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.
I should not have to make this point but it is abundantly clear, that for some, this point needs to be enunciated. I will stipulate there have been countless and reprehensible examples of police abuse in Baltimore, the US and around the world for centuries. However, those abuses are irrelevant to this matter. Indeed, these cops being charged may have committed abuses in the past. That too is completely irrelevant. ALL that is relevant is what these cops did or didn’t do to the deceased on the date in question. This point is not debatable. The same holds true for any defendant, no matter how reprehensible they may be. That is what makes our criminal justice system, as flawed as it is, a shining example of how it should be done. If I were to ever be charged w/ a crime, I would not that to occur in any other country than the US.
Thanks for all the great links and articles anon.
“Timeline: Freddie Gray’s arrest, death and the aftermath”
http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/freddie-gray/
BFM, I refer you to my SINCERE hope that if these cops were wrong, that they be convicted of the charge best fitting what they did wrong. I smell a lynching here. I hope and pray that doesn’t happen. I worked in a prosecutors office as an investigator prosecuting rapes over 30 years ago. The pendulum was swung way against rape victims. That was wrong. Now, the pendulum, because of politics, has swung way against defendants. That is equally wrong. Mike, when these pendulums start swinging they are not slow and subtle, they can be violent swings w/ innocent people being cut badly. I have experience and wisdom in this area. Too many people spouting venom here w/ neither, just anger and vengeance.
Violence in Baltimore
APRIL 29, 2015
by Charles M. Blow
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/opinion/charles-blow-violence-in-baltimore.html
“This week, Baltimore was engulfed in violent revolt as citizens took to the street in the wake of the mysterious and disturbing death of Freddie Gray after he’d been taken into police custody.
Projectiles were thrown. Stores were looted and some set ablaze. Police officers were injured.
It was ugly.
And in that moment, America was again forced to turn its face toward its forsaken and ask tough questions and attempt to answer a few.
…
As James Baldwin put it in his essay “Journey to Atlanta”:
“Of all Americans, Negroes distrust politicians most, or more accurately, they have been best trained to expect nothing from them; more than other Americans, they are always aware of the enormous gap between election promises and their daily lives.”
Baldwin continued:
“It is true that the promises excite them, but this is not because they are taken as proof of good intentions. They are the proof of something more concrete than intentions: that the Negro situation is not static, that changes have occurred, and are occurring and will occur — this, in spite of the daily, dead-end monotony. It is this daily, dead-end monotony, though, as well as the wise desire not to be betrayed by too much hoping, which causes them to look on politicians with such an extraordinarily disenchanted eye.”
It is this disenchantment, as well as the steady beat of black bodies falling, the constant murmur of black pain and the incessant sting of black subjugation that contributed to the conflagration of rage this week in Baltimore.
You could easily argue that that rage was misdirected, that most of the harm done was to the social fabric and the civil and economic interests in the very neighborhoods that most lack them. You would be right.
But misdirected rage is not necessarily illegitimate rage.
Some might even contextualize the idea of misdirection.
The activist Deray McKesson argued this week about the violence that erupted in Baltimore: “I don’t have to condone it to understand it.”
Indeed, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates argued quite convincingly in November that violent revolt has often been the catalyst for change in this country and that nonviolence, at least in part, draws its power from the untenable alternative of violence.
None of this promotes violence as a tactic, but rather is a fuller understanding of the contradictions of America’s current, incessant appeals for peace.
We can’t roundly condemn violent revolt now while ignoring the violent revolts that have littered this country’s history.
We can’t rush to label violent protesters as “thugs” while reserving judgment about the violence of police killings until a full investigation has been completed and all the facts are in.
We can’t condemn explosions of frustration born of generations of marginalization and oppression while paying only passing glances to similar explosions of frustration over the inanity of a sports team’s victory or loss or a gathering for a pumpkin festival.
Nonviolence, as a strategy, hinges on faith: It is a faith in ultimate moral rectitude and the perfectibility of systems of power.
But that faith can be hard to find in communities that see systems of power in which they feel they have no stake and an absence of moral courage on the part of the powerful to expand the franchise.
It has been my experience that people who feel no investment in systems of power — no belief that they have access to that power and that that power will treat them fairly — are the ones most likely to attack those systems with whatever power they think they have.
The time that any population will silently endure suffering is term-limited and the end of that term is unpredictable, often set by a moment of trauma that pushes a simmering discontent over into civil disobedience.
And, in those moments, America feigns shock and disbelief. Where did this anger come from? How can we quickly restore calm? How do we instantly start to heal?
That is because America likes to hide its sins. That is because it wants its disaffected, dispossessed and disenfranchised to use the door under the steps. That is because America sees its underclass as some sort of infinity sponge: capable of quietly absorbing disadvantage, neglect and oppression forever for the greater good of superficial calm and illusory order. And expected to do so.
No one of good conscience and sound judgment desires violence or would ever advocate for it. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.”
But King is not the only person worthy of quoting here. There is also the quote often attributed to Zora Neale Hurston: “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.””
When criminal charges become politicized justice is often not the outcome. The ugly winds of knee jerk politics is frothing in Baltimore. It is obvious the mayor is in way above her head.
@Nick: “The ugly winds of knee jerk politics is frothing in Baltimore.”
On the other hand there are reports these officers did not strap in and secure the prisoner and made a 4th, unreported stop (why not report if it was all above board).
It seems to me there are some serious issues these officers will have to deal with at trial – if it ever gets that far.
“not convicted” my bad. I was channeling the negative cop hatin’ energy.
Fascinating to read people pontificating on criminal prosecutions when it is painfully obvious they don’t know squat and are simply talking out of their asses. Here’s my hope, if these cops are guilty of a crime, that they get convicted on the proper charge. If they are not guilty, I hope they are convicted. It is clear the cop haters here have already convicted these cops. I hope you need a cop someday and they don’t respond.
@BFM
Well, if you agree with me, you must have been slapped “smart”, not “silly.”
🙂
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
““To call someone a thug is politically dismissive,” Wagner says.”….That just her OPINION.”
Well, slap me silly but I think I agree with Squeeky on this one.
Even if one agrees with Wagner, that does not mean we should not use the word – only that we should use the word when the thugs do not have political points to make.
On the other hand, I would bet that many of us believe Wagner’s definition misses that some people with important political issues act like thugs and some do not.
I think that is a pretty close approximation of my view. When political demonstrators deviate from principled, non violent behavior and act like thugs we need to call it out.
Violence doe not enhance the political discussion. When the word thug fits the behavior then we should use it.
“To call someone a thug is politically dismissive,” Wagner says.”
That just her OPINION. My opinion is, they’re a bunch of thugs. I don’t need that idiot Wagner to try to define my words, or my thoughts for me.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“To call someone a thug is politically dismissive” – Kim Wagner, Queen Mary University of London
A Brief History of the Word ‘Thug’
By Max Kutner 4/29/15 at 12:19 PM
http://www.newsweek.com/brief-history-word-thug-326595
Kim Wagner, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, says that descriptions of the Thugs as a murderous religious cult are simply “how the British misinterpreted a local phenomenon,” and that the so-called sect was more of an informal network of highway bandits.
“There was never any clear definition of what a thug was, which is why it was so attractive to the British,” Wagner says. “It allowed them to criminalize any kind of indigenous activity as being something that was inherently irrational and politically illegitimate, not different from the way it’s used today. You’re effectively describing them as having no legitimate grievances and just being hoodlums.”
The word’s use by Westerners to describe Easterners would come full circle during the War on Terror, Wagner points out, as President George W. Bush referred to insurgents in Iraq as “thugs and assassins.”
…
“The label was attached to black and brown people, impoverished people, living in urban communities, regardless of their behavior,” Jeffries tells Newsweek. “They adopted the word for subversive and oppositional reasons, and it found its way into the music.”
He adds, “It’s not a coincidence that the rise of this word in the public sphere coincided with the uptick in the punishment and hyper-incarceration of black and brown people living in late 20th century urban America.”
In recent years, members of the black community have said thug is simply a politically correct replacement for racial slurs. In January 2014, for example, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman said during a press conference, “It seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N word nowadays.”
Obama’s use of the word this week called to mind French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who in 2005 infamously referred to youth rioting over the accidental deaths of two young people who were hiding from police in a Paris suburb as “scum.” His utterance only incited more rioting.
“To call someone a thug is politically dismissive,” Wagner says.
You’re welcome, po.
anon, thanks for the links.
Annie
I took the liberty to share here the link you offered re David Simon. In case people don’t know, David Simon resides in Baltimore, worked the streets as a reporter and was the writer of the HBO series the Wire about Baltimore, and specifically the war on drugs in Baltimore.
Few are more qualified to speak on this than he is.
——————————————–
Here’s an interview with Simon from The Marshall Project.
David Simon on Baltimore’s Anguish
Freddie Gray, the drug war, and the decline of “real policing.”
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish
Excerpt:
BK: What do people outside the city need to understand about what’s going on there — the death of Freddie Gray and the response to it?
DS: I guess there’s an awful lot to understand and I’m not sure I understand all of it. The part that seems systemic and connected is that the drug war — which Baltimore waged as aggressively as any American city — was transforming in terms of police/community relations, in terms of trust, particularly between the black community and the police department. Probable cause was destroyed by the drug war. It happened in stages, but even in the time that I was a police reporter, which would have been the early 80s to the early 90s, the need for police officers to address the basic rights of the people they were policing in Baltimore was minimized. It was done almost as a plan by the local government, by police commissioners and mayors, and it not only made everybody in these poor communities vulnerable to the most arbitrary behavior on the part of the police officers, it taught police officers how not to distinguish in ways that they once did.
Probable cause from a Baltimore police officer has always been a tenuous thing. It’s a tenuous thing anywhere, but in Baltimore, in these high crime, heavily policed areas, it was even worse. When I came on, there were jokes about, “You know what probable cause is on Edmondson Avenue? You roll by in your radio car and the guy looks at you for two seconds too long.” Probable cause was whatever you thought you could safely lie about when you got into district court.
Then at some point when cocaine hit and the city lost control of a lot of corners and the violence was ratcheted up, there was a real panic on the part of the government. And they basically decided that even that loose idea of what the Fourth Amendment was supposed to mean on a street level, even that was too much. Now all bets were off. Now you didn’t even need probable cause. The city council actually passed an ordinance that declared a certain amount of real estate to be drug-free zones. They literally declared maybe a quarter to a third of inner city Baltimore off-limits to its residents, and said that if you were loitering in those areas you were subject to arrest and search. Think about that for a moment: It was a permission for the police to become truly random and arbitrary and to clear streets any way they damn well wanted.
Officers Charged in Freddie Gray’s Death
May 1, 2015 @ 12:14 PM by Tim Lynch
http://www.policemisconduct.net/officers-charged-in-freddie-grays-death/
“This morning Baltimore prosecutors announced that they have filed criminal charges against the six police officers who were involved in the Freddie Gray incident. The driver of the police van, Officer Caesar Goodson, has been charged with second degree murder. In theory, this is the way in which our system is supposed to work. That is, everyone agrees that if police officers break the law, they should be held accountable and treated like anyone else. In practice, the system does not always work that way.
It is important to remember how the Freddie Gray case is different:
Gray’s arrest was caught on cell phone camera.
Gray’s family has retained one of the best attorneys in Maryland, Billy Murphy.
The incident brought scrutiny from the federal Department of Justice.
Protesters in Baltimore brought international media attention and scrutiny to the case.
With all of these factors in play, the police and prosecutors moved on the case aggressively. The accused officers will be able to consult with defense counsel and assert their rights in court. If these cases go to trial, a jury will hear from both sides before rendering a verdict.
It’s also important to remember that the protests in Baltimore and other U.S. cities are not just about the Freddie Gray case. They are about police misconduct and tactics that trouble Americans all around the country.”
Instead of going after teachers unions, they should’ve been more concerned with police unions, it seems.
Baltimore Activists Recount How Police Unions Crushed Accountability Reforms
By Lee Fang
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/01/police-union-influence-maryland-runs-deep/
Marilyn Mosby: What Twitter has to say
Mary Nahorniak, USA TODAY 1:10 p.m. EDT May 1, 2015
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/01/reaction-marilyn-mosby-baltimore-freddie-gray-press-conference/26699771/
http://statelaws.findlaw.com/maryland-law/maryland-second-degree-murder.html