Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Bulldog Bats, don't you find it weird that the examples your subconscious feels are similar are in fact totally different? 4 of your 6 examples are of violence.
Touchdown dancing is of course about as far from thuggishness as football behavior gets, but it's interesting to me that the tradition was started and popularized by black athletes and finds its most vocal critics among white folk.
That doesn't mean racism, but what it means is that the moment non racist folk find reason to criticize something a black person does, racist folk are gonna come pouring out of the woodwork, using it as a moment to:
1) express their bottled up racism
2) find one another
3) affirm to themselves their existing worldview
---> 4) use that moment to invade non-racist space and claim it for their own.
What the heck do I mean by that?
White folk hate being accused of racism. Racist white folk hate it even more, especially when it comes from other white folk. Aside from not wanting federal soldiers enforcing civil rights (reconstruction, desegregation), there's the issue of shame. It's shameful to be racist and shame is one of the worst feelings to experience.
Racists are very shame oriented folk to boot--shaming is the second arm of racism (the first arm is violence). They will do everything they can to absolve themselves of their shame of being racists, short of changing.
So anytime something like this comes up, a black guy who demonstrated something not-very-tasteful, they pile on the criticism, adding in as much racism as they think general public can handle.
It's mostly subconscious, especially with the younger ones.
But in our days we don't tolerate public racism the way we used to, so they pick a word, a word like thug. Why thug?
Because it reinforces whatever gut level reactions help perpetuate racism. Thug has a cultural and style connotation that itself is informed by a behavior set. For the word thug, it specifically means a violent identity.
So you take a person who acts a certain way. That way projects an image. You link that image to a different image by using a word that evokes a negative response. Since you already have a negative response to the behavior, it flies under the radar. Then you associate that person with their image and behavior with a word that carries a different image and behavior. That word also carries an identity, which links back to the original identity.
Have the same group of racist people use the same word (thug) to describe people who all belong to the same identity (say, being black) and eventually like a virus even people who abhor racism subconsciously find themselves making that same connection. Even people of that very group being attacked by racists!
So we have two things going on in that #4 I wrote above.
1) The spread of racist memes to reinforce racism itself by exploiting situations like these.
2) Trying to end personal shame and the shame of being racist by being as racist as tolerable (i.e. as judged by white male liberals in the same sector, i.e. sports fans) to show how it wasn't racist. It's a losing battle.
So basically any time you find a black athlete's action unsportsmanlike for non race related reasons, understand that a whole bunch of other people are going to try to take advantage of that.
The craftier ones make sure that after they've baited folks into calling them out (which they promptly get all huffy and proclaim "race card!") that they try to seem just like you and me. Bad sportsmanship, they say, because he's being a thug. They are parasites to your rationale.
Next thing you know you don't agree with their slander (thug) and yet you still feel compelled to defend them....
Touchdown dancing is of course about as far from thuggishness as football behavior gets, but it's interesting to me that the tradition was started and popularized by black athletes and finds its most vocal critics among white folk.
That doesn't mean racism, but what it means is that the moment non racist folk find reason to criticize something a black person does, racist folk are gonna come pouring out of the woodwork, using it as a moment to:
1) express their bottled up racism
2) find one another
3) affirm to themselves their existing worldview
---> 4) use that moment to invade non-racist space and claim it for their own.
What the heck do I mean by that?
White folk hate being accused of racism. Racist white folk hate it even more, especially when it comes from other white folk. Aside from not wanting federal soldiers enforcing civil rights (reconstruction, desegregation), there's the issue of shame. It's shameful to be racist and shame is one of the worst feelings to experience.
Racists are very shame oriented folk to boot--shaming is the second arm of racism (the first arm is violence). They will do everything they can to absolve themselves of their shame of being racists, short of changing.
So anytime something like this comes up, a black guy who demonstrated something not-very-tasteful, they pile on the criticism, adding in as much racism as they think general public can handle.
It's mostly subconscious, especially with the younger ones.
But in our days we don't tolerate public racism the way we used to, so they pick a word, a word like thug. Why thug?
Because it reinforces whatever gut level reactions help perpetuate racism. Thug has a cultural and style connotation that itself is informed by a behavior set. For the word thug, it specifically means a violent identity.
So you take a person who acts a certain way. That way projects an image. You link that image to a different image by using a word that evokes a negative response. Since you already have a negative response to the behavior, it flies under the radar. Then you associate that person with their image and behavior with a word that carries a different image and behavior. That word also carries an identity, which links back to the original identity.
Have the same group of racist people use the same word (thug) to describe people who all belong to the same identity (say, being black) and eventually like a virus even people who abhor racism subconsciously find themselves making that same connection. Even people of that very group being attacked by racists!
So we have two things going on in that #4 I wrote above.
1) The spread of racist memes to reinforce racism itself by exploiting situations like these.
2) Trying to end personal shame and the shame of being racist by being as racist as tolerable (i.e. as judged by white male liberals in the same sector, i.e. sports fans) to show how it wasn't racist. It's a losing battle.
So basically any time you find a black athlete's action unsportsmanlike for non race related reasons, understand that a whole bunch of other people are going to try to take advantage of that.
The craftier ones make sure that after they've baited folks into calling them out (which they promptly get all huffy and proclaim "race card!") that they try to seem just like you and me. Bad sportsmanship, they say, because he's being a thug. They are parasites to your rationale.
Next thing you know you don't agree with their slander (thug) and yet you still feel compelled to defend them....
I took the liberty of framing the above for posterity. Now you are immortal:
