Don’t want to live like a refugee
The Washington Post is one of several media outlets that have caved in to pressure and stopped referring to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina as “refugees.” The decision comes on the heels of accusations that the word is racist. While touring the Houston Astrodome on Monday, the REv. Jesse Jackson said, “It is racist to call American citizens refugees.” Members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus agree. Even President Bush has jumped on the bandwagon, saying on Tuesday, “The people we’re talking about are not refugees. They are Americans and they need the help and love and compassion of our fellow citizens.”
Huh? Let me get this straight. They’re not refugees, they’re Americans. Refugees, I guess, must come from Refugeekistan.
No, wait a minute. That’s not right. A refugee is one who takes refuge. Even Bob Dylan wrote about “refuge from the storm.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines a refugee as “one who flees in search of refuge.” Webster’s says it’s “an exile who flees for safety.” These don’t describe residents of New Orleans and other Gulf areas battered by the storm and subsequent flood waters? What’s the big deal here?
It could have something to do with the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, which describes a refugee as someone who has fled across an international border to escape violence or persecution. But doesn’t that refer to a political refugee? As opposed to a refugee from a national disaster?
I must be missing something. I was shocked when I first heard about this controversy. When I think of a Katrina refugee, I think of my friends Charles Pizzo and John Deveney, both of whom are white and affluent. Never did it cross my mind that the term referred to anything other than a group of people seeking refuge from the storm and its aftermath. But there are bigger issues at play here. In the midst of so much chaos, so much grief, so much need, why is anyone diverting our attention from the real world in order to address nouns? This specious debate reminds me of Joan Didion’s essay on the feminist movement in the 1960s, in which she argued that a focus on whether to call it a manhole cover or a personhole cover minimized the legitimate and serious issues on which the movement should have been focused.
There is no question that words have power, but “refugee” isn’t one of them. By any dictionary definition—and the perception of the word that most people share—it’s simply an accurate description of those who have fled for safety. For media outlets, national leaders, and congressmen to spend time anguishing over which word to use may indicate why response to the actual crisis has been so damned inadequate.
09/24/05 | 8 Comments | Don’t want to live like a refugee