"Refugees"

One of the sad lessons I've learned during the Katrina tragedy is that Americans regard the term "refugee" as a dirty word. Over the past week I've heard over and over again, "These people are not refugees, they are displaced American citizens."

According to my American Heritage Dictionary, a refugee is "one who flees in search of refuge, as in times of war". Replace "war" with "natural disaster", and it seems to me that this definition is aptly applied to people fleeing floodwaters. However, it turns out that in the ears of many Americans, the word "refugee" connotes lesser people, dirty people, Third World people who don't deserve human rights.

The Washington Post reports:

Tyrone McKnight sleeps in a shelter. His meals come from the kindness of strangers. It's safe to call him homeless, because his house is under water.

What he doesn't want you to call him, or the thousands of other New Orleans residents plucked from floodwater, is this word: refugees.

"The image I have in my mind is people in a Third World country, the babies in Africa that have all the flies and are starving to death," he says, while sitting outside Baton Rouge's convention center, where 5,000 displaced residents are being housed. "That's not me. I'm a law-abiding citizen who's working every day and paying taxes."

It saddens me to realize that even under these dire circumstances, dispossessed Americans feel compelled to establish a classist superiority over displaced citizens in the Third World — as though refugees in Africa or Asia are not law-abiding, don't work, don't pay taxes, and are undeserving of high-quality assistance and fair, dignified treatment.

No wonder the United States is the stingiest developed country in the world when it comes to foreign aid.

Frankly, this entire discussion strikes me as yet another example of American exceptionalism and nationalist prejudice. By insisting that Americans fleeing floodwaters are "evacuees" or "displaced citizens", while Palestinians fleeing foreign invasion and Sri Lankans fleeing tsunamis and Sudanese fleeing civil war are "refugees", American journalists, politicians, and citizens are establishing an international caste system for human rights.

So the next time I hear an American describe a Palestinian or Sri Lankan or Sudanese or other non-American as a "refugee", I'll know that what they're really saying: "Don't bother sending money to the Red Cross or OxFam; they're just refugees."