One of the hallmarks of the far left is its insistence on deconstructing language until anything can mean anything, which is an awfully convenient way to weaponize any word at any time for any reason.
The most recent example of this came in some public discourse over the use of the term “thug,” and whether it has any sort of racial connotations behind it.
Interestingly enough, this discussion was sparked thanks to the Denver Broncos.
Long story short, the Broncos are mired in seismic turmoil and former Pittsburgh Steeler and current ESPN NFL pundit Ryan Clark pins the lion’s share of the blame for that on Denver head coach Sean Payton.
Clark blasted Payton, claiming that the 60-year-old veteran coach “behaved like a thug” with how he treated soon-to-be former Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson.
Trending:
You can watch the comments below:
“Let’s be honest: Sean Payton has behaved as a thug since he became the coach of the Denver Broncos. Immediately when he gets in the building, he starts to undercut Russell Wilson personally and professionally from his first press conference on.” – Ryan Clark on “Get Up” this… pic.twitter.com/u3KxreAaIb
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 29, 2023
“Let’s be honest,” Clark said on the Thursday edition of the ESPN morning sports talk show “Get Up.”
Do you think ‘thug’ has racial connotations?
“Sean Payton has behaved as a thug since he became the coach of the Denver Broncos. Immediately when he gets in the building, he starts to undercut Russell Wilson, personally and professionally, from his first press conference on.
Clark would later add: “From the beginning, [Payton] walked into this building and he had a point to prove when it came to Russell Wilson.”
Whatever one may think of that tangled situation in the Mile High City, Clark clearly had one fan of his fiery screed, and that’s his former ESPN cohort and noted race-baiter Jemele Hill.
“That man @Realrclark25 came with the high heat on Sean Payton,” Hill posted to X.
When a random X user pointd out that, had this been a white pundit calling a black coach a “thug,” Hill would likely be condemning the rhetoric (an accurate prediction), Hill lashed out at the internet nobody.
I know this will be difficult for you to grasp but context matters. White people calling Black people thugs has a completely different connotation — depending on context. There are words and phrases that women can use with each other that men cannot use on us. Hope your brain… https://t.co/mrVYFtFNrI
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) December 29, 2023
“I know this will be difficult for you to grasp but context matters,” she wrote in an X post. “White people calling Black people thugs has a completely different connotation — depending on context. There are words and phrases that women can use with each other that men cannot use on us.
“Hope your brain doesn’t explode.”
There’s just no other way to put this: Hill is just flat-out wrong. Words mean what they mean. If using the color of a man or woman’s skin as the basis of judging behavior is wrong (and it is) you cannot pretend the meaning of words changes based on the skin color of the speaker.
That’s just not how a logical language works.When leftists claim that it does, they expose the racial double standard they live by: They get to judge what is racist and what isn’t. What is allowed and what isn’t. For the left, the value of words — or the harm in them — depends entirely on the way progressives wish to use them.
The n-word debate is a well-worn version of this same argument (spoiler alert: nobody should say it, it’s a racist term), but you don’t have to look very far back in sports history to find a leftist deciding what a word should mean as a matter of convenience.
NBA star LeBron James infamously blasted legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson — a man whose sensibilities run counter to the left-leaning vibes of James and Hill — for daring to use the term “posse” to describe James’ inner circle of friends.
In a November 2016 interview, Jackson told ESPN about a time when James, then playing for the Miami Heat, wanted to spend an extra night in Cleveland, where he is from, after a game against the Cavaliers.
After Jackson recalled that the request was overruled by Heat president Pat Riley, he added: “You can’t hold up the whole team because you and your mom and your posse want to spend an extra night in Cleveland.”
“It’s the word ‘posse’ and the characterization I take offense to,” James’ business associate Maverick Carter, and part of the “posse” described by Jackson, told ESPN. “If he would have said LeBron and his agent, LeBron and his business partners or LeBron and his friends, that’s one thing.
“Yet, because you’re young and black, he can use that word. We’re grown men.”
For his part, James told ESPN: “It just sucks that now, at this point, having one of the biggest businesses you can have both on and off the floor, having a certified agent in Rich Paul, having a certified business partner in Maverick Carter that’s done so many great business [deals], that the title for young African-Americans is the word ‘posse.’”
Well, newsflash for Hill, James and Carter: The burden can’t be on the rest of civilization to appeal to them.
Google’s dictionary (and nobody would exactly be sprinting to describe Google as “traditional” in any sense of the word) is powered by Oxford Languages and offers these definitions:
- Thug: a violent, aggressive person, especially one who is a criminal.
- Posse: a group of people who have a common characteristic, occupation, or purpose.
Where, pray tell, apart from “what you feel like,” does race play any role in the definitions of “thug” or “posse”?
It simply doesn’t. It’s just the left’s way of making language utterly meaningless and more people need to call it out.
It’s a small, but meaningful, fight that conservatives conceded for far too long.
