Census Bureau: Give Us Tired, Your Poor, Your Wretches With Low Food Security

This is appalling.

Despite the cheery headline, this article informs us that 38 million people in the United States are hungry and that 11 million of those are very hungry indeed. That alone is shaming and shocking. Consider just for a moment that the issue of hunger in the United States was never even brought up during these mid-term elections, at least not to our knowledge.

But just as chilling is the use of words here. Get this: the use of the term "hunger" has diminished in the huger report, replaced by the concept of "Food Security." If you are starving, you are said to have "very low food security." If you are just hungry, you have "low food security."

This is an abject example of the diminishment of the disenfranchised by striping their condition of actionable language. Try to get people excited about stamping out "low food security." Are you up in arms yet?

It also makes it their problem, a verbalization that makes hunger linguistically akin to the old saw of self help "insecurity" and edges the problem toward "low esteem."

The academics, sociologist and public health officials how came up with this term no doubt think they are removing stigma and being sensitive to the poor. Poppycock and shame on them!