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Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 12:56 am Post subject: |
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Steelrails wrote: |
If the image of 'thug' that pops into your head when you hear that word is some sort of multiracial 1980s movie gang member who is facing down Robocop, then fine. If on the other hand you are any normal person who has grown up around rap music and hip hop culture, then 'thug' has an obvious racial connotation.
I mean when someone hears 'Thug Life', one does not picture Irish mobsters. |
I have never heard "Thug Life." Perhaps I'm not normal. |
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The Cosmic Hum

Joined: 09 May 2003 Location: Sonic Space
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 3:26 am Post subject: |
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Fox wrote: |
Steelrails wrote: |
If the image of 'thug' that pops into your head when you hear that word is some sort of multiracial 1980s movie gang member who is facing down Robocop, then fine. If on the other hand you are any normal person who has grown up around rap music and hip hop culture, then 'thug' has an obvious racial connotation.
I mean when someone hears 'Thug Life', one does not picture Irish mobsters. |
I have never heard "Thug Life." Perhaps I'm not normal. |
You're not normal.
But rest assured, in this context, it is correlational. |
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guavashake
Joined: 09 Nov 2013
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 3:46 am Post subject: |
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All of this information is from the grand jury investigation transcript, which is public record and available on line...
Grand jury documents rife with inconsistencies
http://fox2now.com/2014/11/26/grand-jury-documents-rife-with-inconsistencies/
Some witnesses said Michael Brown had been shot in the back. Another said he was lying face-down when Officer Darren Wilson finished him off. Still others acknowledged changing their stories to fit published details about the autopsy, or admitted that they didn’t see the shooting at all.
An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of grand jury documents reveals numerous examples of statements made during the shooting investigation that were inconsistent, fabricated or provably wrong. Prosecutors exposed these inconsistencies before the jurors, which likely influenced their decision not to indict Wilson in Brown’s death.
Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecutor, said the grand jury had to weigh testimony that conflicted with physical evidence and conflicting statements by witnesses as it decided whether Wilson should face charges.
“Many witnesses to the shooting of Michael Brown made statements inconsistent with other statements they made and also conflicting with the physical evidence. Some were completely refuted by the physical evidence,” McCulloch said.
The decision Monday not to charge Wilson with any crime set off more violent protests in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson and around the country, many by people claiming the unarmed black teenager was shot while peacefully surrendering to the white officer. Brown’s death has been followed by months of tension in this majority African American city, and some of the details have become intertwined with what many see as an abuse of power and a symbol of racial inequality in America.
Media coverage of the aftermath made it into the grand jury proceedings. Before some witnesses testified, prosecutors showed jurors clips of the same people making statements on TV. Their inconsistencies began almost immediately after the shooting, from people in the neighborhood, the friend walking with Brown during the encounter and even one woman who authorities suggested probably wasn’t even at the scene at the time.
Jurors also were presented with dueling versions from Wilson and Dorian Johnson, who was walking with Brown during the Aug. 9 confrontation. Johnson painted Wilson as provoking the violence, while Wilson said Brown was the aggressor.
But Johnson also declared on TV, in a clip played for the grand jury, that Wilson fired at least one shot at his friend while Brown was running away: “It struck my friend in the back.”
Testifying to the grand jury, Johnson said the shot he described caused Brown’s body to “do like a jerking movement, not to where it looked like he got hit in his back, but I knew, it maybe could have grazed him, but he definitely made a jerking movement.”
The physical evidence ultimately showed that Brown’s back wasn’t struck by any bullet.
Other witness accounts also were clearly wrong.
One woman, who said she was smoking a cigarette with a friend nearby, claimed she saw a second police officer in the passenger seat of Wilson’s vehicle. When quizzed by a prosecutor, she elaborated: The officer was white, “middle age or young” and in uniform. She said she was positive there was a second officer _ even though there was not.
Another woman testified that she saw Brown leaning through the officer’s window “from his navel up,” with his hand moving up and down, as if he were punching the officer. But when the same witness returned to testify again on another day, she said she suffers from mental disorder, has racist views and that she has trouble distinguishing the truth from things she had read online. Prosecutors suggested the woman had fabricated the entire incident, and wasn’t even at the scene the day of the shooting.
Another witness had told the FBI after the shooting that he saw Wilson shoot Brown in the back, and then stand over his prone body to finish him off. But in his grand jury testimony, this witness, acknowledged that he had not seen that part of the shooting, and that what he told the FBI was “based on me being where I’m from and that can be the only assumption that I have.”
The witness, who lives in the predominantly black neighborhood where Brown was killed, also acknowledged that he changed his story to fit details of the autopsy that he had learned about on TV.
“So it was after you learned that the things you said you saw couldn’t have happened that way, then you changed your story about what you seen?” a prosecutor asserted.
“Yeah, to coincide with what really happened,” the witness replied.
Another man, describing himself as a friend of Brown’s, told a federal investigator that he heard the first gunshot, looked out his window and saw an officer with a gun drawn and Brown “on his knees with his hands in the air.” He added: “I seen him shoot him in the head.”
But when later pressed by the investigator, the friend said he hadn’t seen the actual shooting because he was walking down the stairs at the time, and instead had heard details from someone in the apartment complex.
“What you are saying you saw isn’t forensically possible based on the evidence,” the investigator told the friend.
Shortly after that, the friend asked if he could leave.
“I ain’t feeling comfortable,” he said. |
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candy bar
Joined: 03 Dec 2012
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 4:26 am Post subject: |
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Definition of thug~
thug: a violent person, especially a criminal.
What's wrong with calling someone a thug if the shoe fits.
What should I have called him? Innocent victim? Gentle giant? Future college kid? He never caused any trouble kid? The perfect son? He would't have ever robbed anybody kid? The my son wasn't the type of person that was seen on the CCTV type kid? |
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 5:16 am Post subject: |
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candy bar wrote: |
Definition of thug~
thug: a violent person, especially a criminal.
What's wrong with calling someone a thug if the shoe fits.
What should I have called him? Innocent victim? Gentle giant? Future college kid? He never caused any trouble kid? The perfect son? He would't have ever robbed anybody kid? The my son wasn't the type of person that was seen on the CCTV type kid? |
This is a definition of an unabashed racist. |
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candy bar
Joined: 03 Dec 2012
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 5:42 am Post subject: |
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sirius black wrote: |
candy bar wrote: |
Definition of thug~
thug: a violent person, especially a criminal.
What's wrong with calling someone a thug if the shoe fits.
What should I have called him? Innocent victim? Gentle giant? Future college kid? He never caused any trouble kid? The perfect son? He would't have ever robbed anybody kid? The my son wasn't the type of person that was seen on the CCTV type kid? |
This is a definition of an unabashed racist. |
Not it's not. If you will notice, I didn't point anything about race.
If the 6'4" 290 pound, young man that commtited the act in Ferguson had been white, he would have been a thug in my book. Thug defines the act. If a white guy had committed the act, I would have no sympathy for him if a cop had plugged him 6 times or 16 times.
You are the one that comes out posting white on black actions, and not being balanced. You could have just as easily posted black on white actions.
I'm white and my wife isn't white. I think I'm very open on issues dealing with different races.
My views on what happened in Ferguson has nothing to do with the race of the thug. He thugged [thugged is a new word] and he got plugged.
You are racist. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 5:50 am Post subject: |
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candy bar wrote: |
Definition of thug~
thug: a violent person, especially a criminal.
What's wrong with calling someone a thug if the shoe fits.
What should I have called him? Innocent victim? Gentle giant? Future college kid? He never caused any trouble kid? The perfect son? He would't have ever robbed anybody kid? The my son wasn't the type of person that was seen on the CCTV type kid? |
I'm not hung up on the thug descriptor. But, you're calling him a thug, now a criminal, so you can blur the lines between petty theft and hardcore criminal behavior. You are doing so to excuse his execution. He stole cigarellos from a store clerk. He tussled with an aggressive cop. He's a brash and angry teen who should be cooling off in a jail cell right now, at most. |
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Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009 Location: Earth, Solar System
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 6:15 am Post subject: |
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candy bar wrote: |
What should I have called him? Innocent victim? Gentle giant? Future college kid? He never caused any trouble kid? The perfect son? He would't have ever robbed anybody kid? The my son wasn't the type of person that was seen on the CCTV type kid? |
How about Michael Brown? |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 6:27 am Post subject: |
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It really denigrates those men and demeans their deaths when you lump them in with a guy who we have on video shoplifting and shoving a store clerk. |
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candy bar
Joined: 03 Dec 2012
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 8:49 am Post subject: |
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Steelrails wrote: |
candy bar wrote: |
What should I have called him? Innocent victim? Gentle giant? Future college kid? He never caused any trouble kid? The perfect son? He would't have ever robbed anybody kid? The my son wasn't the type of person that was seen on the CCTV type kid? |
How about Michael Brown? |
I can agree with you on this one, Steelrails. Yes, I probably should be calling him Michael Brown, just like the media and everyone else should be calling them Mr. Brown and Mr. Wilson. But no, it's the armed white cop who killed the helpless teenage black child.
However, when I say thug, I'm using it as a definition reference. It's the same as if I use bully, thief, trouble maker or any other term. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 9:58 am Post subject: |
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For me, whether Michael Brown, or the others, were or were not thugs is really pretty unimportant. Their deaths are individual tragedies for the families, etc. However, what the conversation, and the issue, really is about is the institution of the police. This institution effects everyone, and reforming it helps everyone. The breakdown in trust between large segments of the population and an institution that is a pillar of the state is no small thing, and people looking at this as a series of individual incidents that can be broken down as to whether or not one person is a thug are myopic. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 10:37 am Post subject: |
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Leon wrote: |
For me, whether Michael Brown, or the others, were or were not thugs is really pretty unimportant. Their deaths are individual tragedies for the families, etc. However, what the conversation, and the issue, really is about is the institution of the police. This institution effects everyone, and reforming it helps everyone. The breakdown in trust between large segments of the population and an institution that is a pillar of the state is no small thing, and people looking at this as a series of individual incidents that can be broken down as to whether or not one person is a thug are myopic. |
Quote: |
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. |
I don't mean to be so histrionic as to say that America will decline into fascism, but full on acceptance - and even support - for police militarization is step one in the process. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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Leon wrote: |
For me, whether Michael Brown, or the others, were or were not thugs is really pretty unimportant. |
Then instead of talking about it, focus on what is important. |
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