Let’s start off this story with a visual. It is a hot morning in Texas. A man wakes up and heads into the kitchen. He makes himself a cup of coffee, adds a little bit of sugar, and sets it on the table. He makes himself a toaster waffle and pours on some syrup. Then he takes his breakfast into the living room, where he sits on his sofa.
The man boots up his computer and sees a Facebook Post from the National Weather Service.
“A haboob is rapidly approaching the Lubbock airport and may affect the city as well.”
The man jumps up, knocking over his coffee. He is furious! “Haboob?” This isn’t the Middle East, dammit! This is the good old U.S.A.!
I made that scene up, but for a good reason.
According to an article in the Washington Post,a lot of people in Texas who saw that post really did go completely nuts, screaming, ranting and Tweeting their outrage at the use of the Arabic term “haboob.”
The Weather Channel defines a haboob as a particular type of violent dust or sandstorm caused by strong winds which flow downward from a thunderstorm. Its not just any old bunch of blowing sand. It has a specific definition for meteorologists. The storms are usually seen in the Middle East, but also occur in the American southwest.
Apparently a lot of Texans just weren’t accepting that fact last Sunday when the Facebook post went out. Although the term ‘haboob’ has been in use since at least 1925, according to the Post, some Texas Islamophobes objected strongly to seeing it.
"In Texas, nimrod, this is called a sandstorm." https://t.co/civNtWNmv7
— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) June 1, 2016
One person responded this way:
“Haboob!?! I’m a Texan. Not a foreigner from Iraq or Afghanistan. They might have haboobs but around here in the Panhandle of TEXAS, we have Dust Storms. So would you mind stating it that way. I’ll find another weather service!”
What is disgusting about this is the complete xenophobia that goes along with objecting to a word because you think it sounds like it came from the Middle East.
What is hilarious is that the meteorologists used the word accurately, and that it has been in use for decades.
What is pathetic is that in the opening description, the man who was eating his breakfast would have had a hard time telling his buddies about it. You see, the words “coffee”, “sugar”, “syrup” and “sofa” are among the hundreds of everyday English words that came to us from Arabic.
In the video below you can see a haboob covering Lubbock, Texas in 2011.
Featured image by Greg Gorman via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Generic license 2.0
