Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock
Monday, Oct. 2, 2005: Refugee, evacuee, ban, persecute.
Who could object — well, I couldn’t — when Oprah Winfrey in the second week after Hurricane Katrina pronounced from New Orleans that people who made it through the devastation “survivors”? It’s uplifting, optimistic, triumphant and, well, true.
But essentially all of those folks also are refugees. And in the first two weeks after Katrina, civil rights leaders called “refugee” inaccurate at the least and racist at worst. That’s understandable, though I disagree.
But in the weeks since (it’s been a month since that storm (and two weeks since Rita slapped the Gulf Coast up a bit more)) amateur spinners have stepped to the plate.
Let’s not go to the dictionary as our defense. Instead casually recall this common word, refugee. If you have to leave your home, hometown, homeland and be gone for a long period, you’re a refugee. Period. It’s not hard. True, the word is often used in connection with “persecution” (though, interestingly, never when some evangelical Christians write or say on TV that their United States, or just its legal system, is persecuting them). Still you’re a refugee when you’re forced from home.
If that leaving entails being rescued from your home, you’ve just been evacuated, brother, making you an evacuee, sister.
That’s it.
A letter to the editor my paper ran Sept. 29 states, “The people of New Orleans are not refugees and should not be referred to as such. Refugee: One who flees; especially a person who flees to a foreign country or a power to escape danger or persecution. …”
So where’ s the disagreement? There’ve been several letters a week like this. There’s another one that day, reading in part, “If you or your staff would look up the work “refugee,” you would find that this word does not fit these Americans.” He does not define it, but instead notes that the national media has stopped using the word and thus so should the Democrat-Gazette. I think the newspaper is embarrassing him by being accurate. And this, when the word is not pejorative but merely descriptive.
We have a problem with education when there’s an evident need to go back and teach adults how to read the dictionary. To wit, main definition then secondary definitions, separated with punctuation. Even in this lady’s breathless reading, the key word for this circumstance of natural disaster is “danger.”
What’s the meaning of the word “whitewash” ? Now there’s a descriptive that is iced with malice. Is it always slopped on with such a broad, dripping brush, Mr. Twain? -30-
