

The unlikely origins of the word 'thug' - schrofer
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32538487

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ashwinaj
Okay thug is exclusively reserved for Indian people. It's our word, stop using
it :p

I've never heard it in a racial manner either. The play of words is silly, it
just shifts the attention from the real issues at hand i.e. excessive police
brutality and civic unrest.

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DougN7
There was just a piece on NPR claiming thug now means ni__er, at least when
white people say it. I'm white and always thought it mean something more along
the lines of soccer hooligan or bully. Am I that out of touch?

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Torgo
Terms like "thug" "lynch" etc have always felt weird to me when people insist
that they are racialized, but in the media the last several years I've heard
it in higher correlation to a black purported criminal than a white one. But
when I was a kid, I grew up in a town where there was a single black family.
"lynch" was something that happened to cattle rustlers, and "thug" meant an
italian gangster.

