Are They Refugees? 3

Christopher Rabb of Afro-Netizen objected to referring to the victims of Katrina as “refugees” and seems to have started a little tempest in a teapot. Here’s part of his first post on the topic:

Hurricane Katrina victims are Americans!

I don’t recall the media referring to Hurricane Andrew victims in ’92 as refugees. Do you? (Follow the link above to read more.)

So much so that he today published a follow-up post, in which he said, in part,

Both “refugees” and “you people” — or “the blacks”, for that matter — are clear and straight-forward terms and expressions.

So, for those of you who are part of the torrent of the readers who have lambasted me recently about criticizing the media’s use of the word “refugees” to describe the largely Black Americans who’ve been hit by Hurricane Katrina, I welcome you to start a conversation with a group of Black people with “you people” or “the blacks” and tell me if you feel connotations are not as valid as technical denotations.

So I went to the source, Merriam-Webster’s, and found this:

Main Entry: ref·u·gee
Pronunciation: “re-fyu-‘jE, ‘re-fyu-”
Function: noun
Etymology: French réfugié, past participle of (se) réfugier to take refuge, from Latin refugium
: one that flees; especially : a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution
– ref·u·gee·ism /-“i-z&m/ noun

It is quite clear from the definition of the word that Mr. Rabb is on to something. The word refugee definitely has a connotation, if not a denotation, of “otherness.”

Geoff Nunberg had a interesting take on this on today’s Fresh Air.

I posted in another forum (alt.aol.tricks) the following comment:

Rather, I think that there are persons in this country (indeed, in any country) for whom the poor and the disenfranchised and the minorities simple do not exist. They don’t see them at all. So they become definitely not a factor in any policy decision.

Stripped of its facade, evil is truly pedestrian and banal.

The people who were incapable of leaving New Orleans because they did not have vehicles were not on anyone’s radar. Public transportation out of New Orleans shut down well before the storm. And folks were left to fend for themselves.

And now the federal administration is blaming the victims.

Now, I’m a Southern boy. I grew up under Jim Crow and went to segregated schools, white schools. It seemed normal to me because that was all I knew until the 1960s. I know now it was not normal–that, in fact, it was part of the great evil underside to our history.

And I also know bigotry when I see it. And the worst bigotry is when bigotry becomes so normal that no one sees it when it is there.