[Ads-l] Shoulda seen it coming....

Mon Jan 22 05:46:02 UTC 2018

Well, "s-hole" is generally understood to mean something like, "an undesirable place," for some undefined negative reason.  The most "sinister" of the possible meanings that have been bandied about in the press the most often is the suggestion that the expression necessarily suggests that Trump is  a racist, presumably thinking that people from those countries are terrible because they are mostly non-white.

I first remember hearing the word "s-hole" in the film Apocalyps Now, when Captain Willard discusses his river boat crew.  "Mr. Clean" (a very young Laurence Fishburne) is said to come from "some South Bronx s-hole."  The South Bronx of the early or mid-1970s when the film took place was widely depicted as having high levels of poverty, crime and violence, so "s-hole" seemed believable.  I don't remember any widespread outcry that the film was somehow racist for describing the South Bronx as an s-hole.  While I am sure that many of the people lived there might have disagreed, there was in fact levels of poverty and crime there that made outsiders see it as the kind of a place one might call an s-hole.

There is certainly a less sinister reading of Trump's words, if that is what he said.  A likely, plausible meaning is that those countries are poor places with lots of political and social problems, and why would we want to import so many people from those countries, along with whatever problems they bring with them from those poor, politically unstable or violent places.

We can have a political debate about how many we want to accept, or whether we should take more precisely because they are s-holes, but it is hard to argue that those places are not very nice places - s-holes, perhaps - by many objective standards.  It may be true that the majority of people in those countries are non-white, but they do have political, social and economic situations that make them seem like undesirable places to go, at least from the perspective who live in economically, socially and politically more stable places.

Even if we accept the Washington Post's version of the statement, "all of these people," it does not necessarily refer to each and every person from those countries.  He could reasonably be understood as speaking about the volume of immigrants permitted entry from those countries as compared to other countries.  I know that I sometimes use "all" in this way as well, and I know that many (if not most) people frequently do as well.  "All that" - can mean - "as much as that" - and not necessarily "each and every portion of all of that."

It is also my understanding that they were specifically referring to an extention of TPS (Temporary Protected status) protection to people from certain countries, not every majority non-white country in the world.  Ironically, perhaps, the reason that people from those countries were awarded TPS protection in the first place is that those places were considered "s-holes".

He spoke (purportedly) about Haiti, El Salvador, and certain unnamed African countries (not every country on the continent). There are at least three African countries currently benefitting from TPS - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

El Salvador is the home of MS-13 and currently suffers from widespread gang violence and has a history of violent political unrest and civil war.

Haiti is generally considered the poorest country in the Americas, and has a history of political corruption.

If the certain "African countries" referred to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Sierre Leone had an 11 year civil war in with attrocities and child soldiers.  Yellow fever, malaria and ebola are serious problems there.

Guinea has been the subject of fraud and corruption charges related to mining rights by US, British and French law enforcement.  Guinea had a military coup in 2009 and hundreds of people were injured and killed in protests related to an election a few years ago.  The two major parties run along tribal loyalties.  It is very poor.

Liberia has a long history of corruption, is very poor, and had a civil war that ended in 2003.

I'm not the kind of person that refers to places as "s-holes," but I know how s-hole is frequently used by people who speak that way, and can see how the several countries at issue might objectively be seen as "s-holes" by outsiders from more stable, economically advanced societies and without a personal or nostalgic connection to those countries might view them as "s-holes," in the way that others use the similarly problematic word "deplorable" to refer to people of an opposing political view.

I haven't been to any of those countries, but I have been to nice country in Central America that wasn't a s-hole, nice countries in the Carribean that weren't s-holes, and a country in West Africa not far from Guinea which, although it is considered a stable democracy with religious tolerance and a relatively prosperous country for the region, might reasonably be called a s-hole by someone used to a different kind of lifestyle.  The one time I visited West African (as a small cog in a diplomatic mission while I was on active duty in the military) was the only time I have ever seen a young man squatting and taking a dump next to a dead goat on a beach in the middle of a large, capital city, and with no one blinking an eye at it or really taking any notice of it.  The rural communities seemed well kept and the people happy, if poor by our standards, and the city was vibrant, crowded, hot and the wealthy people and diplomats lived behind big walls with armed private guards to keep the riff-raff away.  Was it an s-hole?  I wouldn't call it that, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people visiting might see it that way.  And it was, by all accounts, much nicer than any of the countries Trump is said to have dissed.

You be the judge on whether that is less sinister or not.  It is at least not necessarily "racist", which was the primary accusation making the rounds last week.

________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2018 5:09 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Shoulda seen it coming....

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Subject:      Re: Shoulda seen it coming....
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Peter Reitan, can you find any plausible "less sinister meaning" here?
especially taking into account  John Baker's observation?

Mark

On Jan 18, 2018 1:30 PM, "Peter Reitan" <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> The "implausible spin" is frequently made in response to a basic feature
> of "the Resistance," namely, interpreting and reporting every Trumpian
> ambiguity only in light of the worst of all possible meanings, without
> giving honest or fair consideration to the possibility (and in many cases=
,
> the clear likelihood) that the intended meaning was something less sinist=
er.
>
> The truth generally lies somewhere in the middle.
>

________________________________

From: Baker, John JBAKER at stradley.com
Date: Jan 18, 2018, 10:32 AM

It=E2=80=99s important to remember that Trump did not just characterize Hai=
ti, El
Salvador, and African countries as =E2=80=9Cshithole=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9Cs=
hithouse=E2=80=9D countries.
Either term is offensive to those countries, but by itself it can be
understood as just a crude way of saying that the countries are poor places
where it is unpleasant to live. But what Trump actually said, according to
the Washington Post, was =E2=80=9CWhy are we having all these people from s=
hithole
countries come here?=E2=80=9D In other words, he asserted that people are
inherently undesirable simply because they come from those countries. There
is no sugar-coating that sentiment, even if he had said =E2=80=9CWhy are we=
 having
all these people from countries without plumbing come here?=E2=80=9D

John Baker

>

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