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Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by JumpCrisscross on Monday January 15, 2018 @08:12PM (#16155016)
> You may think that "shithole" is too strong of a statement. But that description seems about right to me

It's a term that was recently applied, with almost comical precision, to countries that are predominantly black. It was applied in respect of the people from those countries, specifically immigrants, more specifically regarding their individual merit as potential Americans.

TL; DR When discussing race, particularly anything relating to black people or predominantly-black countries, it's probably best to use another word.

Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by wooter on Monday January 15, 2018 @08:29PM (#16155082)
as a minority immigrant from a shithole country, i find this opinion condescending and racist. please use whatever adjective you would use for any other race - i don't need my sensitive minority ears protected by an up-to-the-minute adjective whitelist, thanks.
Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by simplemath__ on Monday January 15, 2018 @08:49PM (#16155153)
your appeal to authority is naked
Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by dang on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:32PM (#16155843)
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by wooter on Monday January 15, 2018 @09:02PM (#16155207)
his fake offense on behalf of others is a faux pas. its a common term. we can't use "shit hole" because some people recently decided that was the case?
Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by dang on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:34PM (#16155858)
Would you please stop doing flamewars on Hacker News? It's against the guidelines and beyond tedious, and you've done a lot of it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by btilly on Monday January 15, 2018 @08:31PM (#16155087)
(Quickly hits Google.)

I'm not going to bother keeping up with every tweet from our cheeto-in-chief to keep track of things that might offend politically correct people this week. There is no limit to what can potentially offend others. There is a limit to how much of my attention that I wish to devote to the topic.

If that bothers you, perhaps you should reconsider what offends you. Because like it or not, "shithole" is an accurate description of Nigeria. It would not be a fair description of, say, Botswana.

Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by JumpCrisscross on Monday January 15, 2018 @09:33PM (#16155333)
> If that bothers you, perhaps you should reconsider what offends you. Because like it or not, "shithole" is an accurate description of Nigeria

I am neither telling you to stop using that word nor expressing offense. Language is complicated. Two words with similar definitions can mean vastly different things. Understanding that is part of communication.

You now know this term carries additional implied meaning. Ignoring that fact could be used to communicate a message. Similar to how some people selectively use the words "retarded" and "fag" loosely to communicate something meaningful. (Others are simply linguistically clumsy, or mean to communicate something hateful.) Depending on the circumstances, that may be what you want to communicate, completely unnecessary (thereby lowering your signal:noise ratio) or even debilitating to your argument. Knowing that implied information simply allows you to control that nuance.

Re:Bill and Melinda Gates Are Paying Off Nigeria's $76M Debt... by dang on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:33PM (#16155852)
We clearly can and clearly should do much better on HN than bicker about whether '"shithole" is an accurate description of Nigeria"'. This is embarrassing. Please don't feed it.

Same goes for everyone else in this subthread of course.