Richard Sherman: 'Thug' Is 'Accepted Way of Calling Somebody the N-word'

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman said he was bothered and disappointed that he was called a “thug” after his crazed post-game rant on Sunday because he said it seems like “thug” is the “accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays.”

“The only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays,” Sherman said in a press conference on Wednesday. “There was a hockey game where they didn’t even play hockey, they just threw the puck aside and started fighting. I saw that, and said, ‘Oh man, I’m the thug? What’s going on here?'”

There is nothing Richard Sherman, the straight-A student from Stanford who was the first student in over 20 years from Compton’s Dominguez High School who was good enough on the field and in the classroom to attend one of the most selective and prestigious universities in the world that regularly rejects the nation’s top athletes because they do not meet academic requirements, has done off the field that would lead one to believe he was in any way a thug. 

Sherman said he has “done nothing villainous” and noted he has not gotten suspended for fighting off the field or arrested or any other thing associated with “thugs.” But after Sherman’s post-game rant, he was called things like “thug,” “ape,” “monkey,” and even the “N-word.” 

“I know some ‘thugs,’ and they know I’m the furthest thing from a thug. I’ve fought that my whole life, just coming from where I’m coming from,” he continued, according to a transcript. “Just because you hear Compton, you hear Watts, you hear cities like that, you just think ‘thug, he’s a gangster, he’s this, that, and the other,’ and then you hear Stanford, and they’re like, ‘oh man, that doesn’t even make sense, that’s an oxymoron.'”

Sherman added, “You fight it for so long, and to have it come back up and people start to use it again, it’s really, it’s frustrating.”

Sherman has apologized numerous times for taking attention away from his team and teammates with his post-game interview in which he smacked down San Francisco 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree after Sherman, still filled with adrenaline, preserved Seattle’s 23-17 win over the 49ers with a pass deflection in the end zone that resulted in the game-clinching interception.