I know that there are those who, after reading this headline and seeing the picture attached to this piece—a young and blond and smirking white woman’s mug shot—will consider the use of “thug” to be intentionally sensationalistic, a shameless troll wrapped in a paradox intended to elicit reaction.
Of course, if you’re aware that white women are, in fact, human, and possess the same powers and ambitions and agencies to commit abhorrent acts that people who are not white women possess, you won’t blink at the thought of a young, white female thug. Perhaps because you know that many white women have been able to skirt under the thug-detection radar, enacting their privilege and their inherent damsel-in-distressing benefit of the doubt to help niggas get lynched 60 years ago and get you reported to human resources for borrowing a stapler 60 days ago. To you, a thug like Katie Quackenbush is old hat, mundane. Katie Quackenbush is a Tuesday evening in September.
But if this is not you, and you instead believe that considering a woman who looks like that to be a thug is (at best) a stretch and (at worst) an inherent moral fallacy, consider the following:
1. Thug-ass Katie Quackenbush allegedly shot an unarmed man twice after an argument following his asking her to move her obnoxious SUV.
2. Thug-ass Katie Quackenbush has twice been arrested on assault charges.
3. Thug-ass Katie Quackenbush is literally a SoundCloud rapper. (Her page was taken down at some point today.)
4. Thug-ass Katie Quackenbush is a tatted-up single mom. Of course, neither having tattoos nor raising a child while unmarried is a bad thing. They’re great things! Yay, tattoos and moms! (I personally have both.) But they are totally, definitely, absolutely things that would be used to construct and color the thug perception of a person of color accused of doing what Quackenbush was charged with.
Anyway, if you happen to be out tonight, and you happen to see a crew of Katie Quackenbushes in the street, don’t run. Because that would be foolish. But clutch your purses a little tighter, guard your wallets a little more stiffly and keep your eyes on those thugged-ass motherfuckers. Not because we don’t know what they’re capable of doing. But because we do.