No, the Young People of Baltimore Are Not ‘Thugs’

No, the Young People of Baltimore Are Not ‘Thugs’

I guess it's a fair point that "thug" has become a coded word to describe black men. (One thought. Contrary to the claim of the author, I always have referred to hockey enforcers and frequent fighters as thugs. I can't be the only one who does this.)

Anyway, no problem. Just call them hoods or goons instead. Or call them hooligans if you want to add a European spice to it. Or call the group a "mob." English is filled with synonyms, many of them redundant and unnecessary. Problem solved.

A note on the language: the first recorded use of the word "nigger" (as opposed to "negro" or "niger" or "neger", which are foreign words from Spanish, Latin and Dutch respectively) is actually found in the poems of Scotland's bard, Robert Burns. You will find it in his 1786 poem, The Ordination. He was referring to Noah's grandson Canaan, who really got a raw deal in the book of Genesis. (For some reason which nobody has ever explained well, and biblical scholars continue to debate ad nauseum, he was punished because his dad saw his gramps naked.) Although the Bible never specifically says that Canaan and his father Ham were black men, folk tradition has layered in that interpretation.