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The unlikely origins of the word 'thug'
- DougN7 11y agoThere was just a piece on NPR claiming thug now means ni__er, at least when white people say it. I'm white and always thought it mean something more along the lines of soccer hooligan or bully. Am I that out of touch?
- ci5er 11y agoNo. I can't draw, but if someone asked me to draw a picture of a "thug", it would probably end up being some sort of film noir 1930s small-time hold-up guy.
- Torgo 11y agoTerms like "thug" "lynch" etc have always felt weird to me when people insist that they are racialized, but in the media the last several years I've heard it in higher correlation to a black purported criminal than a white one. But when I was a kid, I grew up in a town where there was a single black family. "lynch" was something that happened to cattle rustlers, and "thug" meant an italian gangster.
- ashwinaj 11y agoOkay thug is exclusively reserved for Indian people. It's our word, stop using it :p I've never heard it in a racial manner either. The play of words is silly, it just shifts the attention from the real issues at hand i.e. excessive police brutality and civic unrest.