When someone says "oh I really like to visit India but I am really scared to go to a third-world country" I feel like throwing stuff at them or something. I think it is derogatory to call a country "thrid-world"- it means we are much below the industrialized giants such as USA, UK and some of their other western counterparts. But my inquisitveness begged for more answers and so I did some digging- when was this term first used? Why? and what does it mean now? It turns out that the term itself was coined by a French demographer Alfred Sauvy (it was "tiers monde"), what it meant was an ignorant, exploited third world wants to be something. Later it became synonymous with "underdeveloped" but for people like you and me, who do not understand much of economic divides- it became synonymous with more than just economy. People here in the first world nations found it unimaginable that someone could actually live in such countries (this was back in the 50s and 60s). ** At some point though the term probably became derogatory because of its connotation- it comes to mean "oh I am superior to you, you guys are just are just so far behind you will never catch up to me" (this no one knows and I could not find it on the world wide web people!!). That is what is annoying, its ok if you are ignorant and use it, but people from a "developing country" calling it a "third world" is simply hurting because they are fully aware of its derogatory aspect!!
Come on people, we are trying to be something- to do that we need to be cohesive, smart and help the folks out who want to do something. So next time you think about "tiers monde" imagine stuff being thrown at you!
** it is just my point of view!
1 comment:
Third world, uh? I have given up fighting with ppl who look down upon developing countries with a supercilious attitude. I jus smile at them now... 'stupid people'
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