Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes (D) went on CNN yesterday and attacked President Obama and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) for referring to rioters in Baltimore as “thugs” saying, “just call them n*ggers”. It is a familiar controversy for readers of this blog. Last year, various commentators objected to my writing about the “thuggish” behavior of Seahawks’ cornerback Richard Sherman
as inherently racist — a position that I rejected. I have continued to use thug as both a noun and adjective. Now it appears that President Obama and Mayor Rawlings-Blake are being accused of the same use of racist code words by Councilman Stokes.
In the meantime, City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young apologized to rioters for calling them “thugs.”
“What we’re seeing today is not about Freddie Gray,” Young said. “It is about the pain, the hurt and the suffering of these young people. There’s no excuse for them to loot, riot and destroy our city. I made a comment out of frustration and anger when I called our children ‘thugs.’ They’re not thugs. They’re just misdirected. We need to direct them on a different path by creating opportunities for them.”
On CNN, Stokes objected to the use of the word when prompted by the host and said
“of course it’s not the right word to call our children thugs. These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us. No, we don’t have to call them thugs . . . “calling them thugs — just call them n*ggers. Just call them n*ggers. No, we don’t have to call them by names such as that. We don’t have to do that. That is exactly what we have set them to. Now, when you say ‘come on,’ come on what? You wouldn’t call your child a thug if they should do something that would not be what you would expect them to do.”
He added that he supported the recent video of a mother slapping her son for participating in the riots, but insisted that it was the right thing to do (not because of his participation in riots) but to keep the police from killing him: “she was trying to save his life. It is clear that it’s better that she hit him than the police hit him and brutalize him and take his life from him.”
In my view, Stokes is wrong on the use of the “thug” as well as his criticism of the President and the Mayor. He views mirror an effort to bar the use of words deemed to be “codes” when used to criticize minorities. The same objections were heard earlier on this blog and other sites. Beanie Barnes was one of those calling out those who use the word: “Suddenly he was ‘classless,’ a ‘thug’ from Compton, and any manner of other negative terms that one can substitute for the N-word. Sherman was no longer human, but a racist caricature.”
I disagree with this view, which ascribes a racist rather than a descriptive element to the use of the noun. The word “thug” has been used widely on this blog to rather to people of different genders, races, and backgrounds. It is possible for blacks like whites to act like thugs. It is their behavior that is driving the use of the word like burning police cars and robbing people in the streets of Baltimore.
No, neither President Obama nor Mayor Rawlings-Blake are racists. These rioters are thugs.
AS usual, everything is relative to a control group. The control group in this case is white people, as they are the standard in our society by which everything is judged.
Whenever there is a riot after a sports event, no one refers to the participants (overwhelmingly white) communally as mob, or individually as thugs.
Yet, whenever black people are involved, whether communally or individually, the word thugs is pulled out against them as fast as a cop shoots them.
it light of that, can we really dismiss the councilman’s comments?
The best way to insure craziness is legitimately crazy and not insightful, is to be fair and equal. Otherwise, trying to dismiss everything as sensitivity or pc gone amok is to be hypocritical.
Either we call everyone engaged in the same behavior a thug, or we call no one a thug.
@DBQ
Fascinating link! I have always thought the cult maybe was into their own form of Erotic Asphyxiation. There is also a thuggee based poem related to the Deadman Wonderland manga/anime series, which you might like:
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/deadman_wonderland_424368
I like the way he wove the words “Khoon Tu Kao” into a chorus. It probably means “feed upon blood.”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“people of color” ?
Now that’s a racist term if I ever heard one.
lol
Unfortunately, Councilman Stokes’s view will prevail, I’ll bet.
This goes back to an issue I’ve raised before:
Part of the leftist deconstruction of Western Civilization is the destruction of words by repeatedly redefining them into meaninglessness.
Facts.
Science.
Rape.
Racist.
Global warming.
Marriage.
Thug.
The process has been underway for decades.
You can’t object to ‘thug’ being redefined, because it’s already done. Even elite blacks were Caught unaware that the word is now racist. There’s no reclaiming it. It’s gone.
The core problem has become:
Who gets to define what a word means?
On the left, they take the Humpty Dumpty approach:
Words mean whatever they want them to mean, nothing more, nothing less.
So Stokes does not want us to call rioters “thugs”? Thuggetaboutit! They are thugs. So are the cops who engage in thuggish behavior. Concur that Stokes should spend less time worrying about the use of the word “thug” and more time dealing with the deep seated problems that underlie this mess.
What is President Obamanation other than a Thug, War Criminal and a Crime Boss all in one, clothed in a suit; and groomed by the CIA and installed by rigged elections?
DBQ
Yeah, I saw Gunga Din with Cary Grant and Victor McLaughlin.
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”
The word THUG is derived from the India term Thugee which is a clan or organized group of assassins. The term has been around since the 1200’s
It isn’t racist at all. Thug is a term to describe behaviour and can be applied to any race, ethnicity at all.
The history of the term is really quite fascinating. http://scribol.com/anthropology-and-history/indias-infamous-thuggee-cult/1
This latest trend of labeling everything under the sun as being racist is really tiresome. And frankly tends to make people give up and say….OK fine fine fine….if you want to call me a racist for no reason at all…… So be it. I WILL be racist then.
The person complaining is the racist. Thugs is a generic term. By associating it with blacks the complainer is the one linking thugs with blacks.
A thug is a thug is a thug.
Mr. Stokes is out of date by a generation. He does more harm than good. It’s time to call a spade a spade.
During the “civil rights” riots of the mid-1960’s, I wrote to one of the newspapers in Denver and said, “You keep saying that the students are rioting. The definition of ‘student’ is ‘someone who studies a subject’. These rioters don’t seem to be studying anything. A better word to use for them is ‘rabble’. To print ‘the rabble were rioting today’ would describe both the type of people they are and their loud and destructive behavior.” This seems to apply today, too.
The word “thug” originated in India to identify a member of an organization of robbers and assassins who typically strangled their victims. Today it means a tough and violent man, especially a criminal. It has no connection to racism, but could be used to describe the violent and destructive rioters — or the police who overreact in their response to the rioting. Means the same thing, no matter what role the individuals play, and regardless of the color of their skin.
The riots in Baltimore and Ferguson are symptoms of far deeper problems than looting. Having said that, looters are thugs. Mr. Stokes’ criticism is absurd.
No thugs in our house are there, dear?
We made that clear
We made little Graham promise us he’d be a good boy
Maybe we can just start calling the thugs, “Purple Penquins”???
For those libertarians with short term memory loss:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389862/school-told-call-kids-purple-penguins-because-boys-and-girls-not-inclusive
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Just because a hip-hop poseur claims the title thug or claims he is living the thug life doesn’t mean the word refers to a specific group.
On a regular basis I have referred to police state thugs. That use may be a little over the top. But it clearly has nothing to do with race. If anything the police state thugs to which I refer are more likely to be northern Europeans. But it is the behavior and policies that make them thugs – not their ethnic background.
Sometimes ordinary people have to step up and take back what others have tried to seize. This time that object is a perfectly acceptable word – thug.
The only thing offensive about thug is that sometimes some people act that way.
If the word fits – use it.
Sultan Knish has a better description:
Savages with Cellphones.
There must be a book of these code words somewhere in the Internet of Things. As an old white guy, I can’t keep up. Nor do I really care to.
Thugs they are. Thugs are defined as a brutal ruffian or assassin.
While they are not assassins, they are definitely brutal ruffians. They decided to throw bricks into businesses, set the city of Baltimore alight at night.
So thugs they are. Remember how they encourage “Thugga 4 life?” Bloods, Crips, and other gangs are thugs too. So are the Mexican Cartels. So are the gangs running Japan, Russia, etc.
So, in essence, how is it a racist code word? LOL… The sheer stupidity of this guy.
There seems to be a trend. If you don’t like the fact that certain behavior qualifies a person as a thug, you call the use of the word racist if the qualified person is black. If not, then calling them a thug is ok.
Persons involved in riots are thugs. Persons involved in peaceful protests are not.
I am surprised that the council member believes that looting and burning down buildings are apporpriate behaviors for “children”.
The council member should be working hard for a ZERO TOLERANCE policy relating to police abuse of citizens in Baltimore. To bad he’d rather be on CNN. Talking the use of the word thug. Mr. stokes has been on the city council in Baltimire for almost 18 years with a break of a few years. Why hasn’t he done more to stop the police from abusing his “children”. Sorry but some one who has been in city government as long as this man has must take responsibility for how the police behave. Maybe someone should picket his house!
Let’s just call the rioters “racist caricatures.”
I’m so far behind. When I think of the word thug I still think of guys in ski masks, or Cruella DeVille’s lackeys in 101 Dalmations, the Hamburglar, of some guys who menace The Hardy Boys and their swell chums Chet and Tony. Jeez, I need to get with it.