Doblin: Don Sterling: 80 years a racist

By ALFRED P. DOBLIN

The Record

Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record.  Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com.  Follow AlfredPDoblin on Twitter. 

ONE OF THE MOST disturbing images in “12 Years a Slave” – a film with many difficult-to-watch scenes – shows Solomon Northup, the free man sold into slavery, trying to keep the tops of his toes on slippery ground.  There is a noose around his neck.  His lynching was stopped, but he was not freed.  That decision was to be left to his master.  And so he dangles. 

Slaves walk past Northup, who could die with just one slip of his foot.  More unsettling than watching how plantation slaves had become numb to the inhumanity surrounding them, was seeing the slave owner’s wife, a picture of Southern gentility, observing Northup’s life-death struggle and doing absolutely nothing to help him. 

Sitting in a movie theater in 2013, it was easy to say that people would not act that way today.  And then there is the case of Donald Sterling, a man with an ironic Dickensian name.  Sterling is mottled tin at best. 

The billionaire real-estate magnate, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, turns out to be a virulent racist.  More revealing is that few people who knew Sterling were surprised.  An audio recording purported to be an exchange between Sterling and girlfriend V. Stiviano reveals a man who sees himself as a modern-day plantation owner.  He tells his girlfriend that she should not be posting images on social media that show her with black men.  He also doesn’t want her to bring African-American men to Clippers games.  Not that it matters when you are so low on the morality ladder, Sterling has been married for more than 50 years. 

Reaction to the story has been fast and furious.  NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling from games for life, imposed a $2.5 million fine (barely a hardship for a billionaire) and wants to force Sterling to sell the team.  A legal challenge to the forced sale is guaranteed. 

Meanwhile, an assortment of high-profile celebrities with deep pockets has announced interest in buying the Clippers.  So even if Sterling loses his team, he will make a lot of money.  But this isn’t a story about money so much as it is entitlement.  Sterling has not been a stranger to charges of racism.  Yet nothing until now has proved significantly damaging. 
In the taped conversation, Sterling does not see a connection between the profitability of an NBA franchise and the caliber of players on that NBA team.  Sterling is paying the salaries of many black athletes, but he is not doing this out of love.  These athletes are the reason people buy tickets and team merchandise.  There were no basketball fans clamoring for a Clippers’ shirt with “Don Sterling” on the back. 

The calmness of Sterling’s voice while he is spewing racist bile is chilling.  There is no sense of anything being wrong on his part.  Granted, he assumed he was speaking privately, but that does make the sentiments expressed any more justifiable. 

I wonder what the U.S. Supreme Court justices who recently ruled that affirmative action applied to university admissions is somehow prejudicial against non-minorities are thinking now.  Maybe they are able to sit inside their wood-paneled cocoons refusing to evolve into butterflies that fly about in the real world.  In the academic world, the law is the law and there is no attempt to grasp the consequences of that law. 

The majority does not always do the right thing.  Historically, it rarely does without a judicial push.  There were other NBA owners who were not unaware of Sterling’s views.  There were former employees who tried to make a noise only to be muffled by a system not stacked in their favor. 

Sterling’s sizable fortune afforded him a lot of latitude in society.  He had to do more than cross a line in the sand; he had to blow up the whole beach.  Perhaps taking his team away from him is a punishment, but it hardly seems like much, aside from the loss of ego.  And let’s be real: A lifetime ban imposed on an 80-year-old man is not exactly a very long sentence. 

NBA owners are lining up behind Silver’s decision.  They should have been lining up against Sterling a long time ago.  But people do not stand up to racism or bigotry easily.  And it’s not just in the world of sports.  Look no further than the performing arts organizations that continue to welcome Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a prominent supporter of Vladimir Putin, who first waged war against homosexuals and, now, has “annexed” a part of the Ukraine.  There have been protests at concerts Gergiev has conducted in the United States, but officials at venues like Carnegie Hall play the deflect-blame game and say Gergiev is a musician and his political alliances have no impact on his music making. 

Sterling’s racist views had no impact on how the Clippers played a game of basketball, but the public recognizes his connection to an NBA team tarnishes that team.  The same is true about Gergiev standing on a podium leading an orchestra. 

My point is that you can have racists owning a sports franchise where a majority of players are black.  You can have a symphony conductor supporting a government leader who is locking up gays and slowly recreating the Soviet bloc.  And there is no universal outcry. 

If we have to wait until an audio recording is released that makes it impossible to ignore what was already known about Sterling, we are no better than that Southern belle watching a black man struggle for solid ground as a noose tightens around his neck. 

Some things in life are disturbing to watch.  But they are far more disturbing when you are the object of the violence and not the spectator. 

Doblin: Don Sterling: 80 years a racist

By ALFRED P. DOBLIN

The Record

Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record.  Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com.  Follow AlfredPDoblin on Twitter. 

ONE OF THE MOST disturbing images in “12 Years a Slave” – a film with many difficult-to-watch scenes – shows Solomon Northup, the free man sold into slavery, trying to keep the tops of his toes on slippery ground.  There is a noose around his neck.  His lynching was stopped, but he was not freed.  That decision was to be left to his master.  And so he dangles. 

Slaves walk past Northup, who could die with just one slip of his foot.  More unsettling than watching how plantation slaves had become numb to the inhumanity surrounding them, was seeing the slave owner’s wife, a picture of Southern gentility, observing Northup’s life-death struggle and doing absolutely nothing to help him. 

Sitting in a movie theater in 2013, it was easy to say that people would not act that way today.  And then there is the case of Donald Sterling, a man with an ironic Dickensian name.  Sterling is mottled tin at best. 

The billionaire real-estate magnate, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, turns out to be a virulent racist.  More revealing is that few people who knew Sterling were surprised.  An audio recording purported to be an exchange between Sterling and girlfriend V. Stiviano reveals a man who sees himself as a modern-day plantation owner.  He tells his girlfriend that she should not be posting images on social media that show her with black men.  He also doesn’t want her to bring African-American men to Clippers games.  Not that it matters when you are so low on the morality ladder, Sterling has been married for more than 50 years. 

Reaction to the story has been fast and furious.  NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling from games for life, imposed a $2.5 million fine (barely a hardship for a billionaire) and wants to force Sterling to sell the team.  A legal challenge to the forced sale is guaranteed. 

Meanwhile, an assortment of high-profile celebrities with deep pockets has announced interest in buying the Clippers.  So even if Sterling loses his team, he will make a lot of money.  But this isn’t a story about money so much as it is entitlement.  Sterling has not been a stranger to charges of racism.  Yet nothing until now has proved significantly damaging. 
In the taped conversation, Sterling does not see a connection between the profitability of an NBA franchise and the caliber of players on that NBA team.  Sterling is paying the salaries of many black athletes, but he is not doing this out of love.  These athletes are the reason people buy tickets and team merchandise.  There were no basketball fans clamoring for a Clippers’ shirt with “Don Sterling” on the back. 

The calmness of Sterling’s voice while he is spewing racist bile is chilling.  There is no sense of anything being wrong on his part.  Granted, he assumed he was speaking privately, but that does make the sentiments expressed any more justifiable. 

I wonder what the U.S. Supreme Court justices who recently ruled that affirmative action applied to university admissions is somehow prejudicial against non-minorities are thinking now.  Maybe they are able to sit inside their wood-paneled cocoons refusing to evolve into butterflies that fly about in the real world.  In the academic world, the law is the law and there is no attempt to grasp the consequences of that law. 

The majority does not always do the right thing.  Historically, it rarely does without a judicial push.  There were other NBA owners who were not unaware of Sterling’s views.  There were former employees who tried to make a noise only to be muffled by a system not stacked in their favor. 

Sterling’s sizable fortune afforded him a lot of latitude in society.  He had to do more than cross a line in the sand; he had to blow up the whole beach.  Perhaps taking his team away from him is a punishment, but it hardly seems like much, aside from the loss of ego.  And let’s be real: A lifetime ban imposed on an 80-year-old man is not exactly a very long sentence. 

NBA owners are lining up behind Silver’s decision.  They should have been lining up against Sterling a long time ago.  But people do not stand up to racism or bigotry easily.  And it’s not just in the world of sports.  Look no further than the performing arts organizations that continue to welcome Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a prominent supporter of Vladimir Putin, who first waged war against homosexuals and, now, has “annexed” a part of the Ukraine.  There have been protests at concerts Gergiev has conducted in the United States, but officials at venues like Carnegie Hall play the deflect-blame game and say Gergiev is a musician and his political alliances have no impact on his music making. 

Sterling’s racist views had no impact on how the Clippers played a game of basketball, but the public recognizes his connection to an NBA team tarnishes that team.  The same is true about Gergiev standing on a podium leading an orchestra. 

My point is that you can have racists owning a sports franchise where a majority of players are black.  You can have a symphony conductor supporting a government leader who is locking up gays and slowly recreating the Soviet bloc.  And there is no universal outcry. 

If we have to wait until an audio recording is released that makes it impossible to ignore what was already known about Sterling, we are no better than that Southern belle watching a black man struggle for solid ground as a noose tightens around his neck. 

Some things in life are disturbing to watch.  But they are far more disturbing when you are the object of the violence and not the spectator.