Small, but with no animal abuse (just a little furbashing)
Over on

tracyluvsya posts about a bad hotel experience with priceline.com. The fun begins when

xhappyx posts this:

what is 3 star by American standards is different in various countries. In parts of Africa that I have stayed, just the fact that the hotel has running water and a toilet makes it 3 stars! I have seen far worse and I am sorry you went through this but when booking a hotel room in a 3rd world country you really need to go 4-5 stars to be on the safe side.

People take this to mean that

xhappyx thinks Puerto Rico is a third world country and of course, people take issue with it.

xhappyx explains that they were referring to Africa, not Puerto Rico. That should be the end of it, right? Wrong!

First,

xhappyx tangles with

karinalightpaw:

kiranlightpaw: Puerto Rico is HARDLY a third world country, though. It's a territory of the United States.

xhappyx:You need to calm down. Did I say it was a 3rd world country? I mentioned my experience in Africa. Also, just because something is a territory doesn't make it have the same standards as the mainland USA.

But thanks for the geography lesson, I don't know how I ever survived traveling the world 10 times over without some furry pointing out the obvious.

Then,

xhappyx gets into it with

crazykimmy:

crazykimmy: Wow, you have a severe case of the moron.

Puerto Rico is hardly a third world "country", by any stretch of the imagination. It's an incredibly racist thing to think, and an even more offensive thing to say!

xhappyx: LOL at race card!

If you want to know where the term 3rd world came from

History Lesson

The term third world is a synonym for those nations that aligned themselves with neither the West nor with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War.

ZOMG!!!! not being aligned with neither the Soviet Bloc or the West is soooooooo racist!

crazykimmy: I'm glad you get all your learningz from stupid_free. It makes you look edumacated.

Just because a term began that way in 1952, does not mean that it's use has been exclusively with that meaning. It can also refer to the amount of human development in an area, and as an extension refer to the development of its infrastructure. Your original comment was not about whether or not, Puerto Rico is affiliated with Russia. You'sd be wrong on that score too. It was about the condition of the hotel being what someone should expect in a third world country--which sounds like you're saying it's underdeveloped. It is not by anyone's standards.

Since it is a Latino country, and has many people of the "brown people" extraction, one has to wonder if you assume all nations of a certain race are just underdeveloped. That would be racist. No card necessary.

xhappyx: I am still lolling at the fact that you are trying really hard to spin this in to a race issue.

Keep it up, and maybe I will get even more attention! I just love all the attention I am getting today.

P.S. my source was the oxford university press dictionary and also wikipedia.

Here is another bit of info for you:

The 2006 Puerto Rico budget crisis was a political, economic, and social crisis that saw much of the government of Puerto Rico shut down after it ran out of funds near the end of the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

Does knowing that Puerto Rico had to shut down from being poor make me racist too?

Please, no ~~fur~~Puerto Rico bashing.

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v_digitalwytch
2007-06-29 02:42 pm UTC (link)

If you've ever worked a call centre and in the fill the dead air chit chat it's asked where am I calling to, soon as New Mexico's mentioned they start:

Do you ride a horse to work?
Do you live in a tipi?
Your English is very good, you sound like a native speaker.
Do you have electricity/cars?

It's really like they think we stopped developing after the wild west days. The ones that really crack me up are from the region like Texas. They're the ones who usually think they're calling out of the country which depending on how much I can fit in when they're pausing mid-rant I do point out we're NEW Mexico, joined the states around the turn of the century and even fought in the Civil War where our side won.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bemysty 2007-06-29 02:51 pm UTC (link)
	Now you know what a European in the US feels like. Friend of mine came back from New York after a year and "How long does it take from your country to the US by car?" was one of the less ridiculous questions. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

bolboreta
2007-06-29 04:34 pm UTC (link)

Last year I met a girl from Puerto Rico who had been asked the same question when she visited Washington DC. That question didn't seem that bad when she started talking about how they'd asked if they lived in huts and wore loincloths there.

I tried to avoid any kind of question that required some form of geographical knowledge. I was too scared of finding people who think that Spain is somewhere in South America/Mexico. Just seeing all the Mexican food with names like "Spanish rice" was enough to know that it didn't make much of a difference to them.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	telophase 2007-06-29 03:22 pm UTC (link)
	You'd think that Texans would know better. I've had to explain to people that no, I didn't ride a horse to school and the only time I wore boots and a cowboy hat to class was our Western Day in 6th grade, for which I won 3rd prize for my costume. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	wolfsamurai 2007-06-29 05:28 pm UTC (link)
	I get the native speaker thing from time to time, both online and when I worked at T-Mobile's call center. Which is hilarious as I'm the whitest white guy ever and they'd never ask if they could see me in person. And don't get me started on Texans. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

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