The Racist Origins of the term “Thug”.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

Interesting article purporting to explain the historically racial connotations of the word thug.

The word tuggee comes from Hindi thag ‘thief’, from Sanskrit sthaga ‘scoundrel’, from sthagati ‘to conceal’. It was an Indian network of secret fraternities, cult-like in many ways, who were engaged in robbing and killing British colonialist. To the British, any brown-skinned face that they saw on the road, or in their imagination, was a “thug” coming to get them, while they innocently made their way through the lands they exploited and colonized.

This is the origin of the term “thug”, as many Indian words passed into common English during British Imperial rule of India. British colonists, however, did not refer to other European imperialists as “thugs,” it was specifically a term in British parlance for the dark skinned “natives” that they feared.

The article also mentions what deceased rapper Tupac Shakur had to say about it way back in 1993:

Cause these white folks see us as thugs
I don’t care if you think you a lawyer, if you a man, if you an ‘African-American’
If you whatever the f*ck you think you are
We thugs and n*gg@s to these motherf*ckers…

On edit: As I said, above, the article purports to show historical racist usage of thug. I don't claim to know if that is correct. But a lot of this thread has been focused more on whether or not thug is currently a racist word. I believe that when certain people use the term thug far more readily to describe a black male than a white male, despite the behavior or characteristics of the white and black males in question being the same, then it is being used in a racist way.

Some argue that this isn't happening because they haven't personally have witnessed it, which seems a pretty weak argument.

However, I do think some are reacting as if they are being accused of being racist if they use the word thug. In my opinion anyway, not every use of the word thug is racist. However, don't be surprised if you call a black male a thug and he takes it as racist.

[XemaSab]

1. Tupac wasn't exactly fleeing from the term

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

5. About that...

Emblazoned across the stomach of the late Tupac Shakur was arguably one of the most famous tattoos in the history of popular culture. “T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.” became a mid-90’s mantra, and echoes of the same were heard from the inner city, to suburbia, to the wide open spaces of rural America.

A complex and controversial artist, the message intended by Tupac’s tattoo was often assumed to convey something sinister or criminal in nature. In fact, the opposite is true. Tupac’s tattoo served as a heart-breaking, yet honest, and even prophetic word for a nation sorely in neglect of the youngest members of its society. The acronym stood for “The hate you give little infants f**** everyone.”

More here.

[XemaSab]

9. And what about the machine gun?

What did that secretly stand for?

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

14. Oh, now I see what you're trying to do.

I responded to your first reply by talking about the THUG LIFE tattoo because, since the word thug is the focus of my OP, I thought that particular tattoo was why you posted the pic.

As for what the rest of one particular black man's tattoos have to do with the word thug and how it's used by racist whites to disparage other black men they fear or dislike, I'd have to say, Nothing.

But, if you're curious about Tupac Shakur's tattoos for some other reason, you could google it

[Gravitycollapse]

19. "50 Niggaz"

"50 Niggaz: 50 Niggaz stands for 1 black from every state of the USA, all them niggaz would be stronger than every weapon, if they would be united"

http://www.2pac2k.de/tattoos.html



Now you can remove your foot from your mouth.

[XemaSab]

40. Here's my problem with Tupac:

He was a smart guy from a smart background pretending to be a moron.

Getting tattoos about guns and nigga this and thug that makes him look like a moron, and then little moron kids see that and they grow up and they act like morons.

It's a cycle of moronitude that results in people getting gunned down in the street.

[Gravitycollapse]

58. All of this has traveled so far over your head.

As if you can only understand it all from your minute, idealized perspective. Expand your horizons.

[XemaSab]

61. You don't know anything about me

Or who I am or where I come from.

Really, you don't.

The whitest school I ever went to was the same school Tupac went to.

And I don't want to expand my perspective to embrace the word nigger. It's an ugly word, and it's even uglier when people use it to refer to themselves.

Same goes for the word thug. I agree that it's taken on a racist connotation, and it's not an identity that should be embraced or glorified.

[Gravitycollapse]

83. It's called reappropriation. Maybe you should do a little light reading on it.

Before talking on this subject again.

[Shivering Jemmy]

65. Once again with the ad hominem

[XemaSab]

81. Here's where thugging leads:

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Teen-slain-in-Oakland-family-fears-brother-13-5169681.php

[scarletwoman]

2. You forgot to include the link to the article.

In any case, your excerpts are appreciated.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

3. Dammit. I hate when I do that! Link added. Thanks for the heads up.

[scarletwoman]

4. You're welcome. Happens to all of us.

Thanks for adding the link! Now I'll go read the whole piece.

[El_Johns]

6. I think this isn't quite correct. It wasn't particularly "British colonialists" the thuggee

killed, since they first enter the historical stage in the 1300s.

They robbed travelers generally -- allegedly.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

7. So then, it's not quite complete. But clearly the writer was just focusing on how the word came

into the English language through the British colonists and eventually became racially loaded, rather than trying to give a complete history of the Thuggee.

This article goes into a lot more detail on the history of the cult itself, including this:

Accounts of a secret cult of murderers roaming India go back at least as far as the 13th century, but to modern history their story usually begins with the entrance of the British Empire in the early 1800s. For some years, India’s British administrators had been hearing reports of large numbers of travelers disappearing on the country’s roads; but, while disturbing, such incidents were not entirely unusual for the time. It was not until the discovery of a series of eerily similar mass graves across India that the truth began to dawn. Each site was piled with the bodies of individuals ritually murdered and buried in the same meticulous fashion, leading to an inescapable conclusion: these killings were the work of a single, nation-spanning organization. It was known as Thuggee.

It's all new to me, so I don't know how accurate any of these sources are. This one sounds convincing, though.

[El_Johns]

39. I think the author's linking the British use of the word under colonialism to current use is kind

of a stretch, personally, as "thug" was widely used to describe white gangsters e.g. in hard-boiled detective fiction & films circa 30s-40s.

The Dashiell Hammett Collection: The Maltese Falcon and 10 ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=1434443973
Dashiell Hammett - 2012 - ?Preview
The Maltese Falcon and 10 More Detective Stories Dashiell Hammett. “Nonsense!” The blond man squirmed at this tribute to his ... Last night this thug I've told you about and I had a talk. He claims he has been hired to kill your wife.” Hubert ...


It's more likely that black "gangsters" adopted it from that usage more or less admiringly. IOW, not really a "racialized" term.

[muriel_volestrangler]

80. They never try to back up their claim that the British used it as a racial term

Looking at the usage examples in the Oxford English Dictionary, we see the earliest one is of 'thugs' attacking fellow Indians ('sepoys' - Indians serving in a British army):

1810 in Hist. & Pract. Thugs (1837) xxi. 329 It having come to the knowledge of Government, that several Sepoys..have been robbed and murdered by a description of persons denominated ‘Thugs’, who infested the districts of the Dooab and other parts of the Upper Provinces.

and the next references are all to those who attack travellers:

1816 in Asiatick Res. (1820) 13 287 The term ‘Theg’ is usually applied, in the western provinces, to persons who rob and murder travellers on the highways, either by poison, or the application of the cord or knife.
1839 P. M. Taylor Confess. Thug I. i. 3 You know not the high and stirring excitement of a Thug's occupation.
1897 Daily News 22 Sept. 6/4 When the Prince of Wales was in India, a Thug criminal showed him how victims were strangled

.
then the figurative meaning - someone violent, without any racial distinction:

b. transf. A cutthroat, ruffian, rough.
1839 T. Carlyle Chartism i. 3 ‘Glasgow Thuggery’, ‘Glasgow Thugs’; it is a witty nickname.
1881 R. L. Stevenson Virginibus Puerisque 164 Sometimes it (sc. death) leaps suddenly upon its victims, like a Thug.
1883 G. W. Cable in Cent. Mag. June 230/1 A few ‘thugs’ terrorized the city with..beating, stabbing, and shooting.
1889 Boston (Mass.) Jrnl. 24 Apr. 1/8 Thugs, plug-uglies, and ‘flash sports’.
1895 J. Burns in Westm. Gaz. 17 Jan. 2/1 They even engage ‘knockers-out’, who..belabour and disable voters as they are entering the booths... They are called ‘election Thugs’.
1958 P. Gibbs Curtains of Yesterday xxvii. 216 ‘Isn't he a madman?’ he asked. ‘Isn't he raising an army of young thugs, his brutish young Brownshirts? Haven't they been fighting and brawling in Bavaria?’
1967 S. Faessler in Atlantic Monthly Apr. 103/2 The old man ducked for cover.., but not my father. Unarmed he stood up to the thugs, and was cracked over the head for it.
1982 Daily Tel. 7 Jan. 16/6 A plea..that it (sc. corporal punishment) should be retained as the final deterrent for school ‘thugs’.

So the first use not involved with the actual highway robbers in India was about Glaswegians. The British have had various racial insults for Indians, but 'thug' is not one of them; it means someone violent.

[Skip Intro]

8. Oh brother.

how detached from reality can we get...

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

11. I don't know, maybe as far detached from specificity as your response.

What, exactly, do you disagree with and why?

[Niceguy1]

31. maybe what matters is currently useage

I generally hear thug being used to refer to a specific lifestyle, that is not exclusive to a particular race or ethnicity.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

34. It *is* about usage. But it's not about what *you* hear. It's nice for you that you don't

read or hear a lot of racists. Some do. And they object it and call it racist.

[Niceguy1]

48. and some choose to hear

Racism when none exists.........

Just because someone makes the claim that a term is being used in a racist manner dose not mean that it actually is racist.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

53. No, the claim doesn't make it so. Nevertheless, it is so.

Just because you don't know that something happens does not mean it doesn't happen.

Next you're going to tell me racism is over because we have a black president. Visit Stormfront.org and face the ugly truth.

[Niceguy1]

57. there is racism...

All races have racists among them..it is an ugly side of human nature.

Nevertheless, because some makes the claim that a term is racist doesn't make it so. Context is key... take the word boy. Common use of the word is not racist. But used in a certain way it can be. Same concept applies to the word thug.

[Inkfreak]

68. Fairly simple concept.

Context & intent. Words are just words.

[Niceguy1]

69. the constantly offended

Must-lead boring lives.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. This makes about as much sense as saying that "pundit" is racist

Or "assassin" or any other word that came into English from somewhere other than Europe.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

12. That would be a reasonable objection if the author claimed the word "thug" was racist simply

because it came into English from somewhere other than Europe.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. I grew up hearing "thug" used to refer to dangerous white men

I was a kid in South Africa and never heard it used to refer to blacks, only whites. I've lived in the US for decades and have heard it used to refer to dangerous men of both races.

I just don't see it.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

15. What is it that you just don't see? And, surely you don't believe that that of which you are unaware

does not exist.

Are you a black male? Of course, you don't have to say, but whether or not you are could be relevant to your perspective and experience.

[Skip Intro]

16. It does refer to dangerous men (and women), of any race.

That's what it means.

Mafia hit-men are thugs.

The young Black men who beat that WW2 vet to death in a parking lot are thugs.

It isn't a racist term, and the argument to make it so seems to be some effort at deflection from the specific incident that brought about the use of the term.

[morningfog]

18. Why would you think the incident needs deflecting from?

[Skip Intro]

20. You'd have to ask the one deflecting the attetion. n/t

[morningfog]

21. I am.

[Skip Intro]

23. Or so you think. n/t

[sammythecat]

72. It seems your knowledge of modern cultural history is rather limited

or else your just being deliberately argumentative.

Thug, gay, and gangster are old words. Gay has been just about wholly appropriated by the homosexual community. It's almost never used in its original sense anymore. Thug and gangster seem to be in the process of being appropriated by black rap artists and younger people might only associate those words with violent black males but those older than, say, 35 pretty much associate them with any violent male.

There is nothing intrinsically racist about the word thug. Not yet, anyway.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

28. The word thug *can* be used to describe any dangerous man or women. In fact, any word, *can* be

used, correctly or incorrectly in any way anyone chooses to use it.

The current popular discussion, and the impetus for my OP, is whether the word "thug" is frequently used in a racist way.

If certain people use the term thug far more readily to describe a black male than a white male, despite the behavior or characteristics of the white and black males in question being the same, then it is being used in a racist way.

Whether or not you personally have witnessed it, this phenomenon is occurring often enough for many to notice it.

[JustAnotherGen]

64. I use it to describe Zimpig

I'm sorry - but I do.

[Orrex]

71. I've always kind of suspected that algebra is racist.

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. the word boondocks comes from the Filipino tagalog word bundoks which means mountains

Still Americans speak of and even sing, "down in the boondocks." The word assassin comes from the same basic Arabic word for hashish - perhaps because ancient assassins in the Middle East were thought to be hashish smokers.

The point being the origins of a word don't mean very mention in terms of how they are applied in modern times. In America and throughout the English speaking world we use the word thug as a colloquialism for ruffian. We use it for white people as well as for people of other races. In its modern English form it has no racial connotations anymore. That is why we have all heard the word thug used for white people just as often if not more often than used for peoples of color.

[Gravitycollapse]

24. Yeah, kind of in the same way that the etymology of "whore" refers to girl?

That's not important, right? Times have changed and whore doesn't refer to women at all. Oh wait...no, you're wrong.

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. I have no idea what you are talking about.

It certainly is very likely that there are people who use the word thug in a racist way just as someone might use the word thief in a racist way or terrorist in racist way. I don't think anyone can deny that.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

38. Of course any word *can* be used in *any* way. But the current discussion is about the fact that

the word thug is frequently used in a racist way.

If certain people use the term thug far more readily to describe a black male than a white male, despite the behavior or characteristics of the white and black males in question being the same, then it is being used in a racist way.

And, whether or not you have seen or heard it, this is common.

This is not to say that every use of the word is racist. However, the word does have racial connotations because it is purposely being used that way. I'm happy for you that you haven't seen it or heard it, but that doesn't make it untrue.

[El_Johns]

41. It may be used in a racist way today (though I don't think so). But that has nothing to do

with it (allegedly) being used in a racist way during the Indian colonial period, as there were long stretches when "thug" was used near-exclusively to refer to white gangsters/toughs.

It's the "gangster" link that's important, IMO.

Raymond Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959)

Collected Stories - Page 546
books.google.com/books?isbn=0375415009
Raymond Chandler - 2002 - ?Preview - ?More editions
Raymond Chandler. It was getting dark early. I left the sedan a couple of blocks from my own ... I told him I thought they were the thugs that machine-gunned Larry Batzel. I didn't tell him anything about Dud O'Mara. “Nice work," Grinnell said in ...

Trouble Is My Business: A Novel
books.google.com/books?isbn=1400030234
Raymond Chandler - 2002 - ?Preview - ?More editions
A Novel Raymond Chandler. “Let's get a couple of more important things straightened out,” I said. ... “A thug named Andrews and a Mexican calling himself Luis Cadena. I daresay you've heard of them.” “I don't know such people,” Dorr said ...

The Long Goodbye: A Novel
books.google.com/books?isbn=140003020X
Raymond Chandler - 2002 - ?Preview - ?More editions
A Novel Raymond Chandler. be the only guy around not holding a chisel. Likely enough then I'll flunk out. ... Inside he's as ruthless as a Gestapo thug. Sylvia is a tramp. He knows it and he hatesitand there's nothing hecando about it. But he ...

Farewell, My Lovely:
books.google.com/books?isbn=6155421331
Raymond Chandler - 2013 - ?Preview - ?More editions
Raymond Chandler. He leaned back and stared at me. "I don't make you out. You risk your hide to come out here and hand me a card to pass on to some thug I don't even know. There's no sense to it." "There isn't ifyou don't know him.

The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely
books.google.com/books?isbn=0307807967
Raymond Chandler - 2011 - ?Preview
Raymond Chandler. were on our way back to her home from there. A car brushed the ... “Eight thousand dollars. It's dirt cheap. But if my friend couldn't get another like it, these thugs couldn't very easily dispose of it either. It's probably known to ...

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

44. Are you using Raymond Chandler's 1950's books to support your claim about usage in the Indian

Colonidal period?

The British Raj (Hindi: rāj, meaning "reign&quot [2] was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj

And your doubt in no way negates the fact that people now use thug in a racist way. Many have seen and heard it. If you haven't consider yourself lucky, because those who use it that way usually have little else to say that most DUer would like to hear.

[El_Johns]

46. Yes, because it demonstrates that there is no such straight line between British usage during

the Indian colonial period & US usage today. Which is what the author is trying to claim.

(And the majority of Chandler's work was written in the late thirties and 40s, not the 50s.)

You do realize that the British killed off the thuggee in the 1830s, surely?

However they used the word, it was the result of British (and American) fictionalizations.

The first printed reference to a "thug" appeared in Ziau-d din Barni's History of Fīrūz Shāh, which was written in about 1356. However, the thuggees as a group weren't "discovered" by the British or even widely discussed until the 1830s. That's when the British governor-general of India, , and Capt. William Sleeman made a concerted effort to eradicate the thuggees from India.

Nearly 4,000 thugs were discovered and, of those, about 2,000 were convicted; the remaining were either sentenced to death or transported within the next six years. Sleeman then declared the thuggee to be completely eradicated.

"The system is destroyed, never again to be associated into a great corporate body. The craft and mystery of Thuggee will not be handed down from father to son," .

As Sleeman's use of the words "craft" and "mystery" hint at, the thuggees continued to capture a place in the British imagination even after they were eliminated. The 1839 novel , by Philip Meadows Taylor, quickly became a best-seller in England and beyond, and was instrumental in introducing the word "thug" to the greater population. Taylor's novel was a first-person narrative by Ameer Ali, as he lays bare the secrets of his life and his crimes. (Meadows Taylor had worked with Sleeman on the effort to eliminate the thuggees and claimed Ameer Ali was based on a man he had encountered.)

Mark Twain wrote extensively about the thuggees in two chapters of his classic 1897 travelogue, Following the Equator. As critic , Twain "found India a strange and sinister land," and these feelings are quite clear in his descriptions of Thuggees. Twain devotes page after page of the book to describing exactly how the Thugs killed their victims; one chapter is titled "Eradication of Thuggee."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/11/18/245953619/what-a-thugs-life-looked-like-in-nineteenth-century-india


I don't know why you're defending the OP article like it's gold; it's slight, bad research, stretching to make some non-existent linkage.

Twain in a non-racialized usage from his 1897 book:

Twain also draws a parallel between India's Thugs and Westerners :

"The joy of killing! The joy of seeing killing done — these are the traits of the human race at large. We White people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who not long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena ..."

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

47. Defending the article like it's gold? Where do you get that? In fact, please note that this is my

Last edited Thu Jan 23, 2014, 05:52 AM - Edit history (1)

opening sentence: "Interesting article purporting to explain the historically racial connotations of the word thug."

I'll check out the info you've provided tomorrow. I've been on DU way too long and it's way past my bed time.

On edit: Let me say that I will not be bothering to read anything else you post, as you have shown yourself to be a person who randomly posts shit that fails to support anything you seem to be trying to prove.

[Lizzie Poppet]

78. It's tricky, that one.

"Thug" is used in a racist manner by a lot of people. It' s also used in a non-racist manner by a lot of people. The only way to tell which is to get a feel for the context and )preferably) the person using it.

[liberal_at_heart]

22. Richard Sherman sure seems to think it's racist. He made the comment that no one

calls hockey players thugs. He makes a good point.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

33. Wellllll, what does he know? I mean, some dudes here on DU never heard that shit, so Sherman's

probably imagining it.

[Comrade Grumpy]

84. "NHL Video: 50 Biggest Thugs in Hockey History | Bleacher Report"

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/897210-nhl-video-50-biggest-thugs-in-hockey-history

I don't think his point his so well made. That was the first thing on a Google search for "hockey" and "thug"

[Nye Bevan]

26. Surly George Zimmerman is the quintessential thug? (nt)

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

29. Yet I'd wager that Trayvon Martin was called a thug about a thousand times as often as Zimmy was.

[El_Johns]

42. I actually get more hits for Zimmerman.

george zimmerman thug: About 1,340,000 results (0.41 seconds)

trayvon martin thug: About 771,000 results (0.14 seconds)


But it kinda supports the point that the word is not racialized.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

43. If you examine the results for Zimmerman thug, a large number of them are people responding to those

who called the Trayvon a thug. For instance:

Who was the real thug — Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman ...

And, in fact, the majority of the results for the search George Zimmerman thug son't seem to be examples of anyone calling Zimmerman a thug. For instance, results such as:

George Zimmerman Called Women 'Hoes' and Mexicans 'Thugs' on ...

Trayvon martin is a THUG, free george zimmerman | Facebook

'Trayvon Martin was not a thug': Rachel Jeantel speaks of her anger ...

Cop Fired Calling Trayvon Martin a Thug. George Zimmerman case ...

Ted Nugent Calls Trayvon Martin a "Thug," Says "Non-Racist ...

[El_Johns]

45. I'm not going to argue about something so meaningless. The fact is that thug has been widely

used to talk about white lowlifes since before I was born 60 years ago.

I linked you to some novels written in the 40s.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

49. Oh. I see. Your argument doesn't hold water, so suddenly the discussion is meaningless. Riiiiihgt.

[El_Johns]

52. It wasn't an "argument". The number of hits a phrase gets on the internet is essentially meaning-

less, unless you want to analyze the context of each individually, which I don't.

Your pulling out of couple and saying "But what about this, and this" is also meaningless.

It's just stupid. And so, anymore, is the whole topic, which I'm done with.

Portraits of Antisocial Individualism - The New York Times
www.nytimes.com/.../gordon-douglass-kiss-tomorr...
The New York Times
Aug 29, 2013 - From left, Barton MacLane, Barbara Payton, James Cagney and Ward ... to “White Heat” with Cagney as an even more violently deranged thug.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

55. No shit, Sherlock! That's what I was telling you. YOU're the one who posted your pointless search

results numbers as if they meant something. Now you want to whine about how meaningless what you posted was??!!


I see no reason to read anything more from you. Ever. Bye now.

[killbotfactory]

27. That reminds me...

One of my favorite youtube channels

https://www.youtube.com/user/thugnotes

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

30. Ha! That was awesome! I can't wait to check out some of his other ones.

Especially the ones I never got around to reading or read so long ago I've forgotten them, like Crime and Punishment. Thanks for the link!

[liberal_at_heart]

32. and just why is the media concentrating on Sherman and Derrick Coleman is getting no

attention at all? He received the sweetest letter from a deaf girl and responded back to her. I guess if it's not thug behavior it isn't news worthy.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

35. Most news outlets cater to the lowest instincts of the human race. Sadly, that's what sells.

[Silent3]

36. See also "barbarian", "philistine" n/t

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

37. I've already seen them.

[Egalitarian Thug]

51. K&R This & the frequent use of the term by authoritarians to describe union members is why I am a Thug.

And fuck you if you don't like it!

[Donald Ian Rankin]

54. The thuggees were a specific Indian cult that went in for murdering people, not just any Indians.

The word wasn't racist when it came into use, and it certainly isn't nowadays, any more than "berserker" is.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

56. What's your point? Does the article say thuggees went in for murdering just any Indians?

The word thug is currently used in a racist way. Frequently. By racists. You may not have witnessed it, but that does not mean it doesn't happen.

Racists frequently call black men thugs, but hardly ever call them beserkers.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

59. Yes, but people also call white men, and sometimes women, thugs.

So no, it's not a racist word.

It can be used in a racist way, just like practically any word, but that's a completely different thing.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

60. Sure, any word CAN be used in a racist way. We're talking about this particular word that IS

currently being used quite frequently in a racist way. The fact that it can be used in a non racist way is a completely different thing.

If you haven't seen evidence of this trend, consider yourself lucky. But don't consider yourself proof that the evidence doesn't exist.

[dipsydoodle]

62. Yes

Conveys anyone who inflicts extreme violence regardless of whether they are black or white whatvever. Sometimes..........I recall a woman here in the UK knee capping another woman at the local shopping centre , using a a pick axe handle with a 6" nail driven though the end , one sunny Saturday afternoon, and yes she was white.

I suppose some of our football hooligans could so be described are too regardless of race or ethnic origin. Same applies to the whole of Europe.

I have no concept of the background to the current obsession of attempts to redifine words. I've never know the word to be used in a racist fashion and until recently don't recall the word being used here on DU over the past 7 years at all.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

63. Does this mean "union thugs" refers only to non-white members of a union? n/t

[left is right]

66. Although I had never looked up the word

I just assumed that a picture of Chris Christie was used to illustrate the word thug in the dictionary: mean-tempered, bullying, criminal.
Oh well, if most think that it is racist, I will just have to find another word. Although I doubt that it will be easy to find one that is as descriptive

[quinnox]

67. thug is a good word, and I'll keep using it when I think it fits

not into the word police thing, and this is yet another extreme to the point of wackiness example of it. Political correctness can get silly and a weeee bit extreme at times, I have noticed. Just my opinion.

[gollygee]

70. When I was young in the 80s, I recognized the word "thug" as being about

people of any color.

However, I do see it being used primarily about African Americans now. I see the media creating a stereotype around the word "thug" that appears to be racial. The word seems to be about rap music and gangs now, and very much a racial slur, when in the 80s I thought of it as being about a bully who held power through the use of physical intimidation, and not specific about race.

I think this use of this word has changed.

[Orrex]

73. That's pretty close to my experience with the term

Years ago I would hear any violent criminal described as a thug, particularly mafia-type enforcers which meant (by Hollywood default) large and predominantly Italian men, or else generic strong-arm bad guys in comic books.

But it's undeniable that more recent usage has skewed sharply toward African American men, and that the term "thug" has become a socially acceptable way to use "the N-word" in polite society.


I'm not particularly worried about the origins of the word, because I don't think that these necessarily or permanently connote racism, but modern use of the word has shifted over time, so that it is now clearly used with modern racist subtext in mind.

[laundry_queen]

75. I agree. nt

[Blue_Tires]

74. Yeah, I remember how often the "thug" word was used to

describe Trayvon Martin while the case was going on...Sad how many folks have already conveniently forgotten that....

[MineralMan]

76. Well, it appears to be shifting to a race-based term, but

that's pretty recent, really. Thug used to be applied more to white goons. Word usages change, of course, but the racist use of thug is of recent origin.

The connection to a murderous group in India is certainly there, but that is a British usage. Here in the US, it was used primarily in the past to refer to mafia-type goons.

Goon is another interesting word, but its etymology is uncertain.

[Bluenorthwest]

77. Joh Kerry used the word ''thug" to describe Assad, A 'Thug And Murderer'

That said, any word can be used with malicious intention, regardless of the origins or definition of the word. It is the intention that gives meaning, along with derivation and definition.
The word 'thug' has been used in English to mean violent criminal for decades. It has also been long used as a word to tarnish a group you wish to tarnish as criminal 'Union Thugs' being one example our history is replete with, and currently the word is often used about young minority men to whom the word as defined does not apply, just as it does not apply to Union members.

Palin calling Union members 'thugs' 2013
Palin has criticized union bosses before, saying in March 2011 that union leaders in Wisconsin were acting "like thugs" in the midst of a collective bargaining battle with Gov. Scott Walker (R).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/22/sarah-palin-union-thugs_n_3483636.html
Michelle Malkin
Happy Labor Day: Top 10 union thug moments of the year; Update: Jimmy Hoffa makes the list.
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/09/05/happy-labor-day-top-10-union-thug-moments-of-the-year/
FoxNews
ABC, NBC and CBS ignore union thugs' attack on Fox News contributor.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/12/12/abc-nbc-and-cbs-ignore-union-thugs-attack-on-fox-news-contributor/

[Baclava]

79. There's no whining in football. Sherman is the badass bully on the block. Just ask him.

Wait till Manning shoves a 50 burger up his ass

I'll laugh

[cherokeeprogressive]

82. So I guess "rethuglican" won't be seen at DU again huh? n/t