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.
The word thug is only widely use by you when it comes to colored people or poor people (no matter color).
War crimes are much more thuggish than acting a fool after a football match but your respected self doesn’t ca our war criminals thugs.
Law applies upwards to you since everyone is equal. But we know that isn’t true.
The anonymous thugs labeled themselves by their behavior. Believe me, they won’t kneel in a corner and cry. Instead, concentrate on their neighbors who have the confidence and decency to make their protests be heard without violence or the threat of violence. Let them teach the thugs a few things.
Anyone want to riot? Latest place to go is Kathmandu and hook up with Nepali villagers.
In the capital Kathmandu, about 200 people protested outside parliament, asking for more buses to go to their homes in remote parts of the Himalayan nation
and to hasten the distribution of aid that has flooded into the country but been slow to reach those in need.
In Sangachowk village in one of the worst-hit districts, about three hours by road from the capital, scores of angry villagers blocked the road with tires.
They stopped two trucks headed for the district capital with rice, noodles and biscuits. Later they blocked a convoy of three army trucks with relief supplies, leading to a tense standoff with armed soldiers.
If “boy” and “girl” now mean whatever the user feels it means that day, then “thug” is clearly racist, not for any definitional, historical, or case-specific usage, but because it caused feelbad, and is therefore doubleplus ungood wrongthink.
A “thug” is a criminal. It is not a racist term. When is somebody going to claim that “criminal” is a racist term? The people claiming “thug” is a racist term are “crazy” – or has that been redefined as racist? This extremely liberal critical thinker does not buy this assertion.. And, no, “protesters” are NOT “criminals” OR “thugs”, but “criminals” AND “thugs” are interchangeable non-racial terms. Buy a good dictionary.
Squeeky, Evidenced here on a daily basis, liberals are the most judgmental and controlling people on the planet.
@po “should we claim that nigger, when used by some, is not racist?”
I can never hear the word without a silent shudder. But I would never try to force others to adhere to my personal standards on language.
Some pubic intellectuals such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and others have claimed exactly that – in some contexts and when used by some individuals the word is not racist.
Go figure?
thug
[ THəg ]
NOUN
a violent person, especially a criminal.
synonyms: ruffian · hooligan · vandal · hoodlum · gangster · villain · criminal · More
historical
a member of a religious organization of robbers and assassins in India. Devotees of the goddess Kali, the Thugs waylaid and strangled their victims, usually travelers, in a ritually prescribed manner. They were suppressed by the British in the 1830s.
Powered by OxfordDictionaries · © Oxford University Press
Of course the Urban Dictionary uses a definition offered by Tupac rather than by linguists who make a study of how a word is actually used. Perhaps, the Councilman just needs to use an actual dictionary.
@po
AHA! The essence, when you say, “Squeek/DBQ, that’s not what is asked, what is asked is to use thugs the same, for all groups.”
Sooo what frigging business is it of yours, what I call people, or the words i use??? Are you one of my parents??? Are you my pastor??? No? Then it is none of your frigging busybody business what words I use to describe a group. I don’t have to do nothing to make you happy. You and the other PC crowd are just pseudo-Puritans trying to control everybody else. Sorry, but you lack “standing”. . .
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
po
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.
To test this I googled University of Maryland Riots. In the local area riots after major UM events drew criticism, but the crowds were not understood to be overwhelmingly black.
The results (a link from the first item in from the google result):
7. University of Maryland – April 1-2, 2002
How it Started:
The University of Maryland defeated Indiana to claim title to the NCAA men’s basketball championship. It was Maryland’s first ever college basketball title and the victory sent fans into a frenzy. An estimated 5,000 hit the streets in celebration. Fueled by excessive alcohol consumption, the mob lit trash cans and couches on fire and started overturning objects in the street.
The Aftermath:
Following the celebratory riot..
As is so common the person trying to reestablish charges of racism after the original charge is discredited has simply made up the circumstances necessary to support his accusation. The more remote the justification for the racism charge the more likely it is simply an assertion backed only by the accusers bias.
Paul, you said it with a racist aim…I was in your mind then, and I could see it :
)
Squeek/DBQ, that’s not what is asked, what is asked is to use thugs the same, for all groups. When it is used for one group and not for other groups, you cannot deny the specificity and therefore the targeting, and therefore the racism.Do that and no one would have quarrel with you. Otherwise…
Nick’s stance on it is the right one. He is not trying to finger people for being too sensitive, he is saying “I use it equally for all”.
Maybe Putin’s term of “hooligans” for pussy riots in Russia would fit better.
I think it’s bizarre that anyone serious accepts President Obama calling someone else a thug. This is a man who commits torture and murder. He’s laughed about his drone kills. He is the living embodiment of a thug. So, it is ridiculous to take him seriously on any issue of violence when he himself is a very violent man.
That said, it isn’t necessarily racist to call another person a thug. Thug has to do with behavior, not color or gender. However, if one is only calling black male rioters “thugs” while simultaneously refusing to call a torturing a murdering president such as Bush and Obama “thugs”, then yes, I would say racism is at work.
@PaulCS
Yeah me too when I wrote my Post-Trayvon Goodnight Prayer! The “Algernon” crowd went crazy. Then, when I did the Trayvonazi Horst Wessel parody, they had to be admitted to hospitals the fits were sooo bad. Hey, does that make me a victim???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
PC is about control. It is about putting people on the defensive about their speech, a precious right in this country. I use the word “thug” for both male and female, and all races. Don’t want to be a thug, don’t act like one. PC is pernicious. It is evil. All people who try and use PC to control how people speak, w/ the intent of controlling how they think, are thugs.
A thug is a thug no matter what color he is, and they are most’y he’s.
When I used the term thug to describe Michael Brown, I was called racist. I had to explain the source of the word.
@po
The “control group” is usually the majority of people, and why in the world should the majority spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to figure out what offends the millions of different little minority groups??? I would imagine that somewhere, a little submissive in full bondage gear, objects to the term, “wage slave” being bandied about. Who gives a f*ck???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
OMG po just used the term “amok”. He is obviously racist against Malaysians or those from Java.. Shame shame shame.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/02/origin-of-the-phrase-run-amok/
The English word most directly comes from the Malay “amuck” (also spelled amuk, and amuco) more or less meaning “attacking furiously” or “attacking with uncontrollable rage” or more aptly “homicidal mania”.
Some theorize this Malay word may have Indian origins or be from the name of a group of professional assassins in Malabar, the “Amuco”. Others theorize that it came from the Malay word “amar”, meaning “fight”, specifically via “Amar-khan”, which was a certain type of warrior. Yet another theory is that the Malay “amuck” ultimately comes from the Sanskrit “amokshya”, meaning “that cannot be loosed”.
See how easy it is to claim racism when you stretch the truth and ignore historical usage of ordinary terms. 😀
@Isaac
Gunga Din??? I remember that movie! The ambush. The British column approaching! The brave bugle call. . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGkg5ytaXlA
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter