Clarity takes a back seat to social conscience
If a word doesn’t ‘sound right,’ that’s all that counts and it can be passed off as a ‘racial slur’
“Patriotism,” said Samuel Johnson in 1775, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” The modern day last refuge, the shield to use when nothing else will work, is the “racial slur ” — and none uses it with more cynical effectiveness than athletes.
Increasingly, an athlete who attacks opponents or assaults officials or otherwise loses control has only to sniff “He (she, they) called me a racial slur!” and the subject is immediately changed from the athlete’s behavior to the athlete’s status as victim. Being essentially a puerile dodge, this blame-shifting is most often employed by high-schoolers, but it also shows up in college and even professional sports.
Thanks to a front page story in the Dec. 30 Albuquerque Journal, we now know that this little game has been picked up by coaches, as well.
Fresno State basketball coach Rodney Terry was so upset at hearing a University of New Mexico fan call his players “thugs” that he stopped the game to berate the offender — stopped the game!
Terry is a black coach with a mostly black team and the inference drawn, correctly, by everyone was that he considers the word “thug” a racial insult. It’s not. Its root is the Hindu word “thuggee,” an enterprise of professional robbery and murder practiced — by thugs — in India beginning in the 14th century.
The word’s modern meaning is stronger than “ruffian” and weaker than “assassin.” The closest synonym is “goon.”
To bolster Terry’s linguistic chops — and justify this “story’s” front page prominence — the Journal hunted around for an “expert” who agreed with Terry and it found one in professor John McWhorter, a clueless academic from Columbia University.
Ignoring the word’s precision, he agreed that, yes, it “is becoming the new N-word.” An English professor, McWhorter ought to know better; but his desire to sanitize the language is clearly stronger than his duty to embrace and define the language.
Thanks to social justice warriors like Terry and McWhorter, “thug” will soon be added to the too-long list of other perfectly serviceable words that can no longer be employed lest they cause offense.
A good example is “niggardly,” a term of Middle English origin, which means “aggressively parsimonious.” A niggard is someone halfway between a tightwad and a miser. The word has no precise synonym and there are situations where it is the perfect word to use, but its unfortunate resemblance to the Queen Mother of racial slurs caused its long-ago retirement.
A person to whom clarity of expression is important would have no objection to it, but clarity is not important to those with a social conscience. The word doesn’t “sound right” and that’s all that counts.
Poor Coach Terry’s well-regarded team lost a close game to the Lobos on Dec. 28. But it wasn’t because of poor play or, worse, bad coaching; it was the “racial slur.”
There is no evidence that Terry is himself a thug, but he has given ample proof that he is something just as bad: a crybaby.