"According to The Waco Tribune-Herald, “officials have found 1,000 weapons tucked into kitchen areas, vehicles and toilets,” and those weapons included chains with padlocks, pocketknives, assault knives, batons and even an AK-47. They also found body armor.
But the tone and tenor of the rhetoric the media used to describe this event — particularly early on — were in stark contrast to the language used to describe the protests over the killings of black men by the police.
In Waco, the words used to describe the participants in a shootout so violent that a local police spokesman called the crime scene the bloodiest he had ever seen included “biker clubs,” “gangs” and “outlaw motorcycle gangs.”
While those words may be accurate, they lack the pathological markings of those used to describe protesters in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore. President Obama and the mayor of Baltimore were quick to use the loaded label “thugs” for the violent rioters there. That the authorities have not used that word to describe the far worse violence in Waco makes the contrast all the more glaring.
The words “outlaw” and “biker” while pejorative to some, still evoke a certain romanticism in the American ethos. They conjure an image of individualism, adventure and virility. There’s an endless list of motorcycle gang movies. A search for “motorcycle romance” on Amazon yields thousands of options. Viagra, the erectile dysfunction drug, even has a motorcycle commercial.
While “thug life” has also been glamorized in movies, music and books, its scope is limited and racialized. It is applied to — and even adopted by — black men. And the evocation is more “Menace II Society” than “Easy Rider.” The pejorative is unambiguous."
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