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Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

According to https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept... Nigeria is tied for 136th worst corruption in the world, out of 176 countries. Worldwide, Nigeria is the poster boy for scams. Google "nigerian 419 scammer" for an example. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... the per capita income of Nigeria is < $6k per person, placing it at 127/187 worldwide with under 40% of the global average. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... the 2015 WHO estimate placed Nigeria with a life expectancy of 54.5, which placed it at 177 out of 183 countries.

You may think that "shithole" is too strong of a statement. But that description seems about right to me. What is average for Nigeria would qualify as a horrible slum in most countries.

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> 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.

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.

your appeal to authority is naked

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 hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

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

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?

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

(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.

> 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.

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.

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