In 2012 an article written by Hamilton Nolan released discussing the shooting of a young black teenager by the name of Trayvon Martin. The article was titles “Stop Calling Black People ‘Urban’”. The reason for this title was an email was sent to Nolan where the emailer referred to Trayvon Martin as Urban or gangster because of him having a gold tooth. In the article Nolan states that the use of Urban is to refer to black people and black culture. Nolan writes the article to bring awareness to the offensiveness and incorrectness of referring to black people as Urban.
In the article it states how people use the word Urban as a coded word for black as Nolan says, “And the number of pundits who drop the "urban" code word while stumbling in search of something to say other than "black" is impossible to count.” (Nolan 12) Everyone knows what people really mean by using the word “urban” referring to black people is to hint at the stereotype of “gangster” or
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By this they refer to the slang used by people who grow up in rough areas, but they use the coded word “urban” instead of black slang. All races who grow up in different areas have different slang or twists to talking but when referring to “dangerous” individuals people say “urban” slang. If you look up “urban” slang and scroll down a news article video pulls up with a Arican American teen and the article title says, “translating street slang as teens deal guns, plan robberies.” These kinds of articles are part of the reason people associate African American with dangerous and ghetto. It was a news cite that posted it which is what Nolan was talking about in his article when he said that “This is not to imply that only moronic people on the internet use this misnomer."Urban marketing" is synonymous with marketing to black people. "Urban fiction" is black fiction. "Urban" music is common parlance for black music” (Nolan