Thinking. That might be dangerous.
I thought I was done with this subject, but what do you think when the Trumpster says (or didn't say) "shithole"? Me, I think of poor, uneducated, crime ridden and corrupt places.
The color of skin predominant in those places didn't pop into my mind. But then I don't readily go straight to the race card. For me corrupt, poor, uneducated, and crime ridden does not mean dark-skinned. It means uneducated, corrupt, etc. That's all.
Now, it could be I think that way because I'm a white guy steeped in white privilege, whatever that means. Maybe I'm a mere rube, hick, redneck. I'm not good at virtue signaling, I guess.
What I do think, is that a real racist would automatically think I'm talking about people of color when I say shithole, corrupt, uneducated, or crime-prone.
Of course Haiti is a shithole. Calling it so doesn't denigrate a Haitian person based on their skin, it denigrates the circumstances in which they live -- you know corrupt, uneducated, crime ridden, and poor. In other words, a shithole.
Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, DC, are all shitholes, too, simply by the definition you posited: "poor, uneducated, crime ridden and corrupt places."
ReplyDeleteBefore anyone questions my inclusion of Washington, DC, have you ever been in the poor, crime-ridden, badly-educated neighborhoods in Northeast DC? I have. And as for corruption, all you have to do is visit Capitol Hill or the DC City Council to see that in action.
Every country has shit-hole areas, it is just that some countries do nothing to improve the other areas. What puzzles me is that a lot of these countries, ie Africa have in existance much longer than the USA. Central America is one shit-hole after another, and the people do nothing to change it other than try to come to this country. One experience stands out in my time in Haiti. I was flying in a US Medret team, Dr's and Dentist to a village about 50 miles north of the Porta Prince. From the air it looked like a typical little village, with a soccer field to land,but at a thousand feet we could smell the village. We landed and of course there was a crowd, adults and kids with Michael Jordon tshirts and shoes. Most spoke a bit of english, and we got the tour. The Dr's and Dentist set up and we took some of the UN escorts to inspect the village. The water source was contaminated, human feces in the streets, cows and pigs roaming the street. According to the village leaders we were the first people from outside the town they had seen in five years. The road leading to the town had washed out years ago along with the bridges needed to cross the rivers. Myself and the crew ended up helping pulling teeth for the dentists. We spent about 5 hours there. The strange thing is this was almost an identical experience to a couple I had in Honduras. Honduras is another subject with our beloved CIA and remains of the Peace Corp screwing things up for the locals.
ReplyDeleteI've long thought the Clintons should be forced to live in Haiti, amidst the devastation they claimed to be helping while they filled their pockets with cash.
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