Children or Trash? A Note on Political Language

We all know language is used to serve political agendas. The pro-choice fetus is the pro-life child; one side's background check is another's gun grab, etc. I came across a particularly jarring example of this while reading up on a 2014 effort by St. Paul's College, a defunct historically black school in Lawrenceville, Va., to house illegal immigrant children in its empty dorms.

Here's a sample of headlines from Google:.

Each refers to the Mexican children differently: "immigrant kids"; "immigrant children"; "illegal immigrant." The kids are "housed" or simply "moved." But the Adolph Hitler Untermensch Award goes to the so-called American Thinker: "Feds Back Down on dumping illegals in small Virginia town." The subject is "illegals"—not humans—who are comparable to trash.

Well done, Thinker!

Woody Guthrie sang about dehumanization of illegal immigrants way back in 1948:

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

                           - "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)"