We are not thugs. Freddie Gray was not a thug. Eric Harris was not a thug. The Black women and men who took to the streets of Baltimore in sheer anger at the killing of one of their own are not thugs. Many across the nation – the President and the Mayor of Baltimore included –seem to believe this with sincerity. But if we are honest, no nation that exacts the language of a profound inhumanity onto the poor and the dispossessed can be truly worthy of its name.
The language of “thugs” is a dog whistle that is often employed to de-legitimize anger at a nation that refuses to understand its inhumanity. To grapple with this fact, one would have to consider all the ways in which the behaviors and actions of black people are often deemed deviant and criminal in the eyes of the law: looking the wrong way at a law enforcement officer; selling cigarettes on a street corner; being mentally disabled; walking on a sidewalk; standing in a park. One would also have to grapple with the ways in which the language of “thugs” heaps onto citizens this nation’s own negligence in addressing poverty, mass incarceration and a host of other grave injustices.
Our nation is at the height of dishonesty when legitimate resistance is met with such a terribly dehumanizing, and imprecise, language. If “thugs” are categorized by their violence, their utter irrationality, their refusal to possess basic respect, our country and its people must reckon with itself. “Thugs” wielded this nation into existence and have, for centuries, maintained a political rule that relegated many to second-class citizenship. The vestiges of such a past remain.
This language is not fitting for our generation — the Black millennials coming of age in an era of mass incarceration, poverty, police brutality and complacency. We are finally rejecting this language and turning our attention instead to systems that exclude us from enjoying quality of life.
While conventional wisdom might be to denounce the frustrations of those who feel as though the nation does not belong to them as “thugs,” the idea that Black millennials are resisting, however imperfectly, speaks to our commitment.
One should consider that young women and men in Baltimore protested for six days before the media descended on that city. The resistance in Baltimore also speaks to our options. We feel a profound despair — not because of our silence on issues of injustice, as there is no evidence to suggest we have been silent – but because of the deafness from those with whom we give care to ensure our quality of life.
We don’t need an alternative language to characterize those who resist. We need the nation to recognize us for the full citizens we are by giving care and concern to the qualities of our lives.
Our country ought to show concern to racial injustice long before our cries spill over into the streets.
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