New York Times: Michael Brown was 'no angel' because he smoked, drank, and rapped

Pro tip: When posthumously profiling a teenager whose death sparked a national conversation about race, it's probably best to not shoehorn the deceased into the stereotype of a troubled black kid.

From The New York Times:

Brown, who was shot to death by a police officer earlier this month, was "no angel," apparently because he drank, smoked, and rapped. However, by that metric roughly 80 percent of all American teens aren't angels — since they've consumed alcohol and used drugs, too.

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More problematically, though, the description seems to imply Brown was a bad egg who maybe had it coming. As many others have pointed out, "no angel" has a unique connotation when applied to the situation that, though it does not directly link rap music and booze to Brown's death, can easily be read as implying as much.