On Monday, the same day Michael Brown’s family members took to the podium at his funeral, The New York Times considered Brown’s life in a profile of sorts. In the piece, titled “Michael Brown Spent Last Weeks Grappling With Problems and Promise,” John Eligon wrote that Brown “was no angel.”

Here’s the full context:

Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life. Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.

Prosecutors across America have, for years, turned to the presence of rap lyrics as evidence of moral failing and/or criminal intent. It’s a racially charged version of blaming video games for Columbine. But let’s leave that aside, and instead consider the benchmark a subject must meet before the editors of The New York Times decide that the person being written about is “no angel.”

The following Times passages are what resulted from a query for the phrase “no angel” in the digital pages of the paper. We’ve excluded reviews of pieces of fictional entertainment, and this list is not exhaustive. However, when looking at the paper’s usage of the phrase when describing people of note, a pattern emerges. “No angel” seems to most commonly describe either hardened white criminals, or men of color.

Before he went on to be a notorious mob boss, Al Capone was no angel: