> countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist

Then how do you explain those reactions? [1] "I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but racist".

GP is totally right, nowadays any remote criticism -- and I'm speaking of the factual ones, not the injurious kind mentioned before -- of a foreign country (except China, Russia and NK for some reason) by white people is labeled racist. And of course, people of color are allowed to speak anything they want against European countries, and spread hate speech mostly without any issue (granted one rapper is condamned from time to time... for instance Nick Conrad after singing "hang the whites" [2]).

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/politics/trump-shithole-c...

[2] https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/ces-rappeurs-qui-defr...

A bit of context,

> "I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but racist," Colville said, responding to reporters at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland. "You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes' whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome."

You missed that second part.

Looks like they’re talking about dismissing the people of those countries just because they are from, what they consider, a ‘shithole’ country/continent.

I did not specify who was conflating/mixing-up these distinct topics, or for what purpose. Racists often conflate countries/governments/populations, which is what Trump did with his "shithole countries" comments. He was referring to the people of those countries, i.e. the pool which immigrants would be members of (or, in his delusional mind, "sent by").

Note that if a country itself were a 'shithole', say for example a war-torn region like Yemen or Syria, that would only help the case for immigrants from that country; since the place they're fleeing is so bad.

> GP is totally right, nowadays any remote criticism -- and I'm speaking of the factual ones, not the injurious kind mentioned before -- of a foreign country (except China, Russia and NK for some reason) by white people is labeled racist.

Citations and examples please (also for the China/Russia/NK criticism; I suspect you're also conflating criticism-of-government/people with criticism-of-country)

> And of course, people of color are allowed to speak anything they want against European countries

What complete and utter total bollocks. Have you never encountered the thought-terminating cliche of "if you don't like it then leave", or its more overtly-racist cousin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_back_to_where_you_came_from ?

> and spread hate speech mostly without any issue

I find this use of the word "mostly" to be mostly questionable.

> Countries are not people, so criticism of a country cannot be racist (it's a category error).

Technically true, but practically useless. What is a country other than a group of people? Almost all criticism of a country will inevitably be about people in it or their actions - with very few exceptions (ex. complaints about the geography, weather, etc).

It’s far from useless and even a cursory review will find many examples of criticism which says things about the people of a country being mislead, poorly served, etc. which is different from racist claims that they are innately disposed to be that way. The key part is acknowledging the fundamental humanity of the people you’re talking about – they may make choices we dislike but that’s a decision, not genetics.

For example, I grew up in California and heard a lot about Mexico’s problems — some people would repeat racist claims about Mexicans being lazy (despite them universally hiring undocumented workers for cheap labor) or dishonest, but others would correctly identify problems like corruption being due to things like the huge amounts of money from the U.S. drug trade ensuring that cartels regularly killed off non-corrupt officials, where the system didn’t work well for most people who didn’t have a choice and everyone involved having acting on the options available to them rather than some innate determinism or moral weakness.

> What is a country other than a group of people?

Which group of people? The population? The government? These can be very different (just ask Myanmar)