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.
@BFM
First, can you give me some numbers on how much TANF and the welfare cap laws actually affected the amount of welfare payments that went out to people? Because I was under the impression that the Workfare stuff didn’t really ever get going the way it was supposed to. IIRC, some states did part of it, and other states more or less of it. Sooo, if you want me to correlate smaller welfare payments to less illegitimate births, can you provide me the numbers of how much less welfare there actually was, if any???
And, while you are at it, a chart maybe of black illegitimate birth rates going back to 1960. There are charts of the amounts, but not the rates that seem easy to find.
Thanks!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Mr schulte
I don’t think you should tell others to read anything with some of the things you’re writing.
Going to school, the idea of becoming educated is not for purely industrial purposes. In Ancient Greece, for example, science and natural philosophy were a gentleman’s pursuit, not supposed to be used for the industries of the day. It wasn’t until Archimedes that we see this change.
Knowledge and science have only thrived in places with great wealth and surplus.
students (higher education) work best when they are given freedom, not meddled with by strapping loads of debt on their backs.
TJustice – we know who hasn’t read Wealth of Nations, don’t we?
Paul
The solutions you offer are of the same type as when you say: let’s the blacks move out of the ghetto. Uhhh…okay, how?
Get good jobs and move out.
Uhhh…how?
Get a good education then get good jobs.
Uhhh…okay, how?
Go to school!
Uhhh…and then we keep looping around.
Squeek
I give you a minute or two to take this Well, it’s really nice that Bill Clinton changed the rules! Unfortunately, he also signed NAFTA, which sent jobs overseas, and to bring us forward to now, Obama is about to legitimize 10 million or so illegal aliens to compete for low-skilled jobs here! And, all administrations have been negligent on increasing minimum wages. Sooo, maybe the first step is admit that the welfare is pretty much a bust when it comes to able-bodied people, and in fact down right harmful. And get off all this blaming everything on racism. And start focusing on jobs. back, less people see it.
po – as I said before, read Wealth of Nations. After you have finished that, then we can continue our discussion. BTW, I am not the one who said all of the things at 7:12 pm.
Inga – that is the correct term.
@Squeeky: “Well, it’s really nice that Bill Clinton changed the rules! Unfortunately, he also signed NAFTA, which sent jobs overseas, and to bring us forward to now, Obama is about to legitimize 10 million or so illegal aliens to compete for low-skilled jobs here!”
So what? All of that is irrelevant to your claim that welfare policy caused disruption in the African American family.
Your claim that easy welfare money (or money substitutes such as food stamps) led to increases in social stat such as unwed births.
There is either a correlation or there is not a correlation over the many years we have had welfare.
If you are right then increases in welfare payments or increases in welfare recipients ought to correlate with increases in the social stats you mention.
Correspondingly, declines in funding for welfare or changes in policy that remove recipients or that make it harder for would be recipients to quality ought to lead to reductions in those statistics.
if you have the data then show it to us. I would like to see it.
Yes indeed BFM, criminal justice reform, another possible solution to add to the list.
@Squeeky: ” Read my numbers. Read Rcocean’s. Then, you can take it, not at face value, but as the result of looking at the numbers. ”
I did read your numbers. So far I see no correlation because you don’t present any numbers related to number of welfare recipients, funding for welfare, or any other states related to welfare policies which could be used to calculate correlation (or even graph a simple trend line).
All you have done is present growth in a social statistics and claim that is related to ‘welfare’ or ‘Democrat welfare policies’. The data you have presented cannot even demonstrate a correlation between out of wedlock birth or marriage and individuals receiving welfare or participating in some kind of poverty program – no if, and or buts about it.
Maybe there is a correlation – but you simply have not shown the correlation or provided any data we could use to demonstrate such a correlation – if it exists.
Even if you find a correlation, most people realize it takes a lot more than correlation to show causality.
You need to do a lot more critical thinking.
It seems evident to me the problem is complex. And it is likely to have several if not many contributing factors.
Maybe we should talk about incarceration rates and sentencing guidelines. I will bet that has something to do with the problem – as one example of possible contributing factors.
But I would not focus on one factor, find some trend in a single statistic and claim causality – especially if I didn’t even have the corresponding data to show the correlation.
BTW, have you checked change in incarceration rates and change in single parent families or out of wed lock births. I don’t know. But I will bet lunch and as many margaritas as you can drink there is a very good correlation there – and those numbers ought to be easy to google.
More solutions, don’t waste taxpayer money on unfunded unnecessary wars. Spend that money at home. Don’t rebuild cities in Iraq and Afghanistan, rebuild our infrastructure and our cities.
Inga – the infrastructure of cities is on the cities. The Feds need to get out of the business of helping out.
Don’t vote for any President that supports these trade deals. Another solution.
More solutions to help single moms stay in the workforce. Provide paid sick days and family leave. Stop trying to weaken the FMLA.
Inga – you need to earn sick days and vacation days.
@BFM
Well, it’s really nice that Bill Clinton changed the rules! Unfortunately, he also signed NAFTA, which sent jobs overseas, and to bring us forward to now, Obama is about to legitimize 10 million or so illegal aliens to compete for low-skilled jobs here! And, all administrations have been negligent on increasing minimum wages. Sooo, maybe the first step is admit that the welfare is pretty much a bust when it comes to able-bodied people, and in fact down right harmful. And get off all this blaming everything on racism. And start focusing on jobs.
Then, to move them off welfare, one would have to take a long hard look at how you increase available jobs, and how well we are training the poor folks in school. Which we pretty much aren’t and they are just zoos for wild animals, but we just send the wild animals home at 3:30, and out of the zoo for good between 16 and 18 years of age. And, one would have to consider why the f*ck are we bringing in millions and millions of unskilled laborers from other countries???
Which all looks to me like the leadership of the Democratic Party doesn’t give a flip about improving the lot of poor black Americans, and in facts, loves them being needy! And, is bringing in millions more!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
bigfatmike: “I say enough with the blame game. Lets figure out what it takes to get young lives back on track with education and jobs.”
Yep.
More solutions, provide more incentives to do well in school, provide incentives for increased parental involvement in their children’s education. Provide more job training and retraining. Provide more head start programs and free daycare. Tax the rich more.
Inga – why should we give incentives to people to do what they are supposed to do. And about all this free stuff. When you give things to people for free they do not appreciate it. That is why, even with a sliding scale, psychologist charge for their appointments. You study a lot harder in school when you are paying for it then when mommy and daddy are paying for it. There are already plenty of training programs available. Students just don’t take advantage them. And if everyone had a piece of the tax action you would not have to tax the rich.
@Squeeky: “Sooo, the question becomes, how did it grow to 70+%??? The simple answer is that Democrats paid black women to be barefoot and pregnant. It is not that hard a jump.”
I agree that is a very simple answer. Maybe we need to think more critically about this complex problem.
During the ’90 Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich and the congress greatly change the welfare rules – roughly making it workfare and placing time limits on duration.
If the problem were really a Democrat welfare state I would expect to see a change in the social stats you have been quoting over the past 20-25 years.
How about it – any decline? Or have the rates remained the same or increased?
Failure for the social stats to change when the policies change are a pretty good indicator that the policies are not the driving force and maybe not even a contributing factor.
Wow, Paul is going out on a limb here. The most rope he’ s ever given.
Paul, those aren’t solutions, they are reactions.
Reactions, as we know well by now are random and don’t bring solutions, they create the need for more solutions.
What BFM says
Yep, at the end of the day that’s the only thing that matters. Those kids, though Black, are yours too, Squeek. You have a bigger role to play in their lives than to tell them to get a more responsible father.
po – they are all solutions. It must be that language thingie that makes you think they are not.
BTW, if we’re going not call thugs “Thugs”, why don’t we stop being mean to Looters? I suggest we rename them “Undocumented Shoppers”.
Rcocean – I think that is ‘illegal shopper’ they have documentation.
Here are Walt Williams numbers on the breakdown of the Black family:
“What about the decline of the black family? In 1960, only 28 percent of black females between the ages of 15 and 44 were never married. Today, it’s 56 percent. In 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 19 percent, in 1960, 22 percent, and today, it’s 70 percent.”
Obviously, Slavery has nothing to do with the Black illegitimacy rate going from 22% to 70% from 1960 to 2010.
Someone loves the phrase “ad hominem attack”
anon – someone has been on the receiving end of a lot of ad hominem attacks.
In the land of trickle-down torture:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/freddie-grays-injury-and-the-police-rough-ride.html?referrer=
Oh yes, make the trades easier to get in for those who aren’t college material. Oh, did I say tax the rich MORE?