My dictonary defines refuge as a person seeking shelter from a war, persecution or natural diaster in a foreign country. I don't know how many times I've heard the news media, the government, anyone talking about the people having to leave the city of New Orleans to find shelter in another state or city as refuges. Last time I looked Houston was not a foreign country. Baton Rouge is not a foreign country. These people from New Orleans are still Americans. They are still from the United States. They are seeking shelter in a different city, a neighboring state, not a different country.
Calling these people refuges is a way to distance them from the rest of the country. Maybe it helps to make such people using these names that it couldn't happen to them. I don't know why, I think initially the use of the term was used as shorthand. I was in my car listening to the radio when I heard what might have been one of the first uses of the name. One of the reporters said that the people in the Superdome were like refuges from another country. After that I started hearing it more and more. Everything that happens has to has a name or title, so they can put a logo on it, make it an event. It's not enough that it happened, let's make it a mini series as it happens.
I think calling the people that are having to find shelter away from New Orleans refuges cheapens them, it makes them less than what they are. It's easier for someone sitting in the north, the west, somewhere else in this country where it's not happening to them to think of them as someone different, maybe not even from this country.
Let's call them what they are: Americans! Americans that need help, that have no home, but nonetheless still Americans.
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