A Dissenting View on the Treatment of LA Clippers' owner Donald Sterling

The condemnation of an NBA basketball owner for racially charged remarks made to his girlfriend has been nearly universal, coming from all shades of political opinion.

 

Donald Sterling, 80 year old owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, was recorded by his girlfriend saying that he didn’t like her being photographed with black friends, specifically naming hoops legend Magic Johnson.

The reaction to the release of the recording landed on Sterling’s head like the proverbial ton of bricks.  Within days, prodded no doubt by a chorus of attacks, Sterling was banned by the National Basketball Association and efforts were promised to force him to sell the team.

Why?

 

Of course, his words were objectionable.  It’s fair to conclude that he doesn’t like black people.  He’s prejudiced.

 

Was he punished for revealing that fact?  I certainly don’t know Donald Sterling.  Besides being a bigot, he may be a miserable, despicable person on a variety of fronts.

But that’s not the focus of the widespread outrage.  It is that he expressed hostility toward another race?

Be honest.  Who among us, of whatever race, or mixture thereof, is free of any racial prejudice?

We have laws, not against racial bias as an attitude, but rather against its practice.

Supposedly, as a society, we don’t care what you think.  It’s what you do that counts.

 

As a restaurant owner, for instance, it matters not whether you like blacks.  But you are forbidden to refuse service to customers who are

.

Thus, the question that should have been answered before Sterling’s head rolled was how he ran his team.

In that regard, it is relevant that most of the Clippers’ squad was black (as is the case with the rest of the NBA teams) and that the team is coached by Doc Rivers, a black man and esteemed NBA player in days-gone-by.  It’s noteworthy that most NBA coaches are not black.  Nor is there any evidence that Sterling treated team members of whatever color in an unfair or hostile manner.

It would appear that, in fact, Donald Sterling was punished for what he thought in private, not what he did in public.

 

Is that the new standard for America?  Speak your mind, even in private, at your economic peril?