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.
http://youtu.be/ieqAXEYB_sA
Most food stamp and welfare recipients are white, according to this report.
From skimming the thread, it is disappointing that commenters focus more on being outraged that people bring up the high rate of unwed mothers and the destruction of the African American family than on finding solutions.
If we can’t even talk about this touchy subject without hurling “racist!” around, how are we ever going to solve the problem? And it’s not just a problem in the African American community. It’s rising elsewhere, as well, but the black community has been hardest hit.
Kids are our future, and too many of them are condemned to struggle in life by the road blocks put in their way from the very start. We should be emulating Harlem’s Children’s Zone, as well as brainstorming other solutions, not insulting people for broaching the topic, or acting like an entire community is helpless or passive. Because that’s not true. They can experience a Renaissance from within.
“But all you have to do is F—
And nine months later you’re getting the big bucks.”
(Lyrics from Swipe Yo EBT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=32&v=luo40WjBKWI
From Snopes:
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I have also heard that the war on drugs is responsible for removing a great many African American men. That may be true. However, there is another side to that.
There are unhappily many women addicted to drugs, who use while pregnant. Others get pregnant because of a spiraling drug addiction. Some addicts keep getting pregnant. Some men abandon their families or father multiple children because of their own spiraling addiction.
So, on the one hand, one could say that decriminalizing drugs would decrease the arrests of young black men, but it would not affect the other side to that coin, how addiction directly affects children and the rate of single motherhood.
Skimming this thread, I have read how many commenters blame slavery for the destruction of the African American family.
This would be true if the African American family remained splintered for the past 150 years. However, in 1965 25% of black children were born to single parent homes, while by 2010, it was 72%. The numbers are rising for Caucasians, too, which rose from 5% in 1965 to about 20%.
Also, if people wanted to marry, but the men were ripped away by racist arrests, that would mean that African American mothers would all be married, with incarcerated husbands. The actual problem is that women are having children out of wedlock. Sometimes things just don’t work out in a relationship. Sometimes women are divorced or widowed with kids. But we need to get real about the rising trend of single mothers, who don’t get that added support of alimony, at least, that divorced moms do. Raising kids as a divorcee has got to be hard, but doing so as a single mom is even harder. If it was just an accident or mistake, that’s one thing. But women of all ethnicities need to want more for themselves and their future families than having children out of wedlock or a committed, long-term relationship. There is even a TV series, “Teen Mom”, which follows young moms and their struggles.
There are many studies and theories about the cause of rising unwed mothers – from the erosion of personal responsibility, welfare subsidizing the phenomena, making the father’s name “unknown” on a birth certificate as well as not living with the father allowing access to more benefits, unequal sentencing, etc. In fact, I know a single mother who cannot live with the father of her child because it would preclude benefits like free child care while she goes to school. It didn’t matter if he gave her money to live on or not. Living with the father is a form of support that reduces the benefits allowed, at least here in CA. We also know that statistically single motherhood is one of the highest risk factors for producing kids that end up in jail, and therefor absent as adults, so we are getting a vicious circle that is cycling out of control.
We focus on the 72% figure of the African American community, because it’s shocking. But single motherhood is rising in other demographics, too, with the same unhappy results for those children.
I would love to see the women of this generation stand up for themselves and turn that tide around.
Perhaps the first step is not blaming events of 150 years ago for our decisions today. We know how babies are made. We know most dating relationships do not lead to marriage, so having a baby with someone you’re dating will likely not lead to a cohesive, equally yoked family unit. So put your future kids first and give them their best chance by waiting until you can provide a secure family for them to grow up in. Even then, not all marriages last, but at least you will have done your best.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=25154
Make birth control free, encourage its use. No kidding having children before one is ready is a bad idea, no matter what a person’s skin color.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1aqhaj0s_4
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Paul, how do you relate Wealth of nations to our contemporary issues?
po – read the book. I am not going to give you any spoilers.
So JT’s team (Bears) took a guy that’s black with dreads. He also went to community college and a measly state school. His name is Kevin White.
If he didn’t have crazy football talent, JT would probably label him a thug too.
#RuleofLawForWho
TJustice – you are swinging at outside pitches. Wait until they come in your comfort zone.
*that they will behave*
The black community will never forget how their people came to this country and the devastating effects linger to this very day. Everything was taken from their ancestors, even their names. African Americans to this day carry the slave master’s name. No Smiths or Jones in Africa of 300 years ago. To deny that what has happened to this ethnic group in America over the centuries is absurd. And it’s absurd to think that they are behave how we think they should just because AFDC would be withheld is absurd. The black community is trying to work through the problems in their communities and we surely haven’t made it all that easy for them to do so with the level of racism we see to this day.
Inga – it is called “working the system.” People do what gets them the most under the system. If it requires having more kids, then they have another kid.
@Po
Hmmm. Maybe you could print off a copy, and pin it on your High Horse??? Just be sure you don’t accidentally sit on the pin. Oh, wait! Ignore that last bit. Sit on it, please!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“Squeek
This is what i think:
Take this
“Finally, sure I believe slavery could still have effects 150 years later. I certainly believe effects of assassination of the Arch Duke and WWI are still working their way through.
Effects of slavery are about attitudes. I can tell you from my personal experience their are many who are still working their way through their feelings about Johny Reb, confederate dollars, the battle flag, and what it means to be hungry – just barely alive. So yes, absolutely, slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, the Klan, Jim Crow, and especially today’s revival or racism are still working their way through this country – especially the inner city.
And you know what Squeeky, your children and their children after them will still be working through the effects of slavery. We might be able to make some of it better. But it is not going to be over for a long, long time.
Don’t you ever forget the effects of slavery are contained in attitudes, transmitted father to son, mother to daughter. And all those warped and twisted by racism are not giving up their hurt and their pain their stereotypical categories, their resentment, their outright hate any time soon, not it this life time.
frame it, and reread it every morning before you go to bed and first thing when you wake up…and also include it into the reporter kit too, perhaps the wisdom in it will make its way through the deaf ears.
@BFM
You are right about many things. Racism isn’t dead by any stretch, and to compound the problem, you now have a new strain of “racism” that is out there mutating among younger people. Imagine if you will, how a person might feel about confronting Rosa Parks over where she sits on the bus. She was a basically decent, hard-working person, and just didn’t feel like playing silly games. You would have to be pretty hard core racist to deny her a seat wherever she felt like sitting. This racism was based on a false image of Blacks, which is why it quickly dissipated when TVs started showing the mistreatment.
But now imagine our current crop of young blacks. A very large number of them aren’t hard working, have crappy attitudes, and walk around with their britches hanging down, and will beat the crap out of you if you look at them wrong. How does your average white person feel about riding on a bus with them??? Well, they may not say it out loud, but they don’t like it, and will not do it unless absolutely necessary. This new form of racism, if you can even call it racism, is not based on false images, but all too often, true and accurate images. I don’t expect it to go away very quickly.
And this is one of the things which is sooo insidious about the welfare society, and all the thugs. They are helping to create more “racism.” I mean, is the average white person going to have a more or less favorable opinion of blacks after Baltimore. And Ferguson. And Trayvon. I submit the answer will be “less.” Which will in turn, tend to decrease their future acceptance into society. Who wants to hire a thug??? Or, somebody where there is a 50% chance they are a thug.
Now that being said, you are back to the correlations, or lack thereof. I think there is maybe something to the fact that the increase in illegitimacy was sooo fast, and sooo large, that the question of “scientific” correlation becomes rather less necessary for a sound and well grounded opinion. If the increase had been say, from 15% to 20%, then maybe other factors would be more influential, and we might be trying to distinguish between economic downturns, and birth control pills, and the sexual revolution, or whatever.
But here, the increase was both massive and fast, and followed right on the Great Society stuff. Sooo, I am comfortable with blaming welfare for the change. Because I also have my own personal “anecdotes” that figure into my opinion. For example. I know a black girl who was pregnant, and she was very pointed about wanting it to be a girl, because one day a girl child could bring her own check into the family.
I have known other young black girls who were very pointed about getting pregnant because it meant they would get their own benefits and wouldn’t have to listen to their mother anymore.
Sooo, that is what I think.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – Rosa Parks was a setup. She was selected for the operation. The officer who arrested her was also a setup.
@fiver
Nice canard! Now, can you explain why you might think that my comment was racist??? Something articulable, if you please.
Thanks!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
This is in a comment board to a piece where the professor complains of unfair accusations of racism in his language.
That took less than five seconds to find. Yet anyone who has been on the comment boards here knew stuff like this would be easy to find and everywhere. It happens all the time here.
Professor Turley, when you’re consistently feeding red meat like this post (and today’s accompanying “Slants” piece) to regular commenters such as this one, and she is neither unpredictable nor alone here, you might consider taking a little less offense.
You’re being “misunderstood” seems quite “understandable” in context.
Well, somebody didn’t like my blunt language, and this comment went into moderation from being posted, so here it is again with the “offending”, but true, language replaced:
@BFM
Don’t take it at face value. Read my numbers. Read Rcocean’s. Then, you can take it, not at face value, but as the result of looking at the numbers. And if not, what, do you think that slavery has some sort of 150 year incubation period, and then KERFLOOOOM! it just busts out of the black collective psyche and they start running around making little [illegitimate] kids all over the place???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@Squeeky: “Don’t take it at face value. Read my numbers. Read Rcocean’s. Then, you can take it, not at face value, but as the result of looking at the numbers. And if not, what, do you think that slavery has some sort of 150 year incubation period, ”
Your numbers and Rcocean’s numbers were not useful at all because it was impossible to tell whether the increases in social stats you mentioned were correlated with anything at all – social policy, welfare funding, population growth, GDP, average hours in the work week, average weekly wage, or anything else.
So far as reaching a conclusion about social policy they were totally useless. You might stick this little bit in your reporter tool kit: correlations require data about two variables not just one.
And correlations are only occasionally sufficient to draw policy conclusions. Correlations, when we find them, are usually the start of discussion about policy not the final word.
The article from Rector/Heritage Foundation might be useful. I have not read it yet. But, Heritage does not have a sterling reputation for reliability – having been caught red handed fudging the numbers in at least one report (Steven Moore projections regarding ACA/Obamacare – I can dig out the gory details if you want to get into that. ).
Nevertheless the correlations claimed by Rector look interesting and might illuminate and important topic – which is why I intend to give it a read.
Finally, sure I believe slavery could still have effects 150 years later. I certainly believe effects of assassination of the Arch Duke and WWI are still working their way through.
Effects of slavery are about attitudes. I can tell you from my personal experience their are many who are still working their way through their feelings about Johny Reb, confederate dollars, the battle flag, and what it means to be hungry – just barely alive. So yes, absolutely, slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, the Klan, Jim Crow, and especially today’s revival or racism are still working their way through this country – especially the inner city.
And you know what Squeeky, your children and their children after them will still be working through the effects of slavery. We might be able to make some of it better. But it is not going to be over for a long, long time.
Don’t you ever forget the effects of slavery are contained in attitudes, transmitted father to son, mother to daughter. And all those warped and twisted by racism are not giving up their hurt and their pain their stereotypical categories, their resentment, their outright hate any time soon, not it this life time.
bfm – I would agree with your thesis, except that hanging on to the past is personal. There are 6 siblings in my family. I am the only one that is Irish enough to still hate the British.
@Paul: “There are 6 siblings in my family. I am the only one that is Irish enough to still hate the British.”
They say our family has a lot of Scotch/Irish. But really we are Heinz 57. If I ever took a swing at a guy in a bar he would probably turn out to be a cousin – somewhere down the line.
Here is a really good article about this. A few excerpts:
Another excerpt:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_black_family.html
This is a good read, and if you are somebody who really cares about poor Black America, and not just the typical leftist ideologue, this has some really good history and information. It also explains some of the various ideologies which clash on this issue.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“It was no mere coincidence that just one year later (in 1995) the illegitimate birth rate fell for the first time in nearly a half-century. In subsequent years the rate remained flat or increased only slightly. This slowdown in the growth of out-of-wedlock childbearing is undoubtedly the result of changes in the social messages surrounding Welfare, particularly the new emphasis on limited aid and personal responsibility.”
*********************************
The slowdown in the growth of out of wedlock childbearing was due to increased rates of birth control and abortion.
@BFM
I found one chart! Here it is:
http://www.heritage.org/~/media/images/reports/2001/the%20effects%20of%20welfare%20reform/effectswelfarereformchart3.ashx?w=400&h=515&as=1
http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/the-effects-of-welfare-reform
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@Squeeky:
Thanks. Your cite to what seems to be an image is broken – at least in my browser.
But I have the article and will give it a read a little later.