Fox News Should Apologize for Using “Anchor Baby”

I’ve never liked the term.  I’ve written about it many times through the years.

In the simplest of terms, babies are not anchors, period.  The anti-immigration clique has taken to using “anchor babies” to describe their fellow citizens and that in itself is deplorable. But its not inconsistent.

Anchor babies are infant citizens of the United States that happen to have been born to unauthorized immigrant parents. But to hear conservative rantings, these suckling babes are to be feared and quarantined, lest they destroy our culture and economy.

Probably the most public and visible anchor baby rantings have com from Fox News. Commentators on that network have launched full-fledged rhetorical attacks against the citizen children of the undocumented. And now a group of Republican Latinos is demanding an apology.

Somos Latinos is the largest and fastest growing Hispanic republican group and it wants Fox News to apologize for using the anchor baby term. Specifically, and maybe even the last straw, came when a Fox commentator referred to the child of actors Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem as an anchor baby. Somos Latinos fired-off a letter to Fox demanding an apology.

My own objections to the term go deeper than Hollywood notoriety. As a writer and communicator I’m sensitive to the use of words and the purpose of specific word choice. In that sense I object to the dehumanizing effect of  “anchor babies.” The term makes it too easy to dismiss the baby’s humanity – they are, after all, not babies, not human beings, but inanimate objects that create a problem for the real citizens. It’s the same reason that I refuse to use “illegal alien.” Alien things are not human, they are “other.” The illegal part is ridiculous; no human being can be illegal, being human is not a criminal act. But if we frame a group of people within terms that render them other-than-human it becomes easier to paint them as unwanted and problematic.

Anchor baby follows that same logic.

There has been no word if fox plans to apologize.