Photo credit:
Loretta Hostettler, Getty Images
Images:
Lady Gaga wasn’t the only thing causing a ruckus in Texas last week – a local TV station’s use of the Arabic word “haboob” to describe the region’s giant dust storms had some Lone Star Staters up in arms!
Soon after Lubbock’s KCBD News Channel 11 posted a Facebook photo captioned “Haboob headed toward Lubbock,” their page began to explode with hundreds of negative comments about the choice of a “foreign” word – kicking up a Texas-sized storm of xenophobia and Islamophobia.
A standard term used by the National Weather Service, a haboob is an Arabic word that refers to a giant desert dust storm – not uncommon in parts of Texas and the Southwest.