well if you are just doing it out of spite then it really doesn’t apply, does it? is this how you normally back up your positions? with exaggerated claims tangential to the actual discussion?
See this is a real “you’re seriously not getting it” moment here. You’re talking about people, on a whim, just deciding to tell people to stop using a word. We’re talking about people who are actually hurt when others use a word.
I am telling you I do. You don’t believe me?
Of course I don’t believe you.
It’s the same thing. You take a perfectly neutral word, and invent a reason for others not to use it. It offends me when you use the word “widespread”. It has sexual connotations. You know, “spread wide” thing. Stop using it.
And I don’t believe you and others when you say that “thug” is offensive to you. It is manufactured offense, from the perpetual victimhood culture.
There are zero people whom you are either fooling or convincing.
I don’t see a point in continuing the discussion (but I’m always open to being proven wrong).
We really need a clip of Ronald Reagan saying “there you go with that mind reading again”.
Enjoy continuing to intentionally hurt people. I don’t know what it can possibly be like to be like you. It takes all kinds I guess.
I am “hurting” them just as much as you’re hurting me by intentionally and maliciously using the word “widespread”.
Well I guess if you are determined - not - to see how it offends people you won’t. God forbid you slow down even 1% with your crusade against victimhood culture.
You’re utterly insensitive against my need for you to stop using the word “widespread”. God forbid you show some sensitivity and stop using this word.
To fail to have sympathy for those sending out clear pain signals is to exhibit either a character flaw or a pathology.
Of course you will not agree that this remark applies to you. So my remark is not really made for your benefit.
I bid you good day sir. I bid you good day.
Richard
This post doesn’t actually prove anything. If I can find a few examples of white people being called thugs, does that prove anything?
What it proves if you don’t want to know. Nobody said the term was a common derogatory term. The claim is that it is starting to be used as one.
It’s just how language works. Nobody’s disagreeing that it’s not a particularly efficient way for language to work, but language is not inherently efficient.
In the same way, the words “gay” and “queer” have perfectly good meanings unrelated to sexual orientation, and no homosexual person has ever decreed that they can’t be used with their original meanings. But most people voluntarily abandoned using them with their original meanings, to avoid connotations of homosexuality. Efficient? No. Natural? Yes.
A closer parallel to the path that the word “thug” seems to be headed down is the evolution of the word “witch”. It originated as a designation for somebody practicing (evil) magic, irrespective of gender: its ancestor in Old English has both masculine and feminine forms, and there are plenty of attestations in pre-modern English usage of the term “witch” being applied to men.
But the gender connotations of “witch” in the broader sense of “woman of unpleasant or malevolent personality” ended up overwhelming its original gender-neutral meaning as “magical practitioner”. You would be very unlikely to call a man a “witch” nowadays, no matter how much sinister occult art he was practicing.
ISTM that in the same way, the racial connotations of “thug” in the broader sense of “a black male of intimidating appearance or ‘edgy’ style” are on their way to overwhelming its original race-neutral meaning as “brutally violent (usually male) person”.
Again, I’m not pointing that out to forbid you from intending the word “thug” in a race-neutral way, and I’m not jumping to the conclusion that any use of “thug” necessarily implies the speaker is racist. I’m just describing what seems to me like a familiar sort of linguistic evolution where, just as “witch” became a general term of disparagement for a woman whether or not she casts spells, “thug” is likely becoming a general term of disparagement for a black male whether or not he’s brutally violent.
I think you’re confusing a passing fad with the broad sweep of language changes that take place over decades and centuries. I’ll be shocked if “thug” as a racial slur is even a thing 20 years from now.
Piffle.
You keep dancing around the fact that two people who have, themselves, had to struggle to overcome racism used a word that is, for the majority of people, not a racial word.
Nothing I said could be construed to indicate that a person could not be accused of racism because he or she was black. That was your unfounded inference.
And neither of the twits that I so identified are my opponents. I have had no exchanges with them on any level. You keep inventing things over which to be offended.
And since I never said any such thing, I have to wonder what your motivation might be for asserting and repeating this baseless claim. I have noted in multiple other threads that institutional racism affects the behavior of all members of a society. That you have inferred a meaning from my earlier statement that both contradicts my general position and that does not actually appear in my statement in this thread simply indicates that you are going out of your way to find offense.
So in your imaginary world, the meaning of thug is irrelevant and had the mayor and president used the words criminals or rioters to condemn the violence, Stokes and Bryant would have been every bit as justified in condemning Obama or Rawlings-Blake, since the meaning of the words are irrelevant and the important point would be to avoid criticizing people who were causing mayhem in black neighborhoods?
It could be a fad. But really you need to ask black people if they view it as a fad. They are much more sensitive to this type of treatment. By sensitive I mean, aware. When it’s not directed at white people it is hard for us to detect.
We’ll see. But what seems to be happening to “thug” is not at all atypical of the way derogatory terms get specifically attached to lower-status groups.
I missed the edit window in my last post to include the example of a similar shift in meaning of the word slut/sluttish, originally applicable to dirty/untidy/slovenly persons of either gender. “Slut” is now a fairly thoroughly feminized slur for a sexually indiscriminate woman.