ADP Online Discusson 2005-06 What they are saying

The Making of an American "Refugee"

by Jason Turner UTM Student

I grew up hearing the term "refugee" and had its image reinforced to me, in the media, as a group of people seeking refuge from an unfair regime’s persecution, war, or political unrest. I would see groups of people, all their belongings and family in tow, always on foot, trying to cross over into another country to save themselves from something. These were not Americans. They seemed not only from another country but from almost another dimension to me at the time. Then, out of nowhere, due to the cataclysmic events of the last few weeks in New Orleans, suddenly Americans were being called "refugees."

What qualifies "refugee" status? Writer and linguist Geoffrey Nunberg stated in a recent article for NPR "You could argue that there's some precedent for using the word in situations like this one. Woody Guthrie used it in his famous song "Dust Bowl Refugee," when a combination of natural disaster and government inaction led to another massive displacement of poor people in America." First there were obviously displaced, poor Americans, displaced so because of a natural disaster. This is without question. The thing that stings is the part about "government inaction." Were they "refugees?" How can an American become a "refugee?"
President Bush defended their status in the speech he gave on Jackson Square in New Orleans, "The people we're talking about are not refugees," he said. "They are Americans, and they need the help and love and compassion of our fellow citizens." The need did not ever seem to be in question but simply how soon they needed this "love and compassion." Is "love and compassion" withheld "love and compassion" at all? How long did the "refugees" of New Orleans have to languish in filth, disease, starvation, and death before help, the kind of help necessary, arrived to their aid?

The president also went on to point out "as all of us saw on television, there's also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America." Did we just magically realize, due to Hurricane Katrina, that New Orleans was ravaged by poverty? No one could have expected or prepared for an event of this magnitude. And you cannot blame just one person, organization, or system. Yet the lackluster response witnessed by the nation seemed to fit the accusation lauded at the Bush White House that poverty and race did play a part in the timely or untimely response seen by the hapless and neglected citizens of New Orleans. Intentional or not this has reinforced an already held view that the poorer you are the less access you have to the services you need, thus the less "love and compassion" you receive. There has been damage other than structural done by this disaster, damage that will most likely take longer to approach and address than the actual re-building of New Orleans itself.

The rough and rocky we are left with is this: are they now (the displaced citizens of New Orleans) or were they ever truly "refugees?" What I saw on television, the images at the Super Dome, the thousands in wet and filthy, huddled masses, and the innocent, orphaned children, could have been a third world country if I had not known better, known this was my own country where we take care of our own. And why did they appear so much like the "refugees" I had grown up seeing on the evening news? Were they displaced? Obviously they were. Were they poor? Obviously they were. Was their government inaction? Obviously, because, sadly, for one of the few times in our great land we have had refugees, not at our boarder seeking refuge, as so often is the case, but refugees from within who were receiving aid from another government, not their own, because their own had responded poorly. Is this the war on poverty that was begun years ago?