Use of Word 'Refugee' Stirs Debate

[Jupseeloat]

most of them homeless some has some type of assistant already!

[frankb03]

most of them homeless some has some type of assistant already!

If they have living arrangements I can understand bumping them. They should not get bumped if they are homeless. That's not right.

[10DimeBry]

no one should get bumped just because someone else lost there home. All people should be equal and everyone deserves the chance to have a place to call home. That aint right

[Jupseeloat]

thats what i'm saying it just seems weird to me that the hurricane victims became first on the list and its coming from a good reliable source and it leaking all the news and radio and people are starting to get upset

[FastBreak]

REFUGEE- Eric Zorn

Eric Zorn
Chicago Tribune
------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, `refugee' is a severe word-- that's the point

September 6, 2005

It may seem trivial to debate fine points of language at a time like this, but some leaders are expressing anger at use of the word "refugees" to describe those who have been evacuated from ravaged Gulf Coast areas.

"It's an offensive term," NAACP President Bruce Gordon told reporters. "These people are fellow Americans. Using the word refugees makes it sound like they are not of us."

U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, a California Democrat, said last week, "`Refugee' calls up to mind people that come from different lands and have to be taken care of. These are American citizens."

Indeed they are. And I agree that it's worth discussing now, while the crisis is ongoing. Words shape our view of the situation and influence our response. But I don't agree that "refugee" is wrong.

The definitions in reference books say that "refugee" generally refers to those who have fled their native lands to escape persecution or oppression and is most often used to describe foreigners seeking aid and asylum.

Yet history also nods to those who use the term to describe Americans displaced domestically--the "Dust Bowl refugees" who migrated to California in the 1930s, for instance.

And the term is far more evocative than the other term favored in news reports--"evacuees."

"Evacuees" is too mild for this situation, too much like a word you'd use to describe a person relocated temporarily for his own safety during a brief period of uncertainty or disruption.

And "survivors," as suggested by others, has a "Whew! That's over!" connotation that's clearly inappropriate.

"Refugees" better keeps our eye on the ball; more starkly reminds us with each use that these afflicted citizens need long-term refuge and that their plight is now similar in many respects to those from other lands who have been forced to abandon nearly everything to survive. It's a proud word--my father and his family were refugees from Nazi Germany--and it should further inspire us to do right by these "internally displaced persons," the proper technical term.

UPDATE: See this blog posting for why I changed my mind on the above issue.

Time to get a gun?

Along with our powerlessness against nature and the fecklessness of the government's response to a crisis, a third frightening aspect to the tragedy of New Orleans has been the breakdown of civilization in the disaster zone that accompanied the snapping of the so-called thin blue line.

Among the questions it prompts in my mind is one that is old and unresolved: Should I own a firearm?

Thirteen years ago, when Los Angeles was up for grabs during the rioting that followed the acquittal of police officers charged in the Rodney King beating, the images of shopkeepers unprotected by police staving off looters with rifles knocked me off my comfortable anti-gun perch. Who wouldn't want a firearm under those circumstances? And who knows where such circumstances will occur next?

It's hard to bring this up again without sounding like one of those cackling vigilantes who would gladly shoot someone swiping a bicycle out of his carport, or one of those basement-bunker survivalists besotted by paranoia.

I resisted back in 1992 and still rely on 9-1-1 and a pitching wedge under the bed to protect my family. But the rapid descent from crisis to chaos to anarchy in New Orleans was another reminder that paranoia can come to look like prudence in hindsight.

Reading the returns

Roughly three-fourths of more than 3,500 voters in our unscientific online poll indicated last week that they'd rather we not spend the money to re-build the devastated, below-sea-level portions of New Orleans.

In the "comments" portions of my Web log, discussion of this issue has been passionate and generally constructive, so to speak. Few people seem to buy into the politicians' chesty declarations that taxpayers must fund a massive rebuilding of New Orleans on-site no matter the cost, or to my blunt view that where the neighborhoods are a total loss, we ought to give the land back to nature and start again on higher ground.

If the policy drift follows public opinion, it will be toward compromise between sentiment and sediment.

[frankb03]

Of course NAACP President Bruce Gordon would consider REFUGEE on offensive term.

Of course U.S. Rep. Diane Watson would consider REFUGEE on offensive term.

What's the common denominator?