Should we stop using the word "felon"?

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we're turning our sights on the word "felon", and looking into what it tells us (and can't tell us) about the 19 million people in the U.S. — like Donald Trump and Hunter Biden — carrying that designation around.

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0:00.0	This election season you can expect to hear a lot of news, some of it meaningful, much of it not.
0:05.8	Give the Up First Podcast 15 minutes, sometimes a little less,
0:09.6	and we'll help you sort it out what's going on around the world and at home.
0:13.4	Three stories, 15 minutes, up first every day.
0:17.0	Listen every morning, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:22.0	What's good, y'all? You are listening to Code Switch. I'm Gene Numbie. And I'm B.A. Parker. And this week, we're revisiting a series we call Word Watch, where we go deep on a piece of language that is making
0:36.4	our antenna twitch or is really sticking in our teeth and so we figured we should turn our sights to felon.
0:45.0	Fillin.
0:47.0	Convicted felon.
0:48.0	A word that seems to be everywhere right now.
0:53.0	Convicted felon.
0:54.0	Convicted felon.
0:56.0	Convicted felon.
0:57.0	Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
1:00.0	A former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency.
1:09.1	And that word is of course in the discourse because former president Donald Trump was recently convicted of a felony.
1:14.7	And so now he has this permanent label, felon, affixed to him just like Mr President.
1:22.1	And a lot of folks are really happy to stick that label to him,
1:25.0	including people who might otherwise be skeptical about our criminal legal system
1:31.0	does its business.
1:32.0	Right, and obviously... our criminal legal system does its business.
1:32.8	Right, and obviously,
	...

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