I was watching some YouTube videos about the housing crisis in Detroit and I noticed a recurring theme among commentators that the situation there resembled that of a third world country. I have spent some time in third world countries, and I think that the comparison could not be further off. While third world countries are poor and people there often appear to be living in squalor, their villages and neighborhoods tend to be vital and teeming with activity. In my Uzbek village where I first stayed, other than the main street, the rest of the roads were dirt. Chicken and cows were more or less everywhere, and many of the homes were quite crude. Nevertheless, there was a feeling that the little village was a place where people lived and transacted the business of daily life. The images out of Detroit (which are strikingly similar to many areas of New Orleans,) lack this vitality of place.

Americans’ bandying of the term “third world” is most often done so from a place of ignorance. My issue is primarily semantic; though the term may no longer be politically correct, I am particularly bothered by the meaning that it is meant to convey. Third world is shorthand for: abandonment, neglect, blight, danger and decay. While each of these conditions may apply to certain third world communities, they by no means define the totality of circumstances of life in such places. Third world communities are often developing, and more often than not, the people who live there take great pride in their communities; one doesn’t need a green lawn in front of a McMansion to convey pride of place.

While the third world is developing, Detroit, and many other areas in this country, are regressing. This regression is painful and shocking; formerly middle class neighborhoods reduced to blighted ghettos does not make a pretty picture. But let’s quit with the presumptuous fiction that our society’s failures resemble those of the third world. The conditions that we have created are distinct and must be analyzed in context. Racial tensions, economics, education, drugs, cultural values… these are our fault lines. Let’s be outraged at what’s happened and let’s be motivated to do something about it. But let’s also be honest about that fact that our problem is distinctly American, and as one video ominously noted in closing, “coming to a city near you!”