A couple emails from the ADS-L mailing list
Geoff Nunberg has recorded an NPR segment on the controversy, which seems to promise to be quite good:
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 22:27:46 -0700
Sender: American Dialect Society Mailing List
From: Geoffrey Nunberg
Subject: Re: refugee, IDP, evacuee
I just did a "Fresh Air" piece on these words, which will air tomorrow (a version will run in the San Jose Mercury and some other Knight Ridder papers on Sunday). One relevant point is that the press seems to be using 'refugee' more often in reference to black and poor people.
In Nexis wire service articles mentioning Katrina over the past week, records containing 'evacuee' outnumber those containing 'refugee' by 56% to 44% (n=1522). But in contexts in which the words appear within 10 words of 'poor' or 'black', 'refugee' is favored by 68% to 32% (n=85). In contexts in which the words appear within ten words of 'Astrodome', 'refugee' is favored by 63% to 37% (n=461). There are no doubt various reasons for these disparities, but there's clearly a basis for the impression that the words are being used in a selective way.
Geoff
Jonathan Lighter also sums up the issue pretty well over at ADS-L:
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 08:09:05 -0700
Sender: American Dialect Society Mailing List <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jonathan Lighter <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: refugee, IDP, evacuee
Apparently the tide of current opinion is that "we" (whoever that is) need to *narrow* the definition. "Americans," some say, "are too good to be called refugees, unless perhaps they've been kicked out of the U.S.A. to seek refuge in another country."
The objectors, who are now on their way to sweeping all before them, assert quite vocally that "refugee" means, meant, and always must mean one single thing--even if it has demonstrably not meant that "one single thing" in over two and a half centuries. The essentialist fallacy with a vengeance.
This is what happens to people who don't know a thing about how languages work, and we've see it again and again.
But here comes the unconscious racist twist, which betrays an utter disregard for nonlinguistic history as well, the fantastic notion that the imaginary essential meaning of "refugee" must be "a *dark-skinned* person from one country seeking refuge in another, esp. the United States."
And the added, even more racist fantasy that, by said imaginary essential definition, such persons are somehow inferior, contemptible, etc., by nature.
Just how tangled this chain of casuistry is is shown by the fact that those who espouse it think they're *opposing* racism. They seem to be getting their inspired information on usage from one of the Muses, undoubtedly transmitting from a mental hospital on Mt. Ida.
Their strident objections both demonstrate and encourage ignorance of how American policy has accepted foreign refugees since before the end of World War II. That's why they keep coming. It is deeply troubling to me as an educator to see political figures of various stripes willfully disregarding well known history and trying, from afflatus alone, to convince the public that journalists and most everybody else use the word "refugee" in a way appropriate only to the most bigoted idiots among us.
The entire uproar will fade away, but at least one principle of Newspeak will have scored a memorable victory.
JL
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 22:27:46 -0700
Sender: American Dialect Society Mailing List
From: Geoffrey Nunberg
Subject: Re: refugee, IDP, evacuee
I just did a "Fresh Air" piece on these words, which will air tomorrow (a version will run in the San Jose Mercury and some other Knight Ridder papers on Sunday). One relevant point is that the press seems to be using 'refugee' more often in reference to black and poor people.
In Nexis wire service articles mentioning Katrina over the past week, records containing 'evacuee' outnumber those containing 'refugee' by 56% to 44% (n=1522). But in contexts in which the words appear within 10 words of 'poor' or 'black', 'refugee' is favored by 68% to 32% (n=85). In contexts in which the words appear within ten words of 'Astrodome', 'refugee' is favored by 63% to 37% (n=461). There are no doubt various reasons for these disparities, but there's clearly a basis for the impression that the words are being used in a selective way.
Geoff
Jonathan Lighter also sums up the issue pretty well over at ADS-L:
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 08:09:05 -0700
Sender: American Dialect Society Mailing List <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jonathan Lighter <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: refugee, IDP, evacuee
Apparently the tide of current opinion is that "we" (whoever that is) need to *narrow* the definition. "Americans," some say, "are too good to be called refugees, unless perhaps they've been kicked out of the U.S.A. to seek refuge in another country."
The objectors, who are now on their way to sweeping all before them, assert quite vocally that "refugee" means, meant, and always must mean one single thing--even if it has demonstrably not meant that "one single thing" in over two and a half centuries. The essentialist fallacy with a vengeance.
This is what happens to people who don't know a thing about how languages work, and we've see it again and again.
But here comes the unconscious racist twist, which betrays an utter disregard for nonlinguistic history as well, the fantastic notion that the imaginary essential meaning of "refugee" must be "a *dark-skinned* person from one country seeking refuge in another, esp. the United States."
And the added, even more racist fantasy that, by said imaginary essential definition, such persons are somehow inferior, contemptible, etc., by nature.
Just how tangled this chain of casuistry is is shown by the fact that those who espouse it think they're *opposing* racism. They seem to be getting their inspired information on usage from one of the Muses, undoubtedly transmitting from a mental hospital on Mt. Ida.
Their strident objections both demonstrate and encourage ignorance of how American policy has accepted foreign refugees since before the end of World War II. That's why they keep coming. It is deeply troubling to me as an educator to see political figures of various stripes willfully disregarding well known history and trying, from afflatus alone, to convince the public that journalists and most everybody else use the word "refugee" in a way appropriate only to the most bigoted idiots among us.
The entire uproar will fade away, but at least one principle of Newspeak will have scored a memorable victory.
JL