We're Told Michael Brown Was Just a "Thug" But GOP's Been Calling President Obama Just a "Thug" for 6 Years

There is a price to be paid for dehumanizing the first African-American president of the United States, who won two elections with resounding victories.  If this Harvard Law school graduate is "just a thug," then where does that leave the other 34 million of us, whose achievements pale by comparison?  Jamelle Bowie of the Daily Beast agrees with Richard Sherman that "thug" has become the new "N-word."  Bowie explains: 

You saw it, for instance, during the Trayvon Martin controversy, where defenders of the shooter, George Zimmerman, were quick to label Martin a “dangerous thug” for ordinary teenage behavior, like cursing or smoking marijuana.

The same is true of the right-wing fever swamps, where “thug” is the favored insult for Barack Obama. It comes quickly from the mouths of Rush Limbaugh—who is quick to call the president a “Chicago thug”—Michele Bachmann—who attacks anodyne political behavior as “thuggery”—and Karl Rove, who told Fox News that the president looks like “some kind of political thug” because of comments he made about the Supreme Court.

These constant declarations of Obama’s ‘thuggery’ are a dog whistle—an attempt to make the president a dangerous ‘other.’   Beyond this, the conservative blogosphere is filled with people who routinely describe Obama as a “Chicago thug” or attack him for bringing “Chicago politics” to the White House.

Obviously, you can’t attribute all of this to racial animus. But there’s no question that the word “thug”—and it’s modifier, “Chicago”—has a distinct racial connotation, and is meant to convey a particular image—of Obama as a menacing young black man. 

And this brings me to the murder of Michael Brown. The riots in Ferguson, Missouri have hopefully subsided.  But a different kind of political unrest is churning beneath the surface.  It is the kind that leads to earthquakes.  Michael Brown is my twelve year old. He is every Black woman's child, who could be summarily executed by a psycho law enforcement agent, who both fears and secretly envies black males.  Michael Brown is Emmett Till, a nightmare so horrible that my mother shuddered many a night with fears for her own children.  And he is Trayvon Martin and that little twelve year old kid playing with a BB gun on the swings, and nameless others, who were also executed for the crime of being healthy, black males.