Sam Fulwood III: Choosing our words carefully

  Not long after the violent shootout at a Twin Peaks Restaurant in Waco, Texas, my Twitter newsfeed lit up with comments that linked what many media outlets termed a “brawl” to the public protests and disturbances last month in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. The comparison was largely unfavorable, as many noted a race-tinged discrepancy in the language used to describe two separate acts of lawlessness.

  In Baltimore, the activity involved black people and the language was less than subtle, typically describing the looters as “thugs” and their behavior as a “riot.”