“Third World” is Racist Classist Propaganda
Originally published in my Facebook post April 23 2020.
You know what I think about people calling the US a "Third World" country?
I'm sad that they're bringing back the term "Third World".
Does no one see how classist and racist that term is? It's literally calling people "third class". Back in the day, trains had different carriages for different classes. Planes STILL have that system except we call it First, Business, and Coach. (Coach means "Third Class" for those of you who don't get it.) Black and brown people were made the poorest people so they were "Third Class" in the eyes of colonizers.
"Third Class" became "Third World".
"First World" meant the White capitalist countries. "Second World" meant Communist countries (called "Second" because they followed the ideology of White men, and were led by the Soviet Union, a White empire). "Third World" meant Black and Brown countries, the former colonies no longer ruled by White men.
Do you see what that means? It means that the capitalists considered even communists, who they hated, as a higher class than Black and Brown countries. That was their class system, worldwide, that they created during the Cold War.
People think they're using the term "Third World" to describe the US ironically (and maybe it is funny). But it won't be long before people are back to referring to Black and Brown countries as "Third World" countries. I can feel it coming.
The truth is that "First World" countries have NEVER been "First". They have always been THIEVES who stole the wealth of Black and brown peoples and used that stolen wealth to justify the continued oppression and extraction of those lands. There IS no wealth in Europe. That's why they came looking for my people in India. There IS no wealth in the colonial settler nation that is the USA. That's why they had to abduct and enslave and extract from innocent people in Africa and the First Nations and other Indigenous lands like India, to force them to make wealth for them. Everything that is in these "First World" countries has been extracted from Black and brown peoples and Indigenous peoples. There is no such thing as "First World" wealth.
The fact that so many are now joking about how coronavirus has shown that the US is a "Third World" country doesn't dismantle the class system. It deepens it.
And this from so-called progressives and socialists.
The US is a thieving settler colonial capitalist nation. Such a political ideology is always going to be poor and make others poor. This is how it has always been. This is how it will always be, until we are all wiped out from it.
The only way to stop this never-ending cycle of poverty is to dismantle this thieving settler colonial capitalist system.
#SmashThePatriarchy #SmashWhiteSupremacy #DefendMotherEarth #DismantleTheClassSystem