Richard Sherman, race and coded language

A brief but passionate post-game interview with Seattle Seahawks' Richard Sherman became national news.  In a press conference days later, Sherman racialized the conversation when he spoke about the media fallout around his angry rant.  Picking up on the widespread usage of the word 'thug,' he described the word as a coded racial epithet, "an accepted way of calling someone the n-word."  How are young people responding to his statements?  "I think it depends on the action that has taken place to give the word  its context. It depends on if someone is having a positive or negative reaction to the word." Read reactions from Merced youth on We’Ced.