Nigerian author and artist Teju Cole (via xkimberlyx)

Also the implication that kids only starve or people are only homeless in Third World countries. Hello, that happens by the thousands in First World countries too, we’re not special.

(via goddessofcheese)

(I don’t like anyone saying “first world problems”, “white problems”, “girl problems”, etc. I feel like a lot people don’t really understand what they are implying when they say it. There is no such thing as first world problems, they are just problems.)

This quite succinctly summarizes my feelings about that phrase.

(via cctcd)

Food for thought. I had never considered this until now. I’m not going to say First World Problems anymore. I feel the same way about when people use the term “White Girl Problems”….are you saying that I don’t have those problems because I’m not white? I guess the same logic applies for First World Problems. 

(via thetumblrofdoriangray)

a lot of my resistance to the term is this [the OP’s point] plus a sense that some western people invoke it to affirm their denial about how much entire global environmental, economic and political systems are undergoing transition-collapse-power contestation stages atm.

it can be righteousness masking intellectual laziness and/or fearful denial, to persist with the notion that the world has only 2 types of people in it, who should prioritize invasion or iPads based entirely on their region, rather than their location within some extremely unstable political variables.

really? significant sections of ‘the west’ are in collapse: economic, civil, environmental, you name it. for white, fairly apathetic westerners who’re secretly terrified of this and choosing to scapegoat the hell out of migrants, rather than face why things are so unstable here, jokes and false solemnity about ‘1st world problems’ are a kind of intentionally shallow affirmation of their wish that these regional, racialised divisions remain ‘just the way things are’.