The Racist Origins of the term “Thug”.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

Interesting article purporting to explain the historically racial connotations of the word thug.

The word tuggee comes from Hindi thag ‘thief’, from Sanskrit sthaga ‘scoundrel’, from sthagati ‘to conceal’. It was an Indian network of secret fraternities, cult-like in many ways, who were engaged in robbing and killing British colonialist. To the British, any brown-skinned face that they saw on the road, or in their imagination, was a “thug” coming to get them, while they innocently made their way through the lands they exploited and colonized.

This is the origin of the term “thug”, as many Indian words passed into common English during British Imperial rule of India. British colonists, however, did not refer to other European imperialists as “thugs,” it was specifically a term in British parlance for the dark skinned “natives” that they feared.

The article also mentions what deceased rapper Tupac Shakur had to say about it way back in 1993:

Cause these white folks see us as thugs
I don’t care if you think you a lawyer, if you a man, if you an ‘African-American’
If you whatever the f*ck you think you are
We thugs and n*gg@s to these motherf*ckers…

On edit: As I said, above, the article purports to show historical racist usage of thug. I don't claim to know if that is correct. But a lot of this thread has been focused more on whether or not thug is currently a racist word. I believe that when certain people use the term thug far more readily to describe a black male than a white male, despite the behavior or characteristics of the white and black males in question being the same, then it is being used in a racist way.

Some argue that this isn't happening because they haven't personally have witnessed it, which seems a pretty weak argument.

However, I do think some are reacting as if they are being accused of being racist if they use the word thug. In my opinion anyway, not every use of the word thug is racist. However, don't be surprised if you call a black male a thug and he takes it as racist.