"refugee" a bad word

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 11:27:31 -0400, Michael McKernan wrote:

>Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>CNN just presented a member of Congress who said, approximately:
>>
>>"The media must stop referring to 'refugees.' They are not refugees.
>>They are American citizens. To refer to them as refugees is to place
>>them in an entirely different status."
[...]
>
>I just heard this same sentiment last night, from my next door neighbor.
>Realizing that he'd spend several years in Thailand teaching English at
>refugee camps, I guessed that his reaction was based on the feeling that
>'refugees' were international.  This turned out to be correct, and his
>wife, feeling likewise, added 'and fleeing political persecution' or
>something similar.
>
>When I suggested that 'refugee' could mean a person in need of refuge
>from any kind of peril, they became much more accepting of the term.
>
>It seems that for some people intra-national usage of 'refugee' is
>questioned; in additional, non-political usage may be questioned.  But
>this doesn't necessarily mean a value judgement concerning their
'status'
>in a hierarchy.
>
>OTOH, I am not surprised to hear that some people may have a negative
>impression of 'refugee' status.  In all cases, reluctance to use this
>term in connection with Katrina evacuees who are USA citizens appears to
>be based on a perception that the term has meaning only in connection
>with international matters and foreigners.
>
>My neighbors also suggested that awful NGO jargon, 'internally-displaced
>person' (which I suppose could mean someone with a hiatal hernia...).

Aaron Brown of CNN mused about "refugees" on Wednesday's broadcast...

-----
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0508/31/asb.02.html
Thank you for your work tonight, Sean Callebs who is awaiting the arrival
of the people -- refugees is such an uncomfortable word to use. For some
reason, when you talk about other countries, other places and use the word
"refugees" it doesn't sound quite so awkward or uncomfortable. When you
talk about refugees of an American city, but that's in fact what they are,
and they're going to be bused, that's about a 12 hour ride or so,
depending on conditions from New Orleans to Houston and while they won't
be there forever, certainly they're going to be there for sometime until
somebody can figure out where they're going to live.
-----

In any case, there seems to be a journalistic distinction in usage between
"refugees" and "evacuees": "refugees from Hurricane Katrina" vs. "evacuees
from New Orleans".


--Ben Zimmer