible for that? The Wikipedia article Economy of Africa paints a different picture, however. Consider this inconvenient fact, taken from the article: “Although Africa and Asia had similar levels of income in the 1960s, Asia has since outpaced Africa.” It’s surely fair to ask why. The article continues:
“One school of economists argues that Asia’s superior economic development lies in local investment. Corruption in Africa consists primarily of extracting economic rent and moving the resulting financial capital overseas instead of investing at home; the stereotype of African dictators with Swiss bank accounts is often accurate.”
That sounds like a home-grown problem to me.
Colonialism is often blamed for Africa’s woes. But consider this fact:
“Analysis of the economies of African states finds that independent states such as Liberia and Ethiopia did not have better economic performance than their post-colonial counterparts.”
The effects of colonialism were decidedly mixed. The colonialists did lots of evil things, but it was what they didn’t do that caused more harm to Africa, with many historians arguing that they should have done more to develop Africa’s infrastructure and open up the continent:
Historians L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan have argued that Africa probably benefited from colonialism on balance. Although it had its faults, colonialism was probably “one of the most efficacious engines for cultural diffusion in world history”.[30] These views, however, are controversial and are rejected by some who, on balance, see colonialism as bad. The economic historian David Kenneth Fieldhouse has taken a kind of middle position, arguing that the effects of colonialism were actually limited and their main weakness wasn’t in deliberate underdevelopment but in what it failed to do.[31] Niall Ferguson agrees with his last point, arguing that colonialism’s main weaknesses were sins of omission.[32]
Language diversity is also a huge problem in Africa:
“African countries suffer from communication difficulties caused by language diversity. Greenberg’s diversity index is the chance that two randomly selected people would have different mother tongues. Out of the most diverse 25 countries according to this index, 18 (72%) are African.[40] This includes 12 countries for which Greenberg’s diversity index exceeds 0.9, meaning that a pair of randomly selected people will have less than 10% chance of having the same mother tongue. However, the primary language of government, political debate, academic discourse, and administration is often the language of the former colonial powers; English, French, or Portuguese.”
Maybe some readers would still argue that the West (including America) should give more money to Africa. Not so fast:
“Growing evidence shows that foreign aid has made the continent poorer. One of the biggest critics of the aid development model is economist Dambiso Moyo (a Zambian economist based in the US), who introduced the Dead Aid model, which highlights how foreign aid has been a deterrent for local development.”
Economic protectionism in developed countries hampers Africa’s growth, as well:
“When developing countries have harvested agricultural produce at low cost, they generally do not export as much as would be expected. Abundant farm subsidies and high import tariffs in the developed world, most notably those set by Japan, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, and the United States Department of Agriculture, are thought to be the cause. Although these subsidies and tariffs have been gradually reduced, they remain high.”
Trade, rather than aid, is the best way to help Africa escape poverty. To the extent that the West is harming Africa, it is largely by refusing to trade with it. And if there is one country that deserves much of the credit for Africa’s astonishing growth in recent years, it is China, which has stepped up its volume of trade with Africa and invested heavily in local infrastructure.
A plea for balance
As for US intervention in El Salvador: let us remember that its UN-brokered peace agreement was signed back in 1992, more than a quarter of a century ago. Despite decades of peace, the GDP growth rate in El Salvador averaged a measly 0.72 percent from 1990 until 2017. That can hardly be America’s fault. Nor can the sky-high homicide rate be blamed on America.
And let’s hear both sides of the story, too. Quartz magazine has just published a long and indignant tirade enumerating the past wrongs suffered by Haiti at America’s hands, including a 19-year occupation by U.S. marines from 1915-1934, during which thousands of innocent people died under a racist government. But the article fails to mention that the U.S. occupation dramatically improved the island’s infrastructure: “1700 km of roads were made usable, 189 bridges were built, many irrigation canals were rehabilitated, hospitals, schools, and public buildings were constructed, and drinking water was brought to the main cities.” Let’s give credit where credit’s due, I say. And let’s also ask, fearlessly: what is it that continues to hold some countries (like Haiti) back, long after the Marines departed?
And above all: let us not be afraid of calling a “hole” what it really is. Before we can change the world for the better, we need to confront it in all its ugliness. And with that, I’d like to conclude my response to Cardinal Dolan. Over to you.
Vj, I agree with you that some countries are holes. I also agree that no person is unworthy of respect. I question you on this, however you said:
“Trump’s angry outburst was (a) directed at countries, not at “someone”, (b) directed at nations rather than races…”
I think you incorrect in this. He is talking about immigrants (actual individuals) from “hole” countries. His comments are directed at individuals, not either nations or races. You may be right that the comments are not “racist”, rather they are “nationist”. The difference is not great.
One additional correction I’d like to make was that Vince’s claim that
This is not intended as a post about President Trump’s recently reported remarks
That’s exactly what it is, and I’m pretty sure Vince realizes it. It’s a defense.
Let’s use the correct word here: not “hole”; “shithole”. And of course Trump’s remark was directed at people, specifically immigrants from certain countries, including Haiti and Africa, which Trump at one point thought was a country. He has since learned that there are many countries in Africa, which is good, though he has apparently learned that one of them is called Nambia, which is bad. Racism and ignorance tied up with one big orange bow.
Incidentally, claims that the USA isn’t “carrying its weight” are not about total immigrants but about refugees, especially refugees from Syria. Try that one on for size.
If this post isn’t a defense of Trump, I don’t see any point to it.
I chose “hole” to be a little less crass than the genius president. I suspect that Cardinal Dolan and vjtorley did similar. We all know approximately what president Trump said, though there is some question whether he said “
%^house”.
brucefast,
I have a hard time pronouncing percentage signs and carets. Come on, Bruce. We’re grownups here.
“Hole” does not adequately convey the intended meaning. “Shithouse” makes no sense. Anyway, it’s the meaning, not the inelegant word, that is the real problem for Trump.
What’s not so clear is whom Vince is trying to impress.
A preponderance of the evidence says loudly and clearly that the Birther in Chief is a racist. Vince is obviously playing a divide-and-conquer strategy. He is ethically wrong to do so, and it would be ethically wrong to engage him on his own terms. That is, if he succeeds in so much as shifting the discussion to his post, then he succeeds in diverting attention from the horrible rise of white nationalism in the United States.
This is a good example of why Lizzie’s principles do not work. It is not the least credible that someone operating in good faith would detach this latest incident from those that have come before. The insistence that I take this post in isolation from others that Vincent has made, and that I not form a model of the poster that includes an agenda not stated by the poster, is just plain wrong.
Vincent Torley will deny being a racist. But he has gone far out of his way to contribute to the cause of white nationalism. If he is unaware that the “Nazis claimed that the Nordic race was the most superior of the ‘Aryan race’ and constituted a master race (Herrenvolk)” [source], then he’s not nearly as bright as I’ve taken him to be. When Trump contrasted the majority-black “shithole countries” with the predominantly “Aryan” country of Norway, it left hardly a doubt in the minds of reasonably well-informed Americans of what shit the President of the United States has been reading.
Vincent,
Independent of your assessment of Trump’s “shithole” comment, do you believe that Trump himself is racist? Why or why not?
You say that Trump’s remark referred to the countries, not the people, but that doesn’t make sense. If they’re good people, why object to allowing them as immigrants? If anything, the compassionate stance would be to accept more good people from those countries, not fewer.
Right one VJ!
Here are two countries that are racially identical. One is a prospering, free-market, democracy where Christianity is flourishing in the South. The other in the North where anti-Christian left-wing social “justice” warriors reign? Ha! Nuff said:
https://brandinginasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/North-Korea-South-Korea-Lights.jpg
To drive home the point:
By the way, I’ve known a great many people who deny being racists, and who are in fact horribly racist in their views.
If you are bothered by predictions that the U.S. will have a Hispanic majority by mid-century, then you are a racist. Spare me the protestations that it’s about culture, not race. I started hearing them at least 25 years ago, from Klansmen and John Birchers who had taken to calling themselves European Americans (and emphasizing, of course, that it was they who were being discriminated against). Mexican immigrants, in particular, are famously rapid in their assimilation of mainstream American culture.
“North Korea opposed both the UN declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity, which called for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality, and the exclusion of sexual orientation as discriminatory grounds for execution”
Sounds like a hotbed of Social Justice
stcordova,
Way more than enough said, I’d say. The rules forbid me to elaborate.
Trumpsters Trumpsters everywhere, nor any drop of sense.
Recently a NK soldier escaped. Is he a scumbag just because his country is? The country doesn’t make the person. Call it racism, or call it nationism as I did earlier. In both cases we are presuming that because the sum of the parts is dysfunctional, that the individual parts are dysfunctional.
I’m just curious: how is this OP in any way related to what TSZ was originally set up for?
J-Mac: probably in the same way UncommonDescent posts (religion,morality,morality,religion) are related to ID.
My interest in these things has always been about inventing ways to mitigate suffering. Most of what government does is counterproductive. Much of it is dynamically equivalent to selling addictive drugs. Solutions that make people feel better, but do not change the dynamics that create the problems.
South Korea is a flourishing democracy? You must have a very short memory, or perhaps a very selective one.
In any case, North Korea gave us the juche lunacy and South Korea gave us the Moonie lunacy.
After reading the OP I came away with two objections:
i) This piece definitely is a defense of Trumps recent shithole comment
ii) The excuse that the remark is not racist because it is not explicitely directed at other races is transparent and lame.
And see; both issues have already been raised in the comment thread.
Yes. Vince is the master of under- and misanalysis. But his presentations are so verbose that he manages to mask from some people where he goes off the rails.
In this case, Vince defends Trump (despite initial claims to the contrary) against some Catholic Cardinal, evidently having only read the story with the Cardinal and not paying close enough attention to the main story with Trump. This is off the rails from the start and stays off the rails all the way through.
Yes, and I’d like to hear from Vince why he thought it was important to claim that this is not a defense of Trump’s “shithole” remark, when of course that’s exactly what it is. Why not be transparent in your activities, Vince? You’re not actually fooling anyone.
What a privilege it must be to earn one’s living not doing what their PhD prepared them for, but simply teaching their own native language in a rich, developed nation, while calling other nation-states ‘holes’.
Shhhh, it’s Vince’s way of running for moderation in a hole filled with atheists and anti-theists who loathe creationists and IDists. ; ) If nation-states can be ‘holes’, then of course Vincent believes websites can be holes too.
Send word out for a party; Vincent J. Torley is going to be a missionary moderator for skeptics in an atheist hole on the Internet! What a courageous move for him to choose such an audience for his writings.
Hi keiths,
I have of course read the 2016 article in Fortune magazine, titled, Is Donald Trump Racist? Here’s What the Record Shows. I have to admit it makes a strong case for Trump having been at least somewhat racist, during the seventies and eighties.
I’ve also read the 2016 Vanity Fair article, How Donald Trump Beat Palm Beach Society and Won the Fight for Mar-a-Lago. The following extracts are revealing:
It is noteworthy that Jesse Jackson also praised Trump, back in the late 1990s:
Bearing in mind that Trump’s own daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared are Jewish, I’d say there’s no truth in the claim that President Trump is anti-Semitic.
Regarding African-Americans: it is quite possible that Trump, like many of his generation, imbibed mildly racist views, but gradually came to shed them in the eighties and nineties, as he matured. Certainly by the mid-nineties, he was outspokenly anti-racist.
Fair question. Australia has a points system where skilled migrants are given preference, and it’s very hard to get in, now, if you don’t have the requisite skills. My guess is that President Trump wants an immigration system which is more like Australia’s than the present system which is in force in America. In that case, immigrants from desperately poor countries would be seen as an economic drain, while immigrants from crime-ridden countries would be seen as a security risk. Trump presumably wants to discourage both.
Now, you might think Trump’s fears are overblown, and that he is being xenophobic. But even if you’re right, xenophobia isn’t the same thing as racism.
Well, at least now you’ve come out of the closet and admit that this is a Trump support thread–and nothing else. You could have done that at the outset instead of feebly denying it, but, better late than never, I guess.
Vincent lives high & mighty as a foreigner, rewarded for spreading his native language alone as an Australian in a ‘spiritual hole’ in Asia (actually, one of the least religious countries in the world), yet has the gall to wag his thumb like a Trump Yankee at ‘other holes’. This is hilarious in its absurdity! Does anyone trust Torley as a judge of ‘holes,’ let alone to moderate a skeptical atheist zone on the internet?! ; )
walto,
The reason why I wrote this post was because I had a puzzle in my head which I wanted to sort out: exactly what is it that makes a country an undesirable place to visit (or a “hole,” if you like)? You might say that I was thinking aloud.
As for the claim that I’m trying to defend President Trump, I can only respond that other people have done a much better job, already:
Tucker Carlson’s timely tweet on El Salvador.
10 Thoughts on the President and the ‘S—hole Countries’ by Dennis Prager, in Investment Business Daily.
Was Trump’s ‘S***hole’ Commentary Racist? by Ben Shapiro in The Daily Wire, January 11, 2018.
What’s the Point of Labeling Trump a Racist? by Ben Shapiro in National Review Online, January 17, 2018.
Trump’s right about the need to pick immigrants for skills by Rich Lowry in the New York Post, January 16, 2018.
Thanks for the additional Trump plumping, Vince. Just makes your intentions more obvious.
Tucker Carlson even–Jesus. You can just admit the obvious. Failing to do so is very unattractive, and, after all, about 40% of the U.S. populace agrees with you. They’re mostly stupider than you are and less likely to be receiving remuneration for their services than you seem to be, but still…..
Tom English,
Unlike you, I have actually been to Auschwitz and Birkenau. I know perfectly well what the Nordic race is, thank you very much.
I’m also aware that there’s a logical fallacy known as the fallacy of affirming the consequent:
1. If Trump is a Nazi, then he likes Nordics.
2. Trump likes Nordics.
3. Therefore Trump is a Nazi.
Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. And I imagine you’ll completely ignore the evidence I marshaled above, in my reply to keiths, showing that President Trump despises anti-Semitism, not to mention his decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there, because that’s what a Nazi would do, isn’t it?
Perhaps it escaped your attention that Mexico was not among the countries I listed as a “hole.” And by the way, I would dispute your statement about rates of assimilation (see here, here and here). I would also note that immigrants are less likely to speak English at home now than they were in 1980. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that if you migrate to a country, you should learn its language. That’s just a basic courtesy.
Unlike you, I’ve met some real racists. Like the mother of a lady I once shared a group house with, who recounted a tale about her time in the mountains of New Guinea, where she and a few friends were looked after by the locals for a month or two before some white people showed up. “It was weeks before we saw any humans at all,” she casually remarked over lunch. Jaws dropped around the table. That was in 1987.
Or a Hungarian I once knew who insisted that the Holocaust was a hoax. This was back in 1981, when I was about 20. I was so shocked by his assertion that I did some research and wrote up a 60-page refutation of the sources he cited, by hand (this was in the days before PCs).
But hey, that’s just the sort of thing a racist would do, isn’t it? Writing polemics against Holocaust-deniers.
Grow up.
Vince needs to remember the first law of holes.
I’ll just park this here!
I define the USA as the world’s worst shithole, on the basis that despite its enormous wealth it ranks very low compared to similarly wealthy countries in terms of violence, life expectancy, science literacy and other general knowledge, the strength and integrity of its institutions and governance, and the quality of the leaders it elects.
America: Shithole of the industrialized world. In terms of:
Life expectancy and infant mortality (but look how much they spend on health care):
https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2016-annual-report/comparison-with-other-nations
Maternal mortality (by a LOT):
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world
Murder rate:
https://www.indy100.com/article/the-chart-that-shows-americas-shocking-murder-rate-compared-to-other-countries–bkAvfB5lwx
Scientific literacy:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-evolution.html
No wonder more Americans are migrating to Norway than the other way around:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-norway-trump-20180113-story.html
Wow. this gets the prize for the longest thread EVER. Its a book.
i don’t pay attention to the news.
Saying some nations and peoples are this and that is famous and the right of all mankind.
Immigration is a gifyt of one people/citizens of a nation to another.
Its the greatest moral, legal, spiritual right of the that people to decide if any, who, or how many foreigners come in.
its impossible for their to be a greater moral right or claim or complaint to trump the natives consent on who gets in.
Otherwise it’s simple historical INVASION.
America/Canada have the greatest admission rate of different and numbers of foreigners in human history.
To question North america is suspicious of evil design to deny north america to live with whom we decide and who gets our home and wealth.
We, everyone, can keep out anyone for any reason. indeed america/canada have histioric examples of stopping immigration. Not well known but they stopped europeans from the more backward countries in the early 1900’s and questioned irish catholics in the previous century and Asians in the late 1800’s.
So americans asserted their right then to decide who and how many.
Are some countries and peoples failures relative to others. Obviously so. Indeed people leaving their nations is always this witness. Rarely do people leave for a less lucrative situation.
Anyways a president must be able to say these nations are holes otherwise nobody could which would be censorship and untruthful and oppressive.
Trump seems to use the wrong words in a right cause.
its fewer and fewer nations today that are so backward.
I don’t know the context.
if its about immigration from those backward nations then most americans would agree to stop it.
In short immigration is so iimmortant and morally immortant THEN it must be the people, by referendum who should vote.
Would they like a end to immigration, less, more, selection on identities, ??? etc
Workers, non citizens also throw in there.
The nation belongs to the American people and/or American citizens.
this is americas great claim to the world.
by the people, for the people, of the people.
No other moral or legal dictates!!
finally who can question americans/canadians on this??
There is a problem as i see it with immigration but thats my opinion.
always was.
america/canada was built by a english protestant peoples and the rest just joined the group. they never contributed anything as segregated identities.
We never needed anyone else nor gained from them EXCEPT in a gain of human beings after assimilation in its degrees.
Rightly nobody suggests immigration would help third world countries or China and India and Japan or Norway or Iceland or Israel.
Its a kindness and disinterest in identity from the English population and all who perfectly assimilated.
Right or wrong.
Millions of people fled Ireland to escape starvation and oppression, yet most would be insulted if a non-Irish person said Ireland was a s*ithole.
You could argue that 1840s Ireland might deserve uncomplimentary adjectives. However, should someone argue that therefore the U.S. should not have admitted Irish immigrants fleeing the starvation?
The issue is not what adjective to use for a country, but then using that to blame the state of that country on immigrants coming from there. And that is what the present U.S. administration is doing.
Vincent, does the one (even if merited) justify the other?
Joe – your sentiment is noble and deserves applause!
Your heart is in the right place, however (and I say this with all respect and deference to your superlative intellectual acumen) your brain is not in the right place.
Case in point: Sweden and Germany today, after the floodgates of migrants washed up on their shores.
Norway was mentioned above: well let’s consider a news item already two years old:
Sweden freaked out by Norway’s pre-emptive move in violation of the Geneva Convention. In Norway’s opinion, there is no longer a question “if” Swedish society will collapse, but rather “when” Swedish society will collapse.
As a proactive measure, Norway has put legislation in place to secure the border with Sweden by force – by not letting ANY Swede apply for asylum, when that shithole country goes the way of Aleppo and Mosul.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-24/norway-warns-sweden-will-collapse-pm-will-defy-geneva-convention-protect-border
Things have gotten much worse since then, especially in Sweden and following close behind, in Germany!
Joe Felsenstein,
I follow the German and Austrian press.
This article caught my eye just the other day:
https://www.wochenblick.at/kriminalitaets-hochburg-malmoe-jetzt-fliehen-sogar-die-fluechtlinge/
Oh –did I just mention Aleppo and Mosul? News Alert:
Refugees in Sweden are now fleeing police-no-go neighborhoods… (strike that)… cities in Sweden! I am not making this up. TODAY, it is now safer to leave homes and publicly celebrate Christmas/Easter on public squares of Aleppo and Mosul than in Berlin or Stockholm. And no, that was not hyperbole or exaggeration!
FTR: This is not second-hand info: I visited a German city which was a police-no-go-zone goddamit – and I only wish I were making that up!
I hate to say this – but these two links summarize the situation perfectly regardless of the sensationalism of the source pandering to less than worthy sentiments for pecuniary self-interest. Yeah – I don’t like the style of delivery either: but the content is right on target as far as accuracy is concerned! I read the European press – take my word for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtceYhHurqY
Reality Check:
I know of nowhere in America where it is unsafe for a Jew to publicly wear his kippah.
Hold that thought:
I know nowhere in Sweden where it is now safe for a Jew to publicly wear his kippah.
That says something!
My father was part of the German resistance to the Nazis and would have gladly escaped to the Allies. The allies did not permit immigration from Nazi Germany and for good reason. Why should it be different today?
A broken clock can be correct twice a day… on this particular score Trump happens to be correct.
Racism can include the racism of reduced expectations and differential treatment based on the color of one’s skin. Today’s Liberals are advocating just such a racism
So the nutbars here are not just creationist nutbars. There are racist nutbars here as well. Good to know.
Thanks for a moment of sanity. I personally don’t thing the current support for mass immigration has anything to do with compassion. It is either for financial reasons (new, cheap labor) or because it was planned by people who encouraged the wars that led to flight from the middle east. I participated as a draftee in the American adventure in southeast Asia. I didn’t like it a bit. I am reluctant to adopt conspiracy theories, but I have never been able to find a rational justification for America supporting regime change in foreign countries.
Not for Vietnam, nor for Iraq, nor for Lybia, nor for Syria, nor for North Korea. I do see possible rationale for supporting policy changes in countries that have defective governments.
That’s really what a shithole country is, a nation having a government that stifles economic growth and individual liberty. I don’t have any magic solutions for such countries.
petrushka,
Really? It’s pretty clear that the North Korean people, and the world, would be better off if the current North Korean regime were replaced with one more like the South’s.
There are dangers in any such transition, of course, and caution is required. But would you really go so far as to say that that there is “no rational justification for America supporting regime change” there?
Faizal Ali,
You need to dig a little deeper, when comparing the U.S. with other countries in the industrialized world. Most of the differences you cite boil down to the fact that America is more multicultural than Europe, and somewhat more religious.
Life Expectancy Indicates U.S. Health-Care Outcomes Actually Outpace International Peers
Infant Mortality Isn’t A True Measure Of A Successful Healthcare System
What about maternal mortality?
If we look at US maternal mortality rates, what’s striking is how much they vary across states: 5.8 for Massachusetts (which compares very well with most European countries) vs. 40.7 for the District of Columbia. So if someone is going to argue that America is dysfunctional, they need to specify which part they’re talking about.
Race is another key factor:
Most of the European countries listed in the article you cited have very low percentages of people of African descent: the ethnic diversity of these European countries is far less than that of the U.S. According to the Wikipedia article on ethnic diversity in Europe, only about 10 million of Europe’s 770 million people are of African descent. 5 million of these are Arabs and Berbers, 500,000 are Horn Africans and 5 million are sub-Saharan Africans. In other words, just over 1% of Europeans are of African descent, compared with about 13% of Americans. How, one wonders, would sheltered Europe cope with America’s level of ethnic diversity? Not very well, I imagine.
According to a 2017 article in NPR, “The disproportionate toll on African-Americans is the main reason the U.S. maternal mortality rate is so much higher than that of other affluent countries.”
The causes of higher maternal mortality rates among women of African-American descent are complex, and include hereditary factors (higher rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes) as well as institutionalized racism (see also here). Education, however, has little to do with the difference: black college graduates experience maternal mortality rates that are three times as high as their white counterparts. It’s not easy to separate genetic from environmental factors: the daily experience of racism can raise people’s blood pressure, for instance.
The point I’m making is that you need to compare apples with apples, when making international comparisons. Europe versus America isn’t a fair comparison.
The article you linked to claimed that US maternal mortality rates are rising, but according to a recent article in Quartz, the increase may well be due to poor record-keeping in the past: “Given the inadequacy of the data collected in the US over those years, it’s very possible that the country was undercounting its maternal mortality rates all along, and that the increase wasn’t an increase at all, but simply reflected better data.” (See also here.)
What about intentional homicide rates? Once again, if you’re going to compare America with Europe, you need to compare apples with apples. The very article you cite squarely addresses this issue:
Let me point in passing out that the “cutoff point” which I proposed in my article was 20 per 100,000. Thus for black Americans, the level of violence in the community borders on totally unacceptable, going by the criteria I suggested. This is obviously an issue America needs to address. Europeans, however, have no right to lecture America about racism, given their relative insularity.
Let me also add that I deliberately refrained from making any policy prescriptions regarding how many overseas migrants a country should take. That’s a matter for each country to decide. A country might decide to open its doors to migrants from all countries, on humanitarian grounds, or it might decide on prudential grounds to restrict immigration from countries known to have high levels of violence. Broadly, President Obama opted for the former alternative, while President Trump prefers the latter. Who’s right? That’s for Americans to decide.
Finally, we come to scientific literacy. Actually, if we look at the overall picture, we find that the United States, on average, performs similarly to many of the European countries, and slightly above the European average. And according to a 2016 report from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Americans “perform comparably to adults in other economically developed countries on most current measures of science knowledge.”
The main area where America compares unfavorably with Europe relates to evolution (see here). But as Julie Beck argues in a 2015 article in The Atlantic, “Asking whether people believe in evolution doesn’t measure science literacy, it measures whether you’re religious. It’s an expression of identity.” Most Americans know what scientists teach about evolution; they just don’t happen to believe it, mainly for religious reasons. See also here.
I might also add that five of the top ten universities in the world are in the United States. Germany’s best university ranks 64th in the world, and France’s best ranks 43rd, although an impressive four of the top ten are in the U.K.
In short: unlike countries like North Korea, El Salvador and Somalia, America isn’t a dysfunctional society. It’s just one which has chosen to take on more challenges than most other developed countries.
You sure you’re not making this up?
So you must have done those experiments. A large number of independent Christmas and Easter celebrations have been conducted, in public squares of Aleppo, Mosul, Berlin and Stockholm, and there were recorded a statistically significant larger number of violent attacks in Berlin and Stockholm, compared to Mosul and Aleppo?
Impress me by confirming you’re not just making this up.
Hi Professor Felsenstein,
You write:
As I pointed out in my article, “good people can have the misfortune to live in a country whose culture is toxic or whose government is tyrannical and evil.” And as I wrote in my response to Faizal Ali above, it is up to each country to decide whether to open its doors to migrants from all countries on humanitarian grounds, or whether to restrict immigration from countries known to have high levels of violence, on prudential grounds.
The 2013 Pew survey on the beliefs of Muslims illustrates some of the issues involved. Most Muslims around the world support making sharia the official law of the land (although Muslims living in countries where they are a minority tend to disagree), with 99% of Muslims in Afghanistan and 91% of Muslims in Iraq saying yes. I can certainly understand why some Americans might think that immigration from countries where people hold such extreme views needs to be curtailed. Certainly there has to be some point at which a democratic country would put up its hand and say “Stop!”, when accepting immigrants who hold anti-democratic views. The only question is: at what point? And that, I would maintain, is a prudential matter.
brucefast and Sal,
Thanks for your kind words.
All kinds of varieties of nutbars here, sadly. It’s a microcosm of this stupid country.
No they don’t, actually. It’s customary to use averages–both here and in Sweden (e.g.). Massachusetts is small, mostly urban, packed with fancy hospitals, and generally liberal with care, so naturally outcomes will be better here than in Alabama or Texas. But, for good or ill, the U.S.A includes Alabama and Texas too. Why do you think it’s ok to cherry pick when discussing these data?
How’d we get onto regime changes? But if that IS the topic, I think the U.S.A is desperately in need of Gort right now.
Nictu Barrata.
Ah, I see. So it’s the fault of the brown and black people in America that it’s such a shithole.
Or maybe it’s a shithole because of how it treats the brown and black people who live within its borders.
I have to say, your posts here are about as racist as one can get without ruining his bedsheets by cutting eye holes in them.