Seriously, Stop Saying “First World Problems”
There is a scene in the movie Lion where Nicole Kidman follows around the house a young boy she and her husband in Australia have just adopted from India. He pauses in front of the TV and she leans over him and sounds it out, “Tel-evis-ion. Do you know what a television is?”
It’s a bonkers thing to say. If not exactly racist, at least sheltered all the way up. Of course he knows what a television is. Teaching him the word in English is one thing, but to assume he’s never seen a TV because he is from India? It’s cringeworthy.
But I understand.
A lot of us that grew up in what we were taught was the “First World,” got the impression that there are those of us that have things and know how to use them, and then everyone else basically walks everywhere and is stuck wearing the championship Tshirts of whoever lost the Super Bowl. Things over there are just more simple. Even if where the line between first and third world is a mystery, well, you’ve seen movies. It’s like living in the past, or something.
Even as you grow up and learn that the world is not so simply divided between a first and third place finish, the instinct to…
