Let me be clear about the president’s recent comment.  I do not think that calling a country a shithole is an inherently racist statement.  It represents a gross, unfair, and often incorrect generalization, to be sure, but you should be able to offer your opinions about certain countries without being immediately branded a racist.  What is demonstrably racist is asserting that the people of one nation are somehow inherently superior to and more desirable than the people of another nation.  Especially when this judgment is so clearly based on race.  And make no mistake, this is what our president said.  And this is why continuing to stand by him constitutes a tacit endorsement of his racist beliefs and racist behavior.

I’ve lived in the many of the countries that Trump deemed shitholes: Haiti, the Central African Republic, and Niger being the most prominent examples.  And I can testify that there are areas of these countries in which most people in the developed world would never want to live.  In Port au Prince, there were dangerous slums near the port (Cité Soleil, among others) where aid workers feared to tread.  There were rivers of trash and styrofoam containers in Carrefour and other parts of the city.  In the Central African Republic, where I lived during a civil war, there were rampant religiously-motivated killings and makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout the country.  In one of these IDP camps at which I briefly stayed, 90% of the children had malaria.  In Niger, the least developed country in the world (according to the Human Development Index), there were few if any paved roads and poverty in the rural areas was oppressive and endemic.

And yet each of these places also has inherent beauty, in addition to the resilience, spirit, and character of its people.  In Haiti, as in most other Caribbean islands, you have idyllic white sand beaches where fresh lobster was readily available.  I managed a team of 30 talented, hard-working, highly-intelligent Haitians who were working to rebuild their country after the 2010 earthquake.[1]  There was beauty in the landscape, and beauty in the people.  In CAR, despite our trying circumstances, I again worked with brave, determined people.  During a food distribution for IDPs that I set up, our security manager went to bargain with some local thugs who showed up to commandeer our supplies; he managed to get them to serve as our impromptu security force while we finished our distribution, in exchange for food at the end.  It was this kind of ingenuity that not only allowed the beneficiaries to receive their allotment of food, but our staff to remain unharmed.  Bangui, the capital, also boasted an island bar in the middle of the Ubangi River that overlooked the Democratic Republic of Congo, where you could share a cold beer with a few friends and watch the sunset over the horizon.  In Niger, I went for runs in the desert on the local hash, afforded the opportunity to run up and down giant sand dunes or following the winding turns of the Niger River.  The people in Niamey were infallibly friendly and kind.  When I returned to Niamey after a year away, the guys in the gym all remembered me by name and instantly welcomed me back.  Needless to say, I have never encountered such a warm reception in my gym in LA.

What binds these places together, and makes them simultaneously trying and resilient, is poverty.  Poverty makes a country desperate.  It forces its citizens to make difficult choices.  Like leaving or uprooting your family to seek opportunity elsewhere.  Poverty contributes to the fight for scarce resources that lead to conflict and war.  Which further strain a country and contribute to lack of development and poverty in a vicious cycle.  It undermines the education system and the chance for its citizens to improve themselves.  And it narrows their options.  If these people seek to immigrate to the United States, it is in search of these opportunities.  But it also makes people resourceful and resilient, qualities that our country would do well to embrace.

This sense of struggle is something about which our president knows nothing, having been bequeathed everything in life, including a racist worldview.[2]  He has never had to work to amass a fortune or get into a good school, he was simply given everything he desired.  And so he cannot understand the perspective of a Haitian immigrant, having come to the US after the earthquake, who works here to send money home to his or her family.  He sees them as leeches.  Or a Centrafricaine, fleeing violence, taking all of their possessions to board a bus to Cameroon, never having even visited that place.  He sees them as undesirable.  Or a rural Nigerien, who sees their way of life increasingly compromised as climate change wreaks havoc on the growing season and brings new pests, further impoverishing their community.  He sees them as lazy.

Poverty can make a country ugly.  It can prevent it from being able to clean up its messes.  Trash piles up in densely-populated areas.  People often can’t afford the basics of cleanliness and grooming.  It’s easy to see why wealth is attractive.  Money can buy superficial beauty.  If you see recent arrivals to a refugee camp, chances are they’re going to look dirty and disheveled and poor.  Because these people don’t have the luxury of bathing, cosmetics, or gym memberships.  When I’ve returned to China in recent years, I have to admit that the women seem more attractive to me.  And it’s not because they’ve changed, it’s because the standard of living has risen and with it the ability of the locals to afford better cosmetics and stylish haircuts and clothes.  So it is when we see poverty in other countries, both in the people and the landscapes.  People lack the money to take care of themselves.  Or to clean up despoiled areas of their major cities.  If you venture outside of these areas, however, you often encounter unimaginable, untouched beauty.  Or the kindness and generosity of the people.  But many, including our president, have never seen this side of Haiti, or CAR, or Niger.  They only see the poverty.  And poverty can be ugly.  And unattractive.  But so can small-mindedness and racism.

[1] The eight-year anniversary of which was yesterday—a fact not lost on Anderson Cooper, among others

[2] His racist father actively discriminated against black tenants in his buildings.