Here’s my answer on why I am having trouble accepting it.
Until two days ago, I had never, ever heard it used as code, nor had I heard anyone complain about it’s usage. We have some people in this thread doing contortions- saying that its racial tones come from people in the black community using it on each other as they would the n-word, and somehow that (in part) puts it off-limits for other groups. Personally, I have an issue in general with people deciding that a word is OK for one group to use but not another, although that’s a different debate.
This has completely come out of the blue for me, and I’m a pretty liberal, well-read guy who actually, you know, pays attention to the world around me.
I wonder if there were a scholarly way to measure it, if we wouldn’t find that government/police are the most common targets of the word. Youth in general are more likely to be seen as thugs, and that’s probably as old as old people. I have seen Putin regularly referred to as a thug- is it only OK if the target is white?
The question isn’t whether we can find some instances of thug used as a slur, the question is whether its a common usage. And so far I haven’t seen evidence of it.
If you come into my high school and are talking to my students-most of whom are freakishly brilliant-and you use the term “thug”, they are going to assume you mean the racial overtones. Because that’s how it’s used by the youth, especially in cities. It’s not ignorant people have the “wrong” meaning vs intelligent people have the “right” one. It’s a meaning that is context specific. And when someone is speaking on a national stage, they should be aware of that and chose their words based on an understanding of how they would be heard.
That’s fine, and I don’t know of anyone who’s arguing that the word is completely off-limits.
However, if I encounter you using the word “thug” primarily in reference to African American men, you betcha I’ll consider that a good reason to suspect racist overtones. That is, after all, one of the ways the word gets used.
Frylock says it should be off-limits when referring to blacks and Sarafeena says that anytime you call a white kid a thug that you’re using code. I’d say that close enough to saying it’s off-limits.
I’ll let them clarify, but I don’t think you’ve exactly got what they’re saying.
The alternative is to treat each use of the word in isolation, which means that I’m a lot likelier to conclude any use of “thug” to apply to a black person implicates the racist definition.
Linguistics doesn’t say that words are defined solely by the thoughts in the speaker’s head. The social context and the experience of the listeners also play a role.
And I also don’t think that anyone is saying that all uses of the word “thug” are racist. It’s a growing acknowledgment in the general public that it has been adopted for racist uses by a slowly growing group of people.
No one is “redefining” it as a racial slur. They are spreading awareness of its growing use as one.
As an aside, regarding etymology, it originated in “thak,” meaning “trickster” or “deceiver.” The m.o. of thaks was to befriend travelers and when they least expected it to strangle them with a special cloth with a coin attached at one end.
The ritual killing was supposedly in devotion to Kali, but of course the thaks—who usually worked in small groups rather than individually— would get to keep the proceeds.
Membership in the cult was secret. In his home village, a thak might hold a position of authority or trust.
And as said above, thaks were a tiny minority of those who worshipped Kali. Kali is very popular, particularly in Bengal, and particularly among the upper classes of Bengal.
In Bengal, blood sacrifice to Kali is still practiced—goats usually. Of course the goats are subsequently eaten. Goat meat is a common component of Bengali cuisine. Most other Hindu deities are given only vegetarian offerings.
I, for one, have no sense or appreciation of context, and use each and every word only with the most strict dictionary definition in mind. There is no such thing as a dog whistle, except, you know, the literal dog whistle. I never so much as wink conspiritorially after using certain words.
There’s more going on here than just the meaning of a particular word. A certain faction likes the fact that certain young criminals are sticking it to The Man and all, but they’re not quite ballsy enough to come out and say it. The most they can bring themselves to do is put on an etiquette class to try to limit others’ ability to criticize said criminals. If people stopped calling them thugs and started calling them hoodlums, then they would say you can’t call them hoodlums, either.
I always associated thug more with white criminals. Muggers, bullies, and so on. Often tattooed, bald and very,very big! Like a bouncer at a bar. They are often thugs.
Of course what is involved is a degree of resistance to our law enforcement system’s decades-long policy to create a “criminal class” in the first place, to label people as members of this class to justify any degree of oppression against them.
It’s a vicious circle. Policy pushes people towards criminal acts. Criminal acts define you as a criminal. Further oppressive policies are justified against members of a criminal class.
That’s why we hear “he was no angel.” Anything you do to a non-angel is justified. But that’s a distraction. Even non-Angels—especially them—have rights.
It probably gets you around the paywall because you have a cookie indicating registration or a subscription or whatnot.
Anyway, isn’t this explicitly against boards rules? Just shoving a link (even a working link) out into the world like an orphaned puppy without any opinion or commentary or question whatsoever?
Yeah, this. If I don’t think of the Indian stranglers, I think of a certain cartoon character; for example, ‘Nick’ from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, who was the henchman of ‘Mugsy’ before ‘Rocky’ took his place. When I hear ‘thug’, I generally think of a cartoon of a large White guy with five o’clock shadow, wearing a cheap suit coat over a turtleneck sweater, and an ‘English driving cap’.
