There's been a lot of fuss over the use of the word "refugee" as applied to victims of Hurricane Katrina that have lost their homes and have to go live somewhere else, perhaps in the Astrodome.
The fuss bugged me more than the word itself, but I had trouble articulating why.
A major metropolitan area - and that's not even including the small towns and cities strewn across the rest of the affected area - has not simply been damaged, but destroyed. One hundred billion dollars' damage so far. Months of uninhabitability. Years to decades of reconstruction if it even happens. Thousands killed, thousands injured, and one point five million people - half a percent of the American population! - made homeless and strewn to the four winds and most of the continental United States, generally with naught but their lives and a few meagre possessions.
Generally speaking, if this happened to a population anywhere else in the world, we (and the people Howling in Outrage right now) would call them "refugees" without a second thought. There's a reason for that, and it's a simple reason: they are refugees.
"Anywhere else in the world." That's the key here.
The main reason a lot of people are complaining about the word "refugee" isn't because it's dehumanizing, or too generous, or a matter of colour, or whatever. It's because they believe Americans can't be refugees, because that's a term which applies to "other people" instead.
By the way, I'm really enjoying Melissa Etheridge's cover of Tom
Petty and the Heartbreakers "Refugee." Covers can be dicey, the
original was so good, and she can be a little over the top... but
somehow, all the elements in this song just work for me. It sounds
particularly poignant in the wake of everything that's happened.
