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.
po – it was an ad hominem attack.
Po, I just laugh at these people, guffaw at their inanity daily.
My solutions are make the first two years of college free. Free birth control. Loosen up abortion restrictions. Stop voter suppression. Raise the minimum wage. Create jobs in this country, stop incentives to shipping jobs overseas. Stop the outlandish trade agreements. Just for starters. Ohhh yes stop police abuse and the piling on of charges and fees. Repatriate money from offshore tax havens, tax the rich, more. Universal healthcare.
Inga – my solutions. Flat tax of 10% on all incomes. No deductions. Free trade. Get rid of the minimum wage. Cut the salary of all Congresspeople by 50%. Get rid of the EPA. Dept of Ed, Dept of Commerce and Dept of Labor, to begin with. Cut all federal employees by 50%
@BFM
I think it reasonable to assume that the effect of slavery would be most evident in the 1880’s studies. If at that time, 80+% of blacks were in marriages, then I would follow that 20% would be the upper limit of the effects of slavery. And, that that particular influence would decrease over time, over the 135 years since then.
As for Jim Crow, obviously it was worse in 1940, and if at that time, the discrimination was the sole and only cause of illegitimacy, then the upper limit would be the 15%.
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.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Still no solutions from Squeeky, only more squeaking.
@Po
Let’s see. I caught you admitting that the war on poverty bears some blame in this, and your response is, “uh, er, uh, well, maybe the war on poverty means different things to us???. . .” Yeah sure. You are just dissembling because you know you’re wrong. Just go ahead and admit it. Nobody’s perfect.
Then, as to the slavemaster family-busting factor, you are now admitting that is also a silly factor to blame for thug activities 150 years after slavery died.
Now, you are moving on to Lead Poisoning as the reason for the thugs acting up! Hmmm. Has it occurred to you yet that the reason you are having these problems and the reason you are having to grasp at straws is simply because you have been wrong in your initial premises??? That the reason why there is so much black thuggery is more related to family breakdown than some sort of variation on the racism theme???
Because if you are ready for that step, then maybe you can start being a part of a solution instead of making the problems worse.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Oops, sex lives. Or their actions in any walk of life unless it’s illegal.
Well Byron, you don’t have that right to put conditions someone’s se lives, sorry. How is that even remotely libertarian?
Inga – all we hear from you are complaints. Don’t see you offering solutions.
po – love the back handed ad hominem attack on Nick.
Po, I absolutely love that he is going from thread to thread telling his acolytes to ignore “trolls”. Yet he like to pretend to be a champion of free speech, lol. What he doesn’t realize is, I absolutely love saying what I want and not having to deal with retorts and responses from these people. He is doing me a HUGE favor.
Byron, Tax policy is supposed to promote positive behavior, like mortgage interest being deductible to support home ownership. With liberals in charge, tax policy supports highly dysfunctional behavior. I think we need a tax revolt.
Well, I am being forced to pay taxes, seems to me sauce meet goose. When you take money from someone they can put conditions on the money, it happens all the time in business and banking. I want to borrow money, well I have to follow the rules of the lender.
Why should I have to support the children of poor women? I am not the one having sex with them. Maybe that is an idea, poor women should be forced to have sex with taxpayers? Then it would be one big family and it really would take a village.
Arent liberals hung up on the Bonobo and all the sex they have to strengthen family bonds? We could become one big Bonobo country, all funded by tax payers. Well at least we would get some strange once in awhile.
Byron – your sex for welfare is the thread champion. Got a big smile out of me.
Squeek, I noticed you acknowledged the war on poverty, which am sure means a different thing to you than it does to me…are you saying that the other wars I listed are non-existent?
And let’s not be lazy here…obviously I am not saying that 150 year old slaves are directly responsible for the rioting in Baltimore…you know that quite well…
in response to your saying that the rioting is directly linked to the welfare state, enabled by the democrats, which caused the breakdown of the black family, I offered many other factors some psychological, ome physical (like Freddie Gray and other Baltimore kids having twice the rate of lead poisoning that kids generally have) , some economic, some social, some legal, some educational…all of which undermine your conclusion.
I am not expected to change your ideology of finger pointing, at this point it is deeply ingrained…
po – there is a whole raft of things you can blame it on, including climate change. I suggest you read Wealth of Nations, then come back to this discussion with Squeeky.
And Byron, Squeeky loathes the libertarian philosophy. I’ve heard her on numerous occasions bashing libertarians and objectivism.
Byron, just HOW is Squeeky going to force men to marry the women they impregnate? Just how is Squeeky going to force women to not get pregnant and collect AFDC? I’d love to hear your solutions to getting people to do what you think they should do.
Squeeky:
are you a hater? you don’t seem like it.
Annie:
Squeeky is proposing marriage, stability, work. I know those things are foreign ideas for liberals, well except for their own families. They don’t want the competition from the underclass so they keep them down on the farm and pregnant. God forbid a poor person goes to Harvard or Yale, I know they let some of the riff raff in from time to time but on the whole, well NIMBY comes to mind.
Still awaiting with bated breath SOLUTIONS to this problem. Byron, do you have solutions? Just how are we going to FORCE black men to marry the women they impregnate?
And the crowd chants, “SQUEEKY, SQUEEKY, SQUEEKY,” as she ignores the trolls taunts and questions and kicks butt on another one. BTW Squeek, Byron is a GREAT veteran commenter. He left for awhile, but hopefully he’s back to stay. You can trust him. Byron is good people who helped me a lot when I walked into this place when it was incredibly hostile. I owe him.
@po
??? You asked just above, “Are you saying that . . the war on poverty . . .ha[s] NO effect on what we see right now?”
No. I am saying just the opposite. That the welfare state has helped more than any other factor to create the mess in Baltimore. Apparently you now agree with me! Good! There is hope for you!
If a slavemaster separated a family in 1865, the last year of slavery, and a child of that was 1 year old, that child would now be 150 years old. That would the lower age limit. A slave who was 20 years old in 1865, would now be 170 years old. I do not think that 150 year old+ people are responsible for the thugs in Baltimore. Particularly since we know from the above STUDY
That year was but 15 years removed from the last year of slavery. Then we know from the above STUDY that in 1940, the black illegitimate birth rate was 15%. That is 1/5 of what it is today. There were probably a few ex-slaves kicking around, since that was 75 years after the last year of slavery, but they would have been kids back in 1865. But even with very remote time connection, the rate was only 15%. Sooo, I am just not finding any big slavery connection here.
You are only seeing, what you want to see.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
Po
Put in layman terms, you have your opinion, and you ain’t going to let no facts get in the way of it! …even though, the post big welfare state increase is far in excess of any possible racial component.
Even back then, when there were separate drinking fountains throughout the South, and the slave masters were pretty much all dead, the rate was only 15%. Now, it’s 70%+, and you still want to blame Jim Crow and the slave masters.
Face it, po, you are not a reasonable person. You are simply an ideologue with a partisan axe to grind. And one whose false ideas, and wrongheaded opinions are hurting the very people you profess to care about.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
——————————————
Fascinating to hear the pot call the kettle…black! There is only one ideologue among the two of us, Squeek and it is certainly you. What is my ideology? What are my false ideas?
Are you saying that the war on drugs and its targeting of blacks, the war on poverty and its targeting of blacks, the war on education and its targeting of blacks, the battle for prison profit and its targeting of blacks and finally the legacy of prying children off the hands of mothers and selling off fathers have NO effect on what we see right now?
if I am wrong, prove it.
These are things we see right now, and we see the effects right now. We see the causes and we see the effects as we speak…trying to reach out decades ago to explain what is happening right now is to lie to yourselves.
And to frame the debate in terms of democrats and republicans is again, a distraction.