Quote:
Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen
But, I'm sure the use of "thug" to describe him exploded after video was released of him in the convenient shop. And that had much more to do with his actions than his race.
If these 'certain voices' were to call Eric Garner and John Crawford as "thugs," I think there's a very heavy argument to argue they are using it with subtle (or not so subtle) racist connotations.
To describe a man who robbed, attacked, and intimidated a much smaller convenient shop worker as a "thug" though? I don't know if I buy into the argument that they actually want to describe him as a ###### but can't.
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I agree with you and was not trying to suggest that these people are using thug as a euphemism for the n-word. In fact, the type of people I'm thinking of would *not* use the n-word. They think they're just making an objective appraisal of what's going on rather than overtly promoting racism and discrimination.
Was Brown a thug? Perhaps. I'll leave it to you to decide the appropriate word. But the people describing him as a thug aren't necessarily putting his pros and cons on a scale and deciding that "thug" is the most apt word. Rather, they're describing him as a thug because it (in their mind) aptly describes and segregates him into that "group" that they are not fond of. These are the people who circulate emails and facebook posts showing a picture of Brown posing with a gun; they then have free rein to editorialize about how they're just looking at the "evidence" to show that he's a thug.
Of course the picture that circulated was a fake. But their desire to fit Brown into a preconceived narrative was not. And no, I don't think they were also scouring the internet to see if there were pictures of Wilson acting as a "thug."