Thug has been a racist dog whistle for like 10 years by now, at least.
My favorite is “urban youth.”
“Just stop calling people thugs, hoodlums, trailer trash, criminals, illegals, etc, and refer to them as people. Problem solved.”
Is this a serious idea or was I “whooshed”? Can we not call someone a criminal until after they have been convicted in court? If you are burning down buildings and stealing shit you are a …? What? What do you call them? Just “People burning down buildings and stealing shit”? That’s quite a mouthful. I think I’ll call a spade a spade (no racism or pun intended) and call them criminals and thugs.
:dubious: Yikes. I, for one, am perfectly happy to go on record as saying we can’t use “the brothers” to refer to random groups of black people who don’t happen to be fraternally related.
And yeah, I’ve noticed the word “thug” devolving into dogwhistle for “young black man” for a while now. It’s somewhere in between “media elites” as dogwhistle for “Jews” and “hos” as dogwhistle for “young black women”.
I’ve been teaching in urban high schools for over a decade, and “thug” has implied “tough black gangsta-kinda kid” for as long as I’ve been here. It sometimes is applied to a hispanic or white or Asian, kid, but only if you want to imply that he’s acting like a “tough black gangsta-kinda kid”.
I can totally believe that if you live and work in suburbia you don’t come across this usage, but it’s absolutely a real thing.
Who later become “Welfare queens”.
Yes, though like I said earlier I think the issue here is when the label is self applied (or when a group self identifies with a label or what a label implies) verse when someone outside applies the same label in perhaps a derogatory way. I guess people outside of the culture don’t realize that the label of thug has been something that’s self applied and an ideal (so to speak) for a long time now…or why someone else, from the outside applying it might hit a raw nerve. I can totally see why people are pissed off to have that label applied to them by outsiders who don’t know what they are saying (or, maybe do and are using it as a broad brush). Regardless, this isn’t a ‘Sudden Rush to Redefine "Thug’ as a Racial Slur’.
Bravely spoken, King Canute. But I don’t think it’s going to work.
Usually, once non-bigots begin to notice that bigots are using a formerly neutral term as a dogwhistle for bigotry, the neutrality of the term has already taken a severe and irreversible hit. The people being dogwhistled about have generally started to recognize the word as a dogwhistle.
I’m not saying that you’re being racist for wanting to keep using the word “thug” as a race-neutral term, and I’m not going to call you racist if you do keep using it, because I know what you mean by it.
I’m just saying that as time goes by, it’s going to become more and more likely that people who don’t know you will think that using the word “thug” makes you sound like a racist.
But I’m not seeing how that makes it racist. If I and my peers use “Suburbanite” to mean dorky, white, khaki-wearing office dweller whose life is pretty well devoid of excitement or meaning, consuming wealth and resources without purpose, does that make it unacceptable for a black urban college professor talking-head on PBS to talk about the “suburbanite” vote, or how “suburbanites” vote their self-interest to the detriment of the urban community? “Suburbanite” is still a perfectly reasonable and valid descriptor, even though my community has added our own meaning.
I realize that suburbanite lacks the negative denotation of thug, but there is a negative connotation.
It’s when the term gets detached from a specific type of behavior and starts becoming code for racial category that its acceptability is called into question. Cf. Jon Stewart’s comments on media use of “thug”:
I get the point about wanting to preserve the useful word “thug” to refer to brutal violent people irrespective of their race. But when common usage has shifted to the point where “thug” is routinely applied in the media to black people who aren’t committing violence but withheld from white people who are committing violence, then I think that ship may have sailed.
I do not see any evidence that “common usage” has shifted n any way. Note the Google hits posted previously. While there was a slightly heavier association with blacks than whites, there was no preponderance of black over white usage.
I am particularly amused that the cries that this word is terrible is first directed at a black president and a black mayor. Given that the Baltimore police immediately launched an investigation into Gray’s treatment by members of their own organization and given that the riots destroyed property in mostly black neighborhoods, Councilman Stokes and Reverend Bryant strike me as just stupid. There is not (yet) any evidence of a cover up and burning one’s own or one’s neighbor’s business does little to call attention to racism and much to confirm the racist beliefs of those who hold them.
But I don’t think “suburbanite” implies “white”. It implies a member of the middle class, it implies white collar job, it implies a certain type of provincialism, and yes, it’s mildly insulting, but it doesn’t imply race. “Thug”, at least the way it’s broadly used in my experience.
Really? For example, in a Yahoo Answers question:
“McDonald’s In Houston Ban Sagging Pants Angers The Hood! (Thugs Aren’t Lovin’ It!)”
And I’m not going to click on or link to any of the sites that advertise cinematic performances by “Hot Young Thugs XXX”, but rest assured that there are lots of them.
None of the black boys and young men referenced or shown in connection with such uses of “thug” are committing any kind of violence or brutality. The word “thug” is being used in these cases not to mean people who are actually brutal and violent, but to signify black boys and young men who wear certain kinds of extreme fashions or have a certain kind of swaggering attitude.
In contrast, white boys or young men who swagger around in loud groups with silly clothing and hairstyles are generally described as “dudebro” or “fratboy” types or “party animals”, not as “thugs”.
That kind of racial distinction is what makes me think that “thug” is on its way to becoming primarily a racist epithet, despite the facts that its original meaning is race-neutral and a lot of people still want to use it in a race-neutral way.
I don’t get the joke. What’s funny about that?
Well, that’s their problem, not mine. I’m not going to parse my vocabulary because of what someone else might think. If someone is acting like a thug, I reserve the right to call them a thug regardless of their race.
Now, if people who would normally use ‘thug" DO change their actions because of what idiots think, then those people are contributing to the idiots’ taking over the use of that word.
Fair enough. If somebody is wearing saggy pants and dreadlocks and a backwards baseball cap and boasting and arguing loudly with their friends on a street corner, are they “acting like a thug”?
I didn’t know that “media elites” meant Jews. Or maybe I should say that I didn’t know you consider “media elites” to mean Jews?
Isn’t “hos” a common term in many rap songs? Debbie Harry should be ashamed of herself for debuting the rap video on MTV. I wonder if she would have done it if she knew it would eventually lead to “young black women” being repeatedly called “hos” by rap musicians?
This, of course, ignores the fact that those clothing choices are a direct emulation of styles popularized by criminals. (Low hanging pants, for example, being an effort to emulate the condition of prisoners whose belts have been removed, and so on.)
As to the “joke,” I suppose that it is more tragic than humorous that some twits are accusing prominent black people of racism when those black leaders are condemning senseless violence that has harmed more black citizens than white citizens. Perhaps I should have employed the word "ridiculous,"noting that such people should be the subject of scornful laughter.
Hmm, I made this same point about Cisgender. But you seem to disagree there, eh? No matter how useful it is, no matter it’s origins- if it’s a hate slur, it’s a hate slur. Right?
Are they acting violently, or committing acts of violence? If not, then they are not “acting like a thug” according to the generally acceptable dictionary definition of the word “thug”.
People who are ignorant of the generally acceptable dictionary definition of the word thug, can chose to remain ignorant, or they can make up their own definition for the word. I do not have to accept their made-up definition.
I guess we could all go to using the term “those people” or “you people” instead of calling them thugs. I’m sure that everyone would then be happy with the language used.
Agreed. It’s not quite the same but I’m reminded of people whining about how the word “gay” was now associated with “homosexuals” and this somehow ruined Christmas traditions because kids started snickering at the use of the phrase “Don we now our gay apparel”.
Languages and words evolve.