Things are going swimmingly for the refugees from New Orleans. So says President Bush's mother.
Former First Lady Barbara Bush told NPR's Marketplace show, "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston. What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."
Ok, so it sounds like she's just praising Texan hospitality. So what's the big deal?
Then Mom Bush added, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."
It's one thing to praise Texan hospitality, to praise the efforts of the Red Cross and other relief agencies. It's one thing to say everyone's doing the best they can taking care of these people. But 'working very well for them'???
And what's the deal with a chuckle in that context? I guess I don't find much hilarious about the situation.
Is she trying to be offensive and insensitive or is she just clueless?
When I lived in Africa, I actually had friends and acquaintances who were or had been refugees*. They were pretty much all underpriveleged before becoming refugees.
(*-under international law, the New Orleans' evacuees are technically called 'internally displaced people' [IDPs]. The legal difference between IDPs and refugees is that refugees are those people who are outside their own country. I call them 'refugees' to underline the third world-esque governmental response to the crisis, especially initially)
Yet even when they were living in camps where everything was taken care for them by aid agencies, I don't know a single one who preferred being a refugee. I don't know a single one who preferred being dependent on handouts. I don't know a single one who preferred living hundreds of miles away from their homes. They may have accepted it as necessary but I don't know a single one who would've said that things were "working very well for them."
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