Well, sprinkles ARE jimmies, says this former Philadelphian 
But I still think of a thug as a word without a racial connotation.
Thug is not racial. Hereabouts it refers to people who are connected.
A thug is someone who beats someone up for money, or lives by beating people up. Like a “heavy” that a bookie has.
I don’t associate the word thug with a particular race, although the origin is Asian Indian, so when I hear or read the word, I think of the origin.
If you disrespect the police, you may face consequences. If you go somewhere and you do not follow the rules, the police may be called in.
I know people who would have said “if you don’t give me a refund, I’m calling my lawyer”.
And is it clear whether the family got in to the pool at all, or if they paid and were all denied entry? Because if they chose to pay and get his trunks, what is the problem.
Looking more closely at the article, it says the women in their thirties “dropped off 8 kids at the pool”. Do they allow kids to be left there unattended?
This story linked to in the article describes the actions of the family more clearly:
http://www.wlwt.com/news/pool-fight-911-call-everything-s-going-crazy/33526786
“”… the incident started when aquatic center employees asked some children to leave the pool because of their behavior.
The children told the park ranger their mom said they didn’t have to leave, the report states."
(my emphasis *** added)
It was NOT only about the swim trunks…
Judy Muller wrote in the Huffington Post about usage of the word “thug” back in 2009, and the discussion has continued periodically since then in various print publications and on air. One issue is whether it is being disproportionately used by white commentators to describe young black men, as well as to describe a 53-year-old occupant of the White House.
Anthea Butler, a professor at UPenn, wrote about this issue as recently as 5 days ago in the Washington Post.
On the other side of the argument, John Boehner called Vladimir Putin a thug in January 2014.
@pizzagirl, that’s not the argument, it’s that one shouldn’t call them jimmies because that’s racist. http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/jimmies.asp Insane, if you ask me.
I don’t accept the premise that a certain group can take a word and give it a certain twist and then claim that if others outside the group use the word they racists. A few claim ‘thug’ requires the ‘thugger’ to be black, and I don’t accept that. http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/jimmies.asp
Give me a break on the “jimmies” thing.
For me, it’s all about the context, but then again I don’t use racial slurs as terms of endearment or call another group a slur, ignore the historical meaning, and insist it has another meaning or decide how another group should feel in terms of a word that has been used to degrade them. 
I have a son after two daughters. Much younger. When he was a toddler, my husband and I became aware of the different way that he moves and deals with the world, and started calling him the little thug. To this day, when we run into people we haven’t seen since he was very young, they will ask after the little thug.
Language is fluid and its use is complicated. There’s the whole in-group/out group dynamic that says that I can use language within my group that an outsider can’t use in addressing or in reference to a member of the group. It’s kind of like the “I can say my mother’s crazy. My sister can say our mother’s crazy, but you say my mother’s crazy and a whole world of hurt’s gonna rain down” thing. I think the use of the n word by African Americans is confusing to a lot of white people and the “rules” are unclear.
I remember my son struggling to define the parameters with his friends of color in HS. If my three best friends are all black and they use the n word in casual banter can I too? What if they call me “cracker”, a milder and much less charged racial slur? Can I sling the n word back? Or is it always, always forbidden for a white person? We counseled him to err on the side of caution and always avoid such terms even if people around him were using them. I’ve known women who use the b word to refer to their female friends and it always made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like the idea that it to some extent normalized the use of the word.
BTW, does anyone else remember the first season of The Apprentice when one of the contestants, an AA woman, threw a nutty when someone referred to her behavior as “the pot calling the kettle black”? Clearly she didn’t know the expression and watching the other woman trying to defend herself against charges of racism was a bit disturbing.
(I hope I’m not taking this discussion too far outside the scope of the original thread. If so, mods you have permission to zap my post.)
You didn’t realize that " thug" has a negative connotation?
Your posts holds many of my sentiments. “Language is fluid…” “There’s a whole in-group/out-group dynamic…” “Erring on the side of caution…” Most certainly. The rules changes from person to person, from relationship to relationship, intent and context.
EK, the questions isn’t whether the word thug has a negative connotation, but whether the word has a racial connotation. I don’t think it does.
Well, some think that it does in some contexts, but obviously not in all contexts such as use within your own home. If you are a commentator on FOX or CNN, it would be different.
Yes, language is fluid and a group can decide to use a word in a certain way. What I don’t agree with is that they can then decide that if others don’t use the word that way, that if another uses the word in the traditional way or as found in the dictionary, that suddenly the traditional way is wrong or racially motivated. One of my kids is adopted and there is a large contingent of adoptive parents who think words like adoption or adopted can only apply to people and never to the many other things that have traditionally been adopted - animals, laws, resolutions. What really gets them going is to adopt a highway or a cause because it is not the same to adopt a highway as it is to adopt a child. Of course it is not the same, but that doesn’t mean that a small group can decide how the rest of the world can use the word.
If blacks want ‘thug’ to mean a certain thing within their community, fine, but don’t tell me how to use it when communicating with others who use the traditional meaning. There are some words that racist from the start, and I do try not to use those once I learn the origin (gypped) but others I don’t care that much about (paddy wagon).
Why is cracker somehow “better” than the N-word? How is it “milder”?
And I am SO sick and tired of “the white community” and “the black community”. As a person who is multiracial married to a multiracial guy with multiracial kids, do we need to apply for some sort of membership card to one race or the other? Is brown a race? Is there some sort of brown community with Hispanics and South Asians as members, maybe some Sicilians too?
Does Herman Cain have more in common with a black lady cleaning houses than with John McCain and Tom Monaghan (Domino’s founder)?
I hope some can agree that “my friend Bob” vs. “my black friend Bob” mean two different things. And perhaps we should stop being hung up on the Confederate flag as much as being disgusted by and fighting against the mass media insists on homogenizing our country, and the world, into boxes, nice little boxes, where white people reside in one box, black people in another box, and "other in the third box.
I don’t know, but for me it is. Maybe other people will disagree. I think it has to do with historical impact, but for me it’s like the difference between being called “girl” and “b” or “c” (you can fill in the rest of the words.) I would find it demeaning to be called the office “girl” but it would be nothing like being called either of the two latter words. If someone called me or a family member “cracker” I think I’d laugh because to my ear it just sounds silly and outdated and not at all threatening.
@twoinanddone There’s this belief out there that word origins can be taken and replaced. This is false. Word origins cannot change, only the meaning can evolve or be added to. The word “adopt” has multiple meanings and thusly can be applied to different situations. The word “thug” has multiple meanings and thusly can be applied to different situations. However, in each case the origins remain the same. For some members of the black community to take claim for the word “thug”, I believe, is foolish. It’s a word that has long existed before the pickup in the late 1900s. Fret not and continue using the word thug.
I believe some become confused when others point out how black people are commonly referred to as thugs by the media. In the media, black people are disproportionally referred to as a thug. This does not mean a thug means a black person, but rather the black person is more likely to be called a thug.
Considering all mixed black people’s cards were place on suspension since Rachel Dolezal, all mixed race people were to receive a form in the mail from their respective race’s representative organization detailing the proper steps to retrieve their race card. Maybe check your local post office in case they held the mail…
Not sure if the word “better” is on point. But “cracker” is nowhere near as bad an epithet as the n-word. Crackers were never sold as slaves, relegated to the back of the bus, had separate washing machines so that their dirt never touched the dirt of someone else. Etc etc. Frankly I think it’s kind of apparent.
“You didn’t realize that " thug” has a negative connotation?"
Thug has a negative connotation, duh. What we are debating is whether it has a racial connotation. I find it asinine that because the word happened to be used to describe thugs who just so happened to be black, that therefore it’s now a racist word.
Like many things, can we accept that things might be regional? Thug has had a racist connotation for as long as I can remember. Here, it’s used to refer to black criminals and has a much more negative connotation than con which is used to refer to white criminals. Then it gets expanded out to mean black in general. I used to hear things like “you’re dressed like a thug” when people wore baggy pants ( which were the more popular among black teens) or wearing brands which tended to cater to black communities.
I accept that this might not be the case everywhere but I sincerely hate how some posters dismiss what others say because it’s not THEIR experience. This is a big country with distinct cultures all over. Maybe, just maybe, one’s experience isn’t universal.