Neither Vox bloggers, NPR shills, nor even essayists emoloyed by dictionary.com have the authority to decide what "thug" means.
Brown was a thug. Get over it.
So who does have the authority to define words, and why?
General public usage indicates what words mean. A handful of racists do not have the power to make literally anything they want racist based on how they use them; that's the kind of logic that leads to people declaring that milk and the "ok" sign are now racist.
Your first sentence literally contradicts the rest of your post.
That's what I was going to say ---
Place-holder sig because new phone and old sigs not saved :/