OPINION:
The reputation of the police in Baltimore has taken a beating in the wake of the rioting. Six policemen have been charged with crimes, though it is important to remember that they are charged — not indicted, and not yet convicted of anything. Nevertheless, some people with nothing better to do are eager to dispatch the Word Police to make further arrests.
The mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, took a thrashing for calling the rioters, looters and arsonists a gang of “thugs.” Most people would say the mayor chose her word well and carefully, but Mayor Rawlings-Blake, who is black, meekly apologized after she was denounced as the usual racist, bigot, zealot, etc. It’s the “etc.” that’s expanding rapidly.
The word “thug” is eminently respectable if the actual thugs are not. The word is devoid of any particular racial meaning, though it was originally a Hindu word in India. President Obama used it to denounce the thugs who sacked parts of Baltimore. But some liberal voices want to relegate “thug” to the dark place where the n-word lives because they regard it, even if the dictionary doesn’t, as a synonym for the n-word, which only rap artists have a license to use.
Megan Garber, writing in Atlantic magazine, argues that “thugs” “are [seen as] both victims and agents of injustice, [and] are both the products and producers of violence, and mayhem, and outrage.” Some in the media, muddling the argument further, excuse the violent behavior. CNN says “rioting is the voice of the unheard.”
Baltimore Councilman Carl Stokes says “it’s not the right word to call our children ’thugs.’ These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us.”
Words, like sticks and stones, can wound, as any arguing husband or wife could tell you, but in the expanding unrest all around it’s important to pay attention to what words actually mean. An official of the District of Columbia government, a white man, was once sacked for correctly using the word “niggardly” to describe a “stingy” budget, and even after the mayor was told to “look it up” he suggested it would be “the best thing for the city” for the man to resign. The man got his job back only after the mayor’s protest died in the laughter that spread from coast to coast.
Taking offense has become the national sport, with demands that perfectly good words be retired and the dictionary, compiled mostly by dead white men, be ethnically cleansed. When a greeting card meant for graduating high-school seniors used the term “black hole” in a description of the solar system, a spokesman for the NAACP complained that “black hole” really meant “black whore.”
A county commissioner in Dallas has cited “black hole” as racist, and nominated several other terms, including “black sheep” and even “devil’s food cake,” to the list of verboten words and terms.
There’s lots to do in Baltimore and everywhere else to repair relations between the races. The language of insult and affront is important for everyone to use carefully. It’s just as important that rioters, looters — and thugs — be called out and called their right names. Identifying the evildoers, naming their crimes and putting them before a court to explain themselves, taking punishment if appropriate, is necessary if peace is to be re-established in Baltimore.
Without the rule of law, there can be no civilized society. Respect for the law must begin in childhood. Bringing these rioters to justice is as important as bringing errant cops to justice. Only then can confidence in the law, and for the authority of the law — be restored. The word for that is “civilization.”
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