Term “Third World” Bad

The term “Third World” is bad, it puts the US as above other countries.
Marsha ‘09 (Marsha, “ARE WE STILL SAYING THAT? BECAUSE WE SHOULD STOP.” Socialogical Images,
October 26th 2009, http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/10/26/guest-post-are-we-still-saying-
that-because-we-should-stop/)

Implicit in these comparisons is the realization that the speakers

not only have no idea about the reality of life in the
so-called Third World, but further, don’t give a crap. They’re able to so flippantly refer to the poverty and
lack of opportunity in some of these nations because they’re comfortable – not with the actual state
of things, of which they have only a vague knowledge, or none – but with the fabled state of things .
Starvation, disease and war existing on such a scale for such a length of time need not be treated with any reverence or respect, one, because it
is completely removed from their lives and doesn’t affect them, and two, because some of the countries of the global South have, in the
estimation of these speakers, become horror stories in themselves, and thus have transitioned into some kind of mythical status. Except, we’re
not talking about centaurs and unicorns here. We’re
talking about real, live, accessible people’s lives, of which, if
someone can hit Enter on a keyboard, they can approach some basic understanding . Further, the term
Third World obscures all parts of a country’s culture apart from those which are to be pitied or
improved. By no great coincidence, so does the mainstream media. Back in March, I highlighted the efforts of Chioma and
Oluchi Ogwuegbu: two Nigerian sisters who had purposed to tell the story of the Africa behind all that media footage of distended bellies and
power-hungry rebels. It’s not that a discussion of the problems of developing nations is not needed. It is. But when you commit to
systematically representing a country solely as victims, you show only one part of who its people are , and
not the greatest part. Third World also implies homogeneity across all the countries that are meant to
comprise this class, one which simply does not exist economically, socially or politically . It suggests
that regardless of level of economic and social development, comparative advantages or system of
governance, they are all to be singularly treated always as less than. And the final issue I have with this term is
perhaps the most obvious: it suggests a hierarchy that in people’s minds is not neatly restricted to some
ranking of progress in development indicators, and certainly not to the historical allegiance of nations during the Cold War,
as its origins are claimed to be, but is attached to real people and by association, their ethnicities. It suggests that the US with its
White majority is innately better than, say, India, and encourages not an examination of global
inequality as a result of historical exploitation, but of the notion that these countries have less
because they are objectively worth less. And that was its intent. When Frenchman Alfred Sauvy coined the term half a century
ago, he was so inspired to do by the presence of the Third Estate in France, the commoners who, by virtue of their position, Sauvy thought
destined to be in an eternal state of revolution against the higher classes of the First and Second Estates. “Like the third estate,” he famously
wrote, “the Third World has nothing, and wants to be something.”

The term “Third World” is outdated and irrelevant

Namata ’10 (Berna Namata, “’Third World’ concept outdated – World Bank” New Times, April 15 th
2010, http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?i=14231&a=28086)

The World Bank has finally acknowledged what it should have done 60 years ago when it was founded;
that the term “Third World” was a wrong, and perhaps immoral, in reference to developing countries
in the world. For the first time in history, on Wednesday Robert B. Zoellick - the World Bank Group
president, has gone on record to dismiss the term “Third World” publically, stating that the global
economic crisis of 2009 and the rise of developing countries in the global economy, was the “death –
knell” of the old concept just as 1989 was for the “Second World” of Communism. “If 1989 saw the end
of the “Second World” with Communism’s demise , then 2009 saw the end of what was known as the
“Third World.” We are now in a new fast –evolving multipolar world economy,” Zoellick said yesterday
in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington ,D.C . While poverty
and fragile states remain, Zoellick observed that developing countries were growing to represent an
ever increasing share of the global economy. “The outdated categorizations of; First and Third Worlds;
donor and supplicant; leader and led, no longer fit”. He also noted that developing countries are also
providing an important source of demand from the recovery from the recent global crisis. “This was
not only occurring in China and India, but also in South East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
Africa could also one day become a pole of global growth,” he said. The term “Third World” arose
during the Cold War to define countries particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, Central and South
America, Africa, and Oceania, that were not aligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the
Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War.