<p>awcntbd, this is a provocative question and I’m glad you raised it. I was one of the people advising against using the word “felon” regarding the cigar robbery, because Michael Brown had not been arrested, tried and convicted. The semantics are important to me because “felon” is another word like “thug” that leaves little room for sympathy or open-mindedness toward any other situations involving that person.</p>
<p>I don’t want to go off on a huge tangent about college rape culture, but your point is fairly taken. “Rapist” is also a word that implies legal judgment and people shouldn’t use it until a jury has convicted someone of acts fitting that description.</p>
<p>Well, now the Ferguson police are standing around watching people in masks loot stores because they don’t want to be accused of using excessive force. Overnight someone was shot and is in critical condition. The police did nothing.</p>
<p>When a bunch of white college kids flip over cars and loot stores after a football victory, are they thugs? How about the Bundy ranch supporters or anyone else flaunting their large weapon in public–“thugs” or something else?</p>
<p>I have heard the community described as a suburb of St. Louis. Maybe the media is switching to “small Midwest city” because suburbs have historically been where the white people go.</p>
<p>This is all so sad I can’t even wrap my mind around it.</p>
<p>You are right, Flossy, that the kid wasn’t apparently killed for stealing. But, the fact that he stole is being widely used to justify his shooting. I’m sure that fact isn’t lost on you. It’s true all the facts about the shooting are yet to be learned. But, what is known is that in the Ferguson PD did not have good relations with the predominantly African American community it serves, that it does have a history of both abusing and then covering up their abuse of suspects in their custody, as well as poor record keeping of arrests and police procedures. This is a recipe for bottled up resentment, and a strident protest response when an unarmed suspect is shot multiple times by one of its officers. Information has been slow in coming in, witnesses weren’t even questioned until days after the incident. It all looks like SSDD to residents who have seen this sort of thing before.</p>
<p>Personally? Yes, I think that white college students flipping over cars and looting stores after a football victory are thugs too, and should be arrested. </p>
<p>Oh, and people who brandish weapons in public are just too pathetic for words. Rednecks or thugs, take your pick: either way, not civilized behavior. </p>
<p>(I’m not excusing this young man’s death. I want to be very clear on that. But he’s a very poor poster child. Trayvon Martin had just come from buying skittles and Coke, not stealing from a convenience store.) </p>
<p>Remember, the video of the convenience store robbery didn’t come out till mid-week–after the family had been interviewed regarding his death. It is possible they just didn’t know, and that he had never done anything like that before.</p>
<p>And the very fact White suburbanites like PG are reacting the way they are to the video despite the fact even the Ferguson PD chief has stated the cop was stopping him for jaywalking in the street and not for the robbery underscores how prejudicially leading this video can be in causing folks of a certain complexion/persuasion to automatically believe certain narratives and discount/minimize others. </p>
<p>I find it interesting folks like her are spending more time discussing Brown’s wrongs and the angry reaction to the shooting than discussing the fact Ferguson’s PD has had a past history which includes LYING IN COURT to cover up and excuse beating a man who happened to be Black* in their custody AFTER they found they picked up the wrong guy due to mistaken ID and yet…felt they couldn’t just release him as they should have. </p>
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<li>What was more tragic was he shared a near identical name to the suspect and had a horrid encounter because he took the wrong exit into Ferguson due to inclement weather obscuring signs on the highway/area.<br></li>
</ul>
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<p>And yet this right, when practiced by non-Whites in an era when White perpetuated racial violence was more prevalent during the '60s, the grandparents/parents or those advocating gun-rights labeled them terrorists and used them as justification to further arm themselves. </p>
<p>Richard M. Nixon also used this latent fear among many Whites, especially in the south to great effect in getting himself elected by using a strategy later known among political scientists and journalists as the “southern strategy”. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, there are always elements who will take advantage of social unrest, and political protests. They are opportunistic, and yes, criminal in their actions. Theft and destruction of property are criminal, and there’s no way to dress that up. But, they are no more thuggish than the university hoodlums who set fires, overturn cars, and destroy property after a game. The difference is that society views one group with far less tolerance than the other. And it has everything to do with race, unfortunately. </p>
<p>Thug is a word that comes out of the gansta rap culture. It’s a lifestyle. Think saggy pants. Mostly black, probably. But it’s not a racial slur. And, I do know of at least one white thug in a nearby neighborhood. A college riot is also a riot and I don’t think that’s tolerable, either.</p>
<p>“I’m here, you’re there, and I have never harmed you nor anyone else. Shouldn’t that be <em>the definition</em> of crime – that someone us hurt, or that property is taken, or set on fire, etc.? DUI is most often a victimless crime.” </p>
<p>No, it shouldn’t be the definition of crime - and obviously, in your case, since you got busted twice for DUI, it is in fact, not the definition, regardless of whether or not you hurt anyone. Your driving was obviously not safe, as you would like to believe, because you indeed get pulled over by the police and they had a reason to stop you. </p>
<p>You have a problem with alcohol and I have no doubt you still drive drunk. </p>
<p>“If an errant act does not negatively impose itself upon any of those rights, is it a crime?”</p>
<p>Yes. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t have been charged with DUI and convicted. </p>
<p>I have never texted while driving, either. I don’t even talk on my cell when I am driving. </p>
<p>The Penn State rioters-- were they called “thugs”? I don’t remember any such thing. The people who rioted after Vancouver lost in the Stanley Cup riots? Also not called “thugs.”</p>
<p>Actingmt, are you saying Trayvon Martin would have assaulted George Zimmerman had George not gone after him that night? Zimmerman, an armed man, was standing his ground against a dangerous criminal, but TM, an unarmed teen walking home with skittles and iced tea was unjustified in trying to defend himself against a perceived threat? BTW, it should be noted that he didn’t rob the 7Eleven of the merchandise he was carrying. He actually paid for it. He was in his own neighborhood, and had every reason to be scared of the stranger following him for no apparent reason. The way some apparently insist on hanging Martin with the “thug” label says absolutely everything about the way in which young black men are automatically assumed to be ticking time bombs of latent criminality, no matter the circumstances. There is no standing of one’s ground, apparently if you’re black and your perceived threat is white, not even if you have no weapon. Got it.</p>