I’m almost 40 years older that you, Romani, so I can remember back a lot longer than you can. “Thug” has never had a racist connotation in my experience.
Oh, and “con” is short for convict. I’ve never heard it used only in reference to white criminals.
Thug for me has always meant the dumb muscle supporting criminal enterprises. Mafia thugs being a case in point. I first heard the racial objection when people referred to rioters in the Freddy Gray and Michael Brown incidents as thugs, because the rioters were mostly African American. It’s interesting to hear the different regional connotations of such a common word.
I think the first use of the word “thug” that people started noticing was when Trayvon Martin was killed. A lot of people on the Internet and especially on Fox News, referred to Martin, who as we remember had not been involved with wrongdoing before he was followed by Zimmerman, as a young thug. It became something to notice when none of those sources referred to whites as thugs. A similar thing happened in many other situations. For instance a riot by blacks was called a riot by a bunch of thugs. When white bikers rioted and people died, they weren’t called thugs.
The word is centuries old, but that doesn’t mean current usage by certain factions can’t change how they use it and what context they use it in.
Since I generally don’t watch Fox News, I can’t speak to its timeline, but I heard Trayvon Martin referred to as a thug because he had some pretty unsavory things on his social media.
I agree with @hayden. I noticed, beginning with Trayvon Martin and Richard Sherman, that the term “thug” seemed to be applied disproportionately to back men. I posted about this in some earlier thread.
I am fully aware of the origins of the word in India, and the interim usage as described by @zoozermom, but it really does seem to me that applying it to young black men has become, as they say, “a thing.”
As I said before, several times in my post, in MY experience and in MY lifetime, “thug” has always had a racist connotation.
Meanings behind words change. I don’t know why this is even an argument. My point is that just because someone’s experience is different than someone else’s, it doesn’t mean either is wrong and it certainly doesn’t mean it should be brushed off.
I’ll take another word. The word “gypped” is a very racist word. The very root of it is racist. However, most people use it without ever thinking about it because they’ve never knowingly met a Roma. As someone who IS Roma, my experience with the word is clearly very different from most in this country.
Until I “met” you, Romani, I really had no idea what the connotation/origin of the word “gypped” was. now I consciously avoid using it, not that it was ever really part of my regular vocabulary.
On the other hand, although I never use the words “faggot” or “fag,” I think it is quite untrue that the negative connotations of the words as an insult aimed at homosexuals derives from execution by burning at the stake.
Another example is the word “gay”. When I was in my teens gay meant joyful and free. Now, well, it doesn’t.
But if someone used the word gay and meant joyful and free, he shouldn’t be deemed a racist because the word still does mean joyful and free. My college roommate’s middle name is Gay; does she have to change it? Just because some word is appropriated by a group it doesn’t mean others can’t use it.
Richard Sherman called himself a thug. Does that mean I can’t use it to describe old fashioned debt collectors or dock workers, no matter what race they are?
It would be best if people could control themselves when they hear a word used they don’t like. That way, there is no problem when someone uses it innocently.
But they can’t.
People seem insistent on wanting to give the people who use those words some power. Take away your emo reaction and they lose their power.
OTOH, people love to feel outraged because they think it makes them important.
However, now that we are on semantics, there is a difference between upset of private word usage and words used by public officials, the media or other prominent voices. We can just ignore it or individually challenge those around us when they use ‘gay’ or ‘retarded’ as a pejorative to mean stupid or not worthy. If someone with a larger voice who is helping to set the standard of what words and usages are OK to say in public in “polite company” uses those terms that way it is another thing all together. (IMO)
From post #101
“Thug for me has always meant the dumb muscle supporting criminal enterprises. Mafia thugs being a case in point.”
and from post #82
A thug is someone who beats someone up for money, or lives by beating people up. Like a “heavy” that a bookie has.
Which is interesting because where I hear it used most locally is to describe public school teachers and Boeing Machinists. Segments of the national media both mainstream and fringe have made it OK to call regular, wage earning people living amongst us (and in some cases with us 
) a name that to many means the dumb muscle supporting criminal enterprises.
People seem insistent on “not giving words power”. I mean, don’t you know that if you don’t give a word power that whatever intent was behind it simply doesn’t matter and the world continues to turn and all is well and just?
Please. I will never understand the fight people give in defense of using words to convey hate or offense. The blowback is interesting each and every time. It still leaves me scratching my head…
Anywho, in response to the meaning of “thug”, based on my experiences, a “thug” is a person who is a criminal and is more often than not a minority male. He has a record, probably lives in the “ghetto”, and dresses “hood”.
In my experience, a thug generally lives in a nice home, dresses very well and is one of two ethnicities, and is white. So geography does matter.
I have personally never heard the word “cracker” used. I’ve read about it, but have never, ever hard it used and am completely unfamiliar with any nuances or suppositions that might be attached because it’s a word that isn’t used to refer to people, only food or toys, in my area.
I didn’t hear the word “cracker” until I moved areas. I mainly heard white people referring to themselves. To this day, I don’t understand the appeal of the word.
Edit: Adding, the mafia would be considered “gangsters”.
It’s just a stupid word. But if black people were to try to insult white people by calling them cracker or honky it just doesn’t carry the kind of heat that the n word does, since there’s no history of oppression, slavery, cruelty, or segregation behind it. Of course, conservative white pundits will still jump all over it and call it racist, which technically it is.
I live in mafiaville and the epithet is usually thug or punk. When not insulting someone, he is referred to as connected. Just that one word. Connected.
Zoosermom, the two notorious examples of that (the only ones I’m aware of) were both completely false – they weren’t his, and were deliberately propagated by some people nonetheless (long after they were debunked) for the purpose of trying to portray him as a “thug.” See http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/martin.asp. If there was anything genuine that supported such a portrayal, I’d like to know about it.
Donna, I am not referring to the profile of the other person, there were some things that Trayvon posted on his own social media that have since been removed but were contemporaneously present. His school suspensions for things like vandalism are a matter of record and can easily be found in press records from mainstream media outlets. From my own point of view, it doesn’t matter if he was a thug. His death was a tragedy and a travesty.
Thanks. And I agree – none of that was relevant.