It amazes me that we talk about wanting to live in a world where we all are treated as equals regardless of race, color, sex, age, sexuality and many other thing, but we keep using terms that do nothing but remind us of our difference and divide us.
Over the past 20 years or so, I have heard this term “Third World” being used. I have found this term to be very racist, classist and not of any help in creating a world that we are all equals. I often ask people who use the term as to where these other worlds are that are supporting human life, as I don't recall NASA or any other space agency having passenger services to these places.
I wish that people would really think about the term and how much it is against the dream of Rev. Dr. Marting Luther King, Jr. and other great leaders pass and present. What makes our society much better than others? “But the term is about Industrialized and non- industrialized nations and places…,” I can hear people saying. Interesting. Could someone please explain to me then how a “world” that is destroying the planet, fighting wars, and so forth is better than a “world” that is living and using the resources that it really needs to survive with very little impact on the planet?
The first time that I heard this term used, it was used against me by someone who was an outright racist. I think that she thought that it would be OK for her to use that term, because if she used “nigger” she would of found herself in deep trouble. Now I really wouldn't of said anything if she went the other way, because I knew that the other Blacks that were around would beat the crap out of her. She did get cussed out by them for what she said by them, but it would have been worse for her if she had gone the other way.
A few years later, I heard the term being used on television. I found this troubling, and I began to think. Why would people use should a offensive word? What makes us better than someone else because of what our country has? Are other places feeling as though they have been insulted because of this term? I had so many questions running through my mind about this, and I knew that if I were to ask people what they meant by the term, and my feelings as to the term, they wouldn't stop.
Will we ever come to a point where we don't see each other as a color, but only a race, where that race will be the Human Race? Until the time in which we all just look and think of this as One World, I don't think that we can truly come together to honor and respect the planet that we live on.