Thuglessness is the wrong answer

My first high school boyfriend told me i shouldn't curse. i did then, and still maintain, quite the potty mouth. i have always tried to consider my audience but sometimes a well-placed and enunciated expletive is exactly the right thing to say. his argument was that it was impolite and that there were other words available to relay my sentiment.

"If I say fudge with as much anger and disgust as any other f-word i might utter, is there really any difference?" he maintained the answer is yes and i still hold firmly that it is no.  

We insist on providing solutions even if they do not impact the problem we are trying to solve. We…the collective American we. We want to lower test standards to illustrate the success of our educational system even though that logic is flawed. We want to build more prisons based on the number of fourth grade students who aren’t preforming where they should be, and we classify that as a crime prevention strategy. And we want to outlaw nigger and now, thug, to end racism.

And I want to scream at well-meaning people. Instead, I sigh heavily and shake my head.

It isn’t that I don’t agree with Richard Sherman, Seattle Seahawks Cornerback and resident caller of bullshit, I do. Thug is the new socially acceptable way to call a person a nigger. It is thinly veiled racial resentment at best, at worst it is blistering racism intend to harm.

However it is hurled and however it is caught, I defend a person’s right to say it. And in this moment, more than my intent to champion freedom of speech, I call ridiculousness because not using thug doesn’t stop racism. It just doesn’t. 

Change.org called for my signature on a petition to urge the president and others to apologize for using thug and to vow never to do it again. I’m all for calling people to task for their use of the word. I’m for stripping the word bare and forcing people to define it in their use. I’m all about asking public figures, especially colored ones, to consider the language they are using to make sure they are not (in)advertently perpetuating misconceptions about black and brown people or providing cover for those that seek to do harm to those black and brown people because they can. Rendering them bodies void of humanity and unworthy of empathy.

Thug helps to facilitate that. At least, unchecked, it can. 

but if we spend our limited time and energy on the censoring of a word we are really missing the point. Spending our energy primarily on language that reflects and describes the sentiments of racism have minimal impact other than assuring people they are being proactive and burying the real problem under misdirection.

Cracking a code doesn’t mean people stop sending messages they simply change the code they use. Focusing heavily on language, at least on the front end, ensures we are forever chasing a shadow, not the thing casting it.