Richard Sherman, the Seattle Seahawks player who was blasted for his spirited interview after a game against the San Francisco 49ers this week, just said what we all were thinking.
Calling him a thug for his non-violent, non-aggressive, but over the top rant is the same thing as calling him the n-word. Let’s keep it real.
“The only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays. Because they know,” he said.
Sherman, who earned a degree from Stanford, hasn’t been convicted of any crimes and didn’t start a brawl on national television, made an even better point.
“There was a hockey game where they didn’t even play hockey, they just threw the puck aside and started fighting. I saw that, and said, ‘Oh man, I’m the thug? What’s going on here?'”
So let’s talk about that word, “thug.” America is already doing it. In fact, the word “thug” was used 625 times on television the day after Sherman’s interview, the most it has ever been used on any single day in at least three years.
Problem is, thug has somehow become synonymous with black — especially a black man who shows expression that can be misconstrued as aggression, like Sherman, or one who wears a hoodie, like Trayvon Martin.
Unless you’re Mark Zuckerberg…who wears a hoodie all the time, but isn’t a suspicious thug.
What’s great about this time, however, is that Sherman is using this opportunity to spill some real knowledge about the new racial epithet and the effect it’s had on his life.
“I know some ‘thugs,’ and they know I’m the furthest thing from a thug. I’ve fought that my whole life, just coming from where I’m coming from. Just because you hear Compton, you hear Watts, you hear cities like that, you just think ‘thug, he’s a gangster, he’s this, that, and the other,’ and then you hear Stanford, and they’re like, ‘oh man, that doesn’t even make sense, that’s an oxymoron.’
“You fight it for so long, and to have it come back up and people start to use it again, it’s frustrating.”
Welcome to America, Sherman. Watch his interview denouncing the new n-word above.
SOURCE: News, Inc.
