@ohmomof2, the only article I see in post #191 is the NY Post article about the 2015 riot. You keep saying that the fact that the media didn’t call the kids at Ohio State thugs “proves” that the term is racist, but I just don’t see it as a persuasive argument.
I think they are different events that were perceived and addressed differently, not because of the race of the primary participants, but because drunk college kids burning trash are different than people throwing rocks at police and causing millions of dollars of damage over several days.
As I said, if you want to make the argument that the protagonists in Baltimore were treated differently than the Occupy Wall Street people who turned violent, I think you could make a more persuasive case. But again, the difference in treatment in those cases, to the extent it exists, is going to be the lionization of the Occupy protesters by people of impeccable progressive credentials so I assume it would be harder to impute base motives.
And speaking of using specific terms for specific races, let’s look at this transcript from “The League” (this particular episode aired in 2010 I believe) - this joke (a very often quoted one) doesn’t arise out of nothing:
Andre: I met this doctor, Dr. Maxwell. Real class act.
Pete: Is he…black?
Andre: How’d you know?
Pete: Nine times out of ten, when a sportscaster is referring to someone as a “class act”, they’re talking about a head coach who’s black. “Tony Dungy, what a class act.”
Kevin: “Total. Lovie Smith—class act.”
Andre: I never noticed that. I mean, it happens all the time?
Kevin: It’s not just football. Sportscasters use these code words in all sports. If they’re talking about a Latino player in baseball, like, “Ozzie Guillen is a…”
Ruxin: Firecracker. Latin guys are always firecrackers.
Kevin: “…firecracker.”
Pete: Spark plug.
Kevin: Spark plug in the clubhouse.
Ruxin: Wes Welker is like a gym rat, a real scrappy player.
Kevin: Which is code word for “white.”
Ruxin: Always a white guy.
Kevin: Ichiro Suzuki is…
Taco: Inscrutable.
“wouldn’t say that the young woman with the backpack in the Yale video was acting like a “thug”. She didn’t bludgeon the Master of Silliman College. She shouted him down. We don’t arrest college students for that particular behavior”
To be clear I wasn’t talking about Yale. I was talking about the students at Mizzou who surrounded the president’s car, preventing it from advancing. As a mob would do. I said they looked like they were acting like thugs. I agree the Yale girl’s behavior would not be like that of a thug. There might be other words to describe her behavior – rude, hostile, impassioned, inappropriate - but thug / criminal / hoodlum etc aren’t among them.
What I said was that the term thug is usually used to refer to black people rioting or whatever, not to white people doing more or less the same thing.
So we can use OSU-Michigan 2002 instead of OSU-Ducks 2015. Or any of the other 6-7 riots I referred to earlier. In general those white rioters weren’t even called rioters, nevermind thugs.
“What I said was that the term thug is usually used to refer to black people rioting or whatever, not to white people doing more or less the same thing.”
Let’s suppose that the above is true (I don’t know). How does that then make it the equivalent of the n word?
I didn’t say it was the equivalent of the n word. I said it’s more often used to describe black people than white people. Someone else may have compared thug to the n word but it wasn’t me.
YOU are the one who asked if it was OK for you to use the n word since Tupac used it, in post #130.
I didn’t read this whole thread, but I must say that it kind of blows my mind that we have a national incident focused on Yale over the fact that a dean very politely reminded students to not be offensive in their Halloween costume choices…and suddenly people think that’s a bad thing.
People seem to forget that “free speech” only means that the government cannot censor your speech or imprison you for it. It does not free you from the reprisals and consequences that come with making offensive or incendiary speech to other people. It also does not proscribe private businesses and organizations from dictating what you can and can’t wear. My boss could fire me tomorrow because she didn’t like my shirt. And Yale can absolutely tell their students how to dress.
Let’s face it: not all speech is equally valuable or deserves a platform.
Consider for a moment how an African American student feels when they walk into a Halloween party and see someone in blackface, dressed as a caricature of their very person. (This has actually happened to me. We tried “tell[ing] them [we] are offended” in very polite, neutral tones. It ended in the people in blackface threatening us and us leaving the bar so we didn’t get hurt.)
“And Yale can absolutely tell their students how to dress”
The schools relationship to their students is different than an employers relationship to its employees. In most states the employment is “at will” while the student would be compared to a customer.
“Consider for a moment how an African American student feels when they walk into a Halloween party and see someone in blackface, dressed as a caricature of their very person. (This has actually happened to me. We tried “tell[ing] them [we] are offended” in very polite, neutral tones. It ended in the people in blackface threatening us and us leaving the bar so we didn’t get hurt.)”
As to your second point, it might work better than you think. Granted, the immediate impact may seem as if you “lost”, however in the scenario you suggested you are the people looking reasonable and the people in black face are the ones looking like “thugs” so to speak. Most reasonable people would sympathize with your position and you probably persuaded more people than you realize that what you experienced was in fact offensive.
The term “thug” to me brings to mind the mafia and the guys used to intimidate, they were the bosses “thugs”. Thugs are those who intimidate either by using force or threatening violence. Any number of people can behave as thugs. If you behave that way you will get called that.
“People seem to forget that “free speech” only means that the government cannot censor your speech or imprison you for it. It does not free you from the reprisals and consequences that come with making offensive or incendiary speech to other people.* It also does not proscribe private businesses and organizations from dictating what you can and can’t wear. * My boss could fire me tomorrow because she didn’t like my shirt. And Yale can absolutely tell their students how to dress”
Uh, not quite. Didn’t the Supreme Court rule AGAINST Abercrombie & Fitch for not allowing an employee to wear hijab (headscarf)?
Students at Yale are more like customers of a store than store employees, though certainly you’re right in that private colleges can dictate dress codes (as some of the Christian colleges do). I don’t think Yale really wants to be in the business of dictating dress codes other than ensuring they follow appropriate New Haven public-decency rules.
Just want to clarify, @Pizzagirl, did you watch the youtube video I linked where I showed that the following is completely false:
Just want to know if after actually watching them (after presumably simply reading someone else’s interpretation) you still think calling them thugs is appropriate and if so, do you refer to the Sons of Liberty (the group that perpetrated the Boston Tea Party) and ACT UP (the famous AIDS activist group based in NYC) as thugs as well? If you’re unfamiliar with ACT UP and their demonstrations, I recommend watching How to Survive a Plague (http://surviveaplague.com/). It was on Netflix, not sure if it still is.