If Mort Divine ruled the world
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Dak
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I've got a radical policy proposal: Subsidize emigration to Haiti for everyone so triggered by Trump. Surely free moving removes the only barrier to relocating to that Caribbean island paradise. #notyourpresidentanymore
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CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Einherjar86
Active Member
Not quite, otherwise other people wouldn't identify it. You could say it's a collective hallucination... but then, we could also argue that the acknowledgement of consciousness in other human beings is a collective hallucination since there's no way for me to crawl inside your head and verify your consciousness.
Let's assume that Trump isn't a bigoted nincompoop, that his language truly was not racially motivated. He could have just as easily said "Why do we want people from economically disadvantaged countries?" or "Why do we want people from politically tumultuous countries?" or "Why do we want people from socially reactionary countries?" But he didn't; he chose the word "shithole."
"Shit" and "blackness" have a socially interrelated history; but of course, someone like Trump probably doesn't know this. Walter Mosley hints as much at the end of his story "Dr. Kismet" when his protagonist says that black signifies the absence of knowledge, black holes, what white people can't see. It's the color of shit.
Some people might say that this association didn't precede the fabrications of fiction, but that fiction produced the association, thereby making it art's fault; but this isn't true either. From the first interactions between white Europeans and black natives, the dark skin color of the latter was associated with "miasma" and "effluvia." In other words, dark-skinned individuals were closer to waste fluids, noisome substances, and general decay (source: Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World).
So describing these countries as "shitholes" is a racially inflected comment, even if Trump didn't mean it as such. It isn't "in my head."
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
AKA the hivemind.
So your complaint essentially boils down to: Donald Trump isn't an establishment politician.
Well that's a large part of why he was elected by his supporters, because he doesn't play the language games that characterize mainstream politics. Why are people such as yourself so aggressive in your refusal to realise that he was elected as an attack against political correctness and not to play into it?
The man is a boorish douchebag and that's actually what they wanted.
Jesus Christ, now I'm just thinking it's you who is the racist here.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Why? Because I note the linguistic structures by which people of darker skin colors are hierarchically categorized and associated with particular ideas, images, etc. and oppose them? Being conscious of racism doesn't make one's consciousness itself racially motivated. You're confusing concern with callousness.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
No because all of that comes to your mind when you hear cultures and countries called "shitholes" because that's exactly what they are and race isn't mentioned anywhere.
HamburgerBoy
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How about instead of using words longer than three syllables, you pick something that conveys the meaning of "shithole" without the imagined racial implications. "Dump"? But that implies garbage which often can turn a sickly brown. "Cesspool"? Oh wait that's poop again.
I'm glad you're the first person I've seen make this stretch so far, not even the MSM has crossed that bridge yet afaik, generally they just say "But they're shitholes because of whitey 200 years ago" or "He's so reckless and will scare talent away from coming here" or "WW3 impending" or "Check your privilege".
Relevant to your ability to dissect the true meaning of our world from science fiction:
Einherjar86
Active Member
Have you ever read Hemingway's story "Hills Like White Elephants"?
Gravitational singularity! That's all he needed to say!
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Einherjar86
Active Member
It's a story about a man and a woman discussing an abortion, but the word "abortion" doesn't appear anywhere in the story.
The point is that meaning doesn't reduce to the application of specific words. It's an emergent phenomenon, it rises out of context and circumstance.
Ultimately, I'm not all that miffed about Trump's comment. It's expected, and adds nothing new to what I already supposed about our current asshole of a president. He has no tact and no grace when it comes to sensitive matters in which race absolutely plays a part, so I don't expect him to have any now. He also has minimal intelligence when it comes to the subjects about which a president needs to know, so it's a good thing he has semi-capable people around him (either that or he's feigning ignorance, which is even more disturbing because it means he wants people to underestimate him for reasons we can only speculate). I doubt he thinks of "shithole countries" as a racist comment, but the fact remains that it is. That's not a hallucinatory interpretation; it's a result of the context in which he said it, the pattern of comments he's made in the past, and the vitriol with which it was used.
And for the record, calling African countries "shitholes" is so much different than calling a local traffic ticketing controversy a "black hole." That's some overblown shit.
EDIT: and for the record...
http://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/no-not-everything-is-racist-but-donald-trump-is.html
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rms
Active Member
Ein, if you re-read the original historical linguistic breakdown you made there and don't think that sounds almost as bad as Alex Jones on InfoWars i'm not sure what is going on here.
I honestly don't get the effort or end goal in proving Trump is racist. If he is, OK. Now what?
I had this conversation earlier on immigration with I think HB or CF about "cheap" and "expensive" immigrants and I imagine it's still true that immigrants from under developed-non english speaking countries are more economically and socially expensive to integrate than an immigrant from a 'developed' english speaking country.
But this whole thing becomes weird, again, when we see the underlying logic of western powers made these countries shit holes so they must save their people and country in order to right their historical wrongs WHILE also saying america needs to stop globally intervening because they make shit hole countries.
Leftist stance on immigration is so goofy and inconsistent I honestly don't get it. We just saw last week that Baltimore city schools are not properly tended to financially, we see California is rife with prison labor and likely a problem nationally. The informed public mostly agrees we have a systemic issue with policing and part of that is due to economic reasons.
Yet, the left will ignore these issues as soon as some brown people from another country want to come here.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
I don't agree that it is a fact that it was a racist statement, though it was clearly discriminatory. I just think it was culturally so rather than racially so. Also I didn't mean to imply you were hallucinating though I can see how my "in your head" comment seems that way now, what I meant was I think you're conflating interpretation with fact and while I appreciate the 'Hills Like White Elephants' example I don't think it quite applies, considering we both have different interpretations of the context of "shithole" here, whereas I assume it was clearly about abortion without much of an alternate interpretation?
Anyways, I agree that Donald Trump is:
But I actually lean towards thinking Donald Trump is more post-racial than any other American politician right now.
Einherjar86
Active Member
For what it's worth, my stance isn't "the left's" stance; and I agree that the issue, as you frame it here, is contradictory.
As far as proving Trump racist, I don't think it needs to be proven; I just think it's obvious. This just means that there's still work to be done in communicating this to certain groups of people, many of whom don't want to hear it. And undoubtedly past communicative efforts have been, to put it mildly, ineffective.
Re. interpretation vs. fact, good point. I actually try to resist using the word "fact," but it slipped out above because of the colloquialism, i.e. "the fact remains." I don't think there's any way around the racial inflection of his comments and behaviors, but I'll stop short of calling it a fact.
Re. fiction vs. politi-speak, I think there's overlap even if the context differs. There's far less political gasoline surrounding Hemingway's story than there is surrounding Trump's comments, that's true; but that doesn't means political language can't be interpreted in that respect. In fact, if Orwell is to be believed (a la "Politics and the English Language"), then most politi-speak needs to be interpreted and unpacked since it's mired in ideological baggage.
I feel like you want to suggest that Trump, by using the word "shithole," is actually circumventing ideology by simply stating the obvious and not tiptoeing around the issue. I'd agree that he's stating something obvious (i.e. the poor political and economic state of certain regions), but that he's appealing to ideological fervor by stoking the embers of an American exceptionalism that has never burned out.
I disagree completely, but that's a big claim to counter.
EternalMetal
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This whole thing just reminds me of that bullshit troll about milk being racist that so many people bought into. Conflating a term like shithole to being racist because of the black/brown reference is just some imagined PC bullshit.
I dont exactly agree with Trump's desire to deny immigrants from shithole countries (people immigrate to other countries for a better life), but I dont think he is being 'racist' about it. The type of immigrant Trump wants is somebody who is already skilled and competent with abilities that will better our country. Whether they are white, black, yellow, etc, I dont think he cares.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
@Einherjar86 Will respond (and try to elaborate on why I think Trump is more post-racial than anybody else right now) after much needed cryosleep.
Just quickly: I don't think I said or implied that Trump is trying to circumvent ideology, I specifically said I think his bias is nationality not race and that's why I don't think he'd ever slander [insert non-white ethnicity]-Americans but I bet in a heartbeat he'd call another white majority country a "shithole" because for him it seems to be all about American exceptionalism, which would also explain why he's prioritizing Norwegians over Haitians, the former in his mind enriches America whereas the latter enriches the immigrant at America's expense, again in his mind.
So yes, I've always thought it was exceptionalism with him and not racism. Cultural chauvinism.
Anyway just a thought.
Just quickly: I don't think I said or implied that Trump is trying to circumvent ideology, I specifically said I think his bias is nationality not race and that's why I don't think he'd ever slander [insert non-white ethnicity]-Americans but I bet in a heartbeat he'd call another white majority country a "shithole" because for him it seems to be all about American exceptionalism, which would also explain why he's prioritizing Norwegians over Haitians, the former in his mind enriches America whereas the latter enriches the immigrant at America's expense, again in his mind.
So yes, I've always thought it was exceptionalism with him and not racism. Cultural chauvinism.
Anyway just a thought.
HamburgerBoy
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Is there a precise quote or transcript available yet? afaik it's not yet established that he singled out African nations, or that he is against a merit-based system. For all we know (afaik again) Dick Durbin said "Haiti is having a lot of troubles, we should take in extra people from Haiti" to which Trump replied "Why focus on these shitholes?"
Einherjar86
Active Member
This whole thing just reminds me of that bullshit troll about milk being racist that so many people bought into. Conflating a term like shithole to being racist because of the black/brown reference is just some imagined PC bullshit.
I dont exactly agree with Trump's desire to deny immigrants from shithole countries (people immigrate to other countries for a better life), but I dont think he is being 'racist' about it. The type of immigrant Trump wants is somebody who is already skilled and competent with abilities that will better our country. Whether they are white, black, yellow, etc, I dont think he cares.
But he does, which is why he's willing to refuse or allow entry to people based on nationality. He's not even willing to give Haitian or African immigrants the chance to prove themselves individually. He's simply making broad assessments based on general national stats; and when you take a country like Norway versus an African country, this also correlates to racial identity.
For the record, I don't have my copy of "Dr. Kismet" with me; I'm paraphrasing. I don't think Mosley was implying that "black hole" is a racially motivated term, but that blackness is commonly associated with a particular set of concepts, and that in certain cases these can be seen to intersect with attitudes toward people of color. I'm being more reductive in my comments here than I should be, but it's tough to respond to everyone without spending an hour on a post.
I don't know of any transcript, but based on reports it seems pretty straightforward. I mean, we can argue over whether he specifically meant Africa and Haiti, but that seems like a waste of time.
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HamburgerBoy
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Knowing the extent to which he supports or disfavors a merit-based system is pretty fundamental to it, beyond general outrage over Trump being offensive (which is obviously nothing new). The immigration process is very slow for people that aren't either extremely wealthy/successful, or aren't illegal. An average Norwegian is probably much more skilled and educated than a 90th percentile Haitian, but the former will have a much harder time getting here. From what Wikipedia tells me, Haitians immigrate here at a rate at least 10x higher than Norwegians, having sent 1% of their entire population here during the last decade.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Is that because it's harder for Norwegians, or because Norwegians don't give a fuck about immigrating to America?
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