Thou shalt not call them thugs. Chi Trib has goods on candidate the news room loves to hate. His twitter site "liked" a "thug"-strewn comment. . .
Plus a disquisition on thug and sundry observations on same . . .
Thug as racist term “"liked” by Vallas Twitter account is a grabber for anti-Vallas Chi Trib news room, which appears all out to distance themselves from Col. McCormick-like editorial page which endorsed the V-man:
V. had already been outed for similar misdemeanor on Facebook. Chi trib news gang (I say it affectionately!) is thorough if not much else on outing the V-man. Have they checked him on Instagram? God knows what’s next.
BTW, looking for tidbits on this Johnson fellow. Was he once caught rooting for the Packers? Any little thing will do. The gossip column’s waiting.
The latest down-and-dirty, twitter style:
June 2022, weeks after jumping into the mayor’s race, Vallas’ account liked a comment that refers to “thugs” under a Vallas-account post lamenting an apparent “smash and grab crime spree” that encompassed Edison Park and suburban Lincolnwood.
Where thugs normally do not roam . . .
“Then as usual these thugs make their way to the collar counties, however in DuPage they are chased, apprehended, and then held and charged,” the [liked] comment said. “The thugs are almost always surprised by that!”
The term “thug” has been criticized as racially insensitive and used to disparage Black people, Chi Trib story continued [without explaining].
What’s more:
Vallas’ profile also employed the word “thug” in a June 2021 post that said, “The breakdown of the lawlessness can (be) seen in the videos of young thugs climbing on police cars while they are patrolling and the police cannot do anything about it.”
His account liked a comment under that post that read: “So many things to see in this beautiful city but you can’t anymore. As long as the liberal politicians are at the helm, letting these thugs run wild, it’s over with. No thanks, I’ll spend my money where it’s thug free and I feel safe.”
An aggressive and violent young criminal
- hood [slang], hoodlum, goon [informal], punk [N. Amer, informal], tough [informal], toughie [informal], strong-armer
On the other hand, consider this from the groves of academe, in which the widely respected John McWhorter is asked (in 2015) about this matter. The interviewer -- on NPR -- introduces the matter:
A certain five-letter word has been used repeatedly over the last few days.
(SOUNDBITE) MAYOR STEPHANIE RAWLINGS-BLAKE: ...The thugs who only want to incite violence...
(SOUNDBITE) GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: ...Our city of Baltimore to be taken over by thugs...
(SOUNDBITE) PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: ...And thugs who tore up the place.
Interviewer:
Thugs, the word chosen by President Obama, Maryland's governor, Baltimore's mayor and others to describe those who looted and burned stores in Baltimore and in some cases that were later retracted with an apology.
So why is thug so charged? John McWhorter has been thinking about this. He teaches linguistics at Columbia University and often writes about language and race. Welcome back to the program.
MCWHORTER: Thank you, Melissa.
Melissa: John, I've been looking at the Merriam-Webster definition of thug, and it describes it as a brutal ruffian or assassin. What's the origin of this word?
MCWHORTER: Well, the word originates in India as a word for roughly that. And because the British ran India for a good long time, the word jumped the rails from Indian languages to English, and that's the reason that we in America have used the word for a very long time. And until rather recently, it did mean what you might call a ruffian, but of course, things have changed.
Melissa: Well, how have they changed?
MCWHORTER: Well, the truth is that thug today is a nominally polite way of using the N-word. Many people suspect it, and they are correct.
I did not know that!
McWhorter, continued:
When somebody talks about thugs ruining a place, it is almost impossible today that they are referring to somebody with blond hair.
What? Blondies don’t ruin places? And if they did, we wouldn't call them thugs?
It is a sly way of saying there go those black people ruining things again. [Sly? Because they were black people ruining things and deserved to be called that.] And so anybody who wonders whether thug is becoming the new N-word doesn't need to. It's most certainly is.
So no more
He means that when I see a black couple walking their children down our street minding their own business or my black pastor (as in 2015) greeting us all with winning smile, I call them thugs? Listen, I'm old as the hills, but I still have my wits about me. It doesn’t work that way.
Melissa: Although . . . in two of the pieces of tape that we played, we heard from an African-American mayor of Baltimore and an African-American president of the United States using that word.
MCWHORTER: Yep, and that is because just like the N-word, we have another one of these strangely bifurcated words. Thug in the black community, for about the past 25 to 30 years, has also meant ruffian, but there is a tinge of affection.
A thug in black people's speech is somebody who is a ruffian but in being a ruffian is displaying a healthy sort of countercultural initiative, displaying a kind of resilience in the face of racism etc. Of course nobody puts it that way, but that's the feeling.
And so when black people say it, they don't mean what white people mean, and that's why I think Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Barack Obama saying it means something different from the white housewife wherever who says it.
So white people's writ (of supremacy?) does not cover everything. The things they don’t know!
Melissa: You're saying that African-American, in this case, politicians, who use the word thug should be given a pass because they understand it in a different way? I mean, the mayor certainly walked back her use of the word. She didn't want to be associated with it. She said, you know, “I spoke out of frustration. They're really misguided young people.”
I like that. There go those misguided young people, wrecking things. And look out, it might catch on. People will take offense, asking, What do you mean, misguided?
MCWHORTER: No, because I think that if an African-American woman uses the word thug today, we're not always conscious of all these overtones in the words that we use. [I would say so.] But I think that when she said it, she didn't mean it the same way as her white equivalent would. [No way of telling!] The word means two things, just like the N-word. [When blacks say it, anyhow] And I think all of us are sophisticated enough to wrap our heads around that.
Oh. So the A-A woman gets a pass. But what if a white winked when he said it, indicating he had wrapped his head around it without getting dizzy?
Stop! The man said, and I stopped.
Ah yes, I had a call from the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest publisher some years back about the column I had just submitted in which I quoted blacks using the no-no word to each other on Oak Park Avenue -- a friendly explanation as to why the column as printed would use the substitute, inoffensive word I had used.
Of course, and you look it up in then-Chi Trib managing editor F. Richard Ciccone's excellent Royko: A Life in Print,
Noun: thug thúg