The day after the Richard Sherman evisceration began, I looked up the definition of “thug”, though I had considered this word many times before. It originates from the Hindi word “thag”, and referred to a robber who often engaged in murder, generally by strangulation. In India. Strangulation is certainly one of the most vicious and violent ways of committing a murder. Generally, one would be facing their victim, perhaps even staring directly into their eyes bulging with the life being squeezed out, bulging with the victim’s effort to keep it in. Strangulation, bulging; all part of an event where the fullness of life is forced out of the very lenses through which it was to be consumed and enjoyed – life going the wrong way down a one way street. Whether or not these “thags” faced their victims to actually see it, they would always feel life violently erupt in an attempt to escape. Yet, life would succumb to the attacker’s malice until it finally did escape, but only in defeat; only once it was fully gone from the crumpled package that once and recently contained it. After such an event, to celebrate the spoils of a conquest… this is what it meant to be a “thug”.

I have grown weary, but darkly amused at the loaded and often thinly veiled racist language that has emerged in the decades since burning crosses became passé. Too smoky, too messy, too much to carry; if only there was app for that. Nevertheless, we do love our four letter words. How neatly and well they carry. The “comments” section of the internet is constantly smoldering though, when it is not being set ablaze anew, full of smoke signals. Lynchings occur on smartphones instead of in the backwoods. Ear-buds are the 21st century hoods and it is even harder to know who is underneath, because everybody is wearing one. It is easy for twits to tweet and enemies to facebook.

Our scales are off, under surreptitious thumbs. There is much ado when non-sexual events and objects are referred to as “gay” for example, but little outcry when tacky and shabby things are “ghetto”. Black and Hispanic men who are anything but demur are “thugs”. The NHL has fights that are a part their “tradition”, even premeditated ones that commence seconds after teams take the ice. They are not called “thugs” there, but not because cooler heads prevail. Many of those players also come from ghettos, just not any in the United States. They are called “enforcers” – how positive a connotation! In another league though, it’s “Malice in the Palace”, and how the sky falls and calamities befall us when big black men get out of control! Nevermind that most of those men come from middle class, two-parent homes. I conclude that those who would use the word are more “thug” than anyone. They would strangle honest efforts at tolerance, even blatant bigotry; which I would much (much) rather over the sneaky plausible deniability of “if you know what I mean”. And I think you do.