I see your point. I guess my perspective is a bit different due to a couple of things.

One, I grew up poor, and often in mixed communities where we were all pretty much in the same (sinking) boat. My dad was an electrician, so we moved a lot. I started thinking that cops, as an institution, were evil sometime in the late 70's.

Two, while I was not myself ever directly involved, I did run with a rough crowd in my early adulthood. I was the "clean" guy that a lot of criminals knew, so I heard the term a lot. I never realized it was a prison tattoo, more like what you said in your article. An identification of the enemy.

Like most "easy" labels, it's too fucking simple.

Given what I've learned from you, I'll not use it anymore, but I don't know how to reach middle class folk on things like this. Any poor person with more than a couple years of living knows that the cops ain't your friend. Add being dark skinned or somehow "different", and it gets exponentially worse.

But the people in the "nice" neighborhoods don't have the same experience, or at least not nearly as often, and they straight up don't get it. Even with all the video, all the testimony, they just don't or won't get it.

It's one area where I've written thousands of words, most of which will never be seen by the public, because I re-read it and it just comes off wrong.