Reading Skookum’s inciteful post A bigot’s money is still green got me thinking. Everyone is in a lather about Donald Sterling’s comments and the last thing the NAACP wants is for anyone to think critically about the complete picture. As Skook quoted:
“Sterling’s long-established pattern of bigotry and racist comments have not been a secret in the NBA. Yet until now, they have been tolerated and met with a gentle hand and a blind eye.”
Indeed.
As noted, Sterling has a history of racist behavior:
Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College, wrote a long post on Talking Points Memo, a liberal political website, probing the NAACP’s ongoing relationship with Sterling. One of the largest landlords in Los Angeles, Sterling has been sued multiple times over the years for residential discrimination against blacks and Latinos, and tenant abuse, as he tried to evict legal residents from their rent-controlled apartments. In 2009, he settled a $2.7 million rental lawsuit, the largest ever brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Mutiple times.”
Sterling received his first Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP just before he agreed to settle the above case for about $2.7 million.
Now let’s examine a number of statements and events.
In addition to his first NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, Sterling also received a Humanitarian Award from the NAACP in 2008. Neither will be rescinded.
For the NAACP, an organization whose mission is to fight discrimination in all its forms, this was obviously a conflict. After two days and a lot of condemnation of Sterling’s remarks from present and former players, current NBA franchise owners and even avid NBA fan President Obama, the LA chapter rescinded the award.
Sterling wasn’t stripped of all his NAACP Awards: He was also given a Humanitarian Award in 2008 and a President’s Award in 2009. Jenkins told reporters his chapter would not be rescinding those honors.
The NAACP is not the only organization which has benefited from Sterling’s largesse. He’s also made considerable donations to the United Negro College Fund and the Black Business Association. The amount is described as “millions.”
So what has Sterling given in the way of donations? NAACP President Leon Jenkins has described that as an “insignificant amount.”
At the same time Jenkins also had this to say:
Jenkins said the NAACP decided to honor Sterling because of “a body of work. Mr. Sterling’s organization has on a consistent basis brought in the minority community. He has also over the years contributed to a number of minority charities. Compared to other L.A. franchises, his organization gave more money than the others.”
And this:
Jenkins said that the NAACP had been working closely with Sterling on contributions to the black community in southern California, including creating an endowment at a predominantly black college in the LA area and a scholarship program for black students at UCLA.
Call me silly, but that sounds like a lot more than an “insignificant amount.”
Jenkins indicated that the money donated by Sterling would be returned and added a fascinating ampersand- Jenkins was willing to forgive Sterling:
“God teaches us to forgive, and the way I look at it, after a sustained period of proof to the African American community that those words don’t reflect his heart, I think there’s room for forgiveness. I wouldn’t be a Christian if I said there wasn’t,” Jenkins said.
Why they would do that is pretty obvious:
“We are negotiating with him about giving more moneys to African American students at UCLA, and so we are in preliminary discussions,” Jenkins said. He also noted, however, they had not spoken since the scandal broke.
Money bought its way into the heart of the NAACP and more money will find forgiveness. Without a doubt that money has done good for the black community in LA and its drying up would certainly be harmful. That’s why the NAACP held its nose and weathered the smell of racism from Sterling and bestowed upon him one award already and was prepared to add another.
In this light, all the outrage takes on a stupid pallor.
Let’s be honest. The NAACP and Sterling need each other. Sterling has racist tendencies for sure, but the NAACP was willing to overlook them until TMZ ripped the blanket off. Their relationship was uncomfortable, but symbiotic. It’s almost a domestic squabble that the two should be allowed to work out together. It’d be best for both sides.
Harry Reid spoke of Barack Obama as a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
Reid didn’t lose his job. Obama forgave him.
Neither Sharpton nor Jackson pushed their way to the floor of the Senate to make demands and now all they will do in what they do best- inflame an already bad situation and find a way to both aggrandize and enrich themselves without regard for the fallout.
Bill Clinton once said that Obama should be getting Clinton coffee.
Again, nothing.
As Skook said, a bigot’s money is still green, but a prostitute doesn’t really care from where the green money comes either.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
The racist Donald Sterling is a Democrat.
The Republican Donald Sterling lives in Texas and owns no basketball teams.
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/donald-sterling.asp?cycle=12
Apparently, he’s a registered Republican:
I liked some of what Kareem Abdul Jabbar had to say.
Why the outrage over a comment he made privately to a confidante rather than express outrage over statements and actions made publicly for years?
Personally, I don’t care if he’s a racist. It doesn’t affect me. If he made bigoted comments about Asians, so what? Is racism the worst evil on the planet? Really?! If it leads to harmful and violent actions, then that would need to be dealt with. But what people think and feel?
I see this related to Brendan Eich and the morality pitchforks-and-torches mob mentality of the left.
What if someone prefers dating Asian women over other races? Is that racist? Is that okay to have a preference, regardless of the reasoning (such as stereotyping Asian women as demure and submissive)? What if a woman has a thing for black men? What if a guy is only attracted to blondes? What if a guy doesn’t find any black women attractive. Is he racially biased? Is that a crime? What if a store-owner can’t stand the sight of tattoos. Is he prejudiced?
I just think there are bigger problems in the States than the issue of racism, sexism, and genderism.
The NAACP is selling ”racist offsets,” just like the carbon offsets those stranded in the Antarctic bought after wasting all that carbon being tourists of global warming in thick ice.
Mr. Sterling could buy these NAACP racist offsets by setting up enough black scholarships and giving to enough of the NAACP’s other charities.
@Wordsmith:
There are, but they don’t amount to democrat talking points.
The alleged source of this controversy, has it be verified and was it reliable? Who was the source? If the data and alleged B.S. recording is fake, Sterling will own the nba and every sports caster and tv station in this country.
The conduct of the left media is typical “knee jerk” to stupidity.
Jackson stuck his face into the is mess-he is a racist and a true bigot.
DrJohn,
I just got finished reading Skook’s stuff you quoted above as well as trying to read as much as possible on this as I’m trying to get a shot at throwing something out on my blog on it (Derby Week. The world stops for me. LOL!)
We can all agree that we must always be vigilant and aware of Racism and the other tawdry qualities that “man” unfortunately has. And as pointed out in numerous articles, the well is deep as to the instances of “racist, homophobic, Anti-Latino and so on and so on statements and such made by idiots and so on. And let’s not even begin going into the hypocrisy of the stances against the overt racism out there as evidenced by the Jesses, Sharptons, Holders and of course the leftist media who all are so willing to “forgive and forget provided the person being racist at any particular moment is in fact one of their own and yes, all sides are guilty of this!
However, thanks to a great article I read written by Kareem Abdul Jabbar, we must address the really more serious aspect he brings up and that is in effect “the secret taping and use of it by individuals or government to bring down those they are against for any reason. Is this not Gestapo/Soviet style behavior?
Mr. Jabbar in his commentary makes some very salient comments, all of which I agree with ( and let’s make no bones about this. I wouldn’t think anyone would consider him anything other than a liberal, not hard left, but a liberal. You don’t hear much from him but when he speaks out, one should listen. His arguments are well reasoned and his beliefs are deeply held, much as the great Senator Moynahan’s were. Kareem hits it on the head below as he points out that so much of this was already known about Sterling and far to many others and in fact ignored..
“And now the poor guy’s girlfriend (undoubtedly ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his racism. Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing “pin the fried chicken on the Sambo.” She blindfolded him and spun him around until he was just blathering all sorts of incoherent racist sound bites that had the news media peeing themselves with glee.
They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping.
I don’t blame them. I’m doing some whooping right now. Racists deserve to be paraded around the modern town square of the television screen so that the rest of us who believe in the American ideals of equality can be reminded that racism is still a disease that we haven’t yet licked.
What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?
He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?”
Hypocrisy is the great cancer here and the money controlling it. And don’t let me leave out the prostitutes in our government who can always turn their cheek to outright racism if it serves their causes! But Kareem than touches on something that goes to our very base of Freedom and privacy.
“Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it.
Make no mistake: Donald Sterling is the villain of this story. But he’s just a handmaiden to the bigger evil. In our quest for social justice, we shouldn’t lose sight that racism is the true enemy. He’s just another jerk with more money than brains.
So, if we’re all going to be outraged, let’s be outraged that we weren’t more outraged when his racism was first evident. Let’s be outraged that private conversations between people in an intimate relationship are recorded and publicly played. Let’s be outraged that whoever did the betraying will probably get a book deal, a sitcom, trade recipes with Hoda and Kathie Lee, and soon appear on Celebrity Apprentice and Dancing with the Stars.”
Actions like “releasing a secretly taped conversation years after it happened to destroy someone is now apparently common and accepted! And if one would believe for one moment the NSA and all of the stuff surrounding our government and their covert operations against American Citizens is just a croc than that to is indicative of the problems this country faces.
Kareem closes with the following:
“Let’s use this tawdry incident to remind ourselves of the old saying: “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” Instead of being content to punish Sterling and go back to sleep, we need to be inspired to vigilantly seek out, expose, and eliminate racism at its first signs.”
“Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” Wise words from a wise man that should be heeded! It’s not just about Racism. As I’ve said so many times, this is about the basic ideals we as Americans should be following, those out forth by our founding fathers and the people who fought and gave us this great country. Yes, many were flawed, but in the big picture, their hearts were in the right place. We as a country have come a long way in many respects as to racism and so forth and yes we have much farther to go. I know. i was around the tracks back when Skook was and I personally saw far to much of it. But facing up to and fighting racism and such cannot be done at the loss of personal privacy as in this and far to many cases in all walks of life.
I remember Jesse Jerkson wanting to give the Bamster a scrotumectomy. He was caught on a hot microphone. It created a slight murmur on the left wing richter scale. The NAACP is a reverse discrimination factory, period.
Sterling might be an owner, but sports fans in Boston are taking it to whole new and low level!
A Montreal Canadien got the game-winning goal in the 2nd overtime against the Boston Bruins.
If you’ve ever seen P.K. Subban (a native Canadian) play you know he’s something special.
A fantastic stick handler and scorer.
Subban also happens to be black…..
His parents were originally from the Caribbean.
So Twitterverse has gone nuts!
Take a gander at what liberal Mass. whites are saying:
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/05/02/boston-strong-racist-reaction-after-subban-scores-game-winner/
Amongst his awards:
In 2013 he won the James Norris Memorial Trophy, and was the leading scorer amongst all defencemen.
Internationally, Subban has won a gold medal with Team Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
All this angst over words when the world has REAL SLAVERS working to enslave black girls.
“Boko Haram”, translates as “western education is forbidden”.
Boko Haram has attacked a school (naturally) and taken 220 female students.
The girls are the victims of slavery, child abuse and forced marriage.
Their captors (Boko Haram) are by extension slavers and rapists.
The Leftist media is not completely pro-Boko Haram, just protective of it.
Headlines in Leftist media say these girls were ”kidnapped,” as if they might be given back someday.
They blame Boko Haram as doing nothing more than what ”the West” did and thus make light of it.
But this is a lie.
Pretending the West is to blame is by agreeing that knowledge is “western knowledge”.
Truth is from knowledge and thus knowledge is the property of the entire human race.
Claiming that the education of girls is “western cultural imperialism” is getting on a road that leads you to nihilism as soon as you step down it.
No wonder our media is making much of Sterling while making nothing but crickets over real enslavement of black people.
One of the few non-leftist accounts:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/03/220-schoolgirls-abducted-by-boko-haram-have-been-enslaved
Where is Jesse Jackson.
Where is Al Sharpton?
Where are all the blacks against oppression of blacks?
Here’s CNN quoting the leader of Boko Haram:
“I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah.
“There is a market for selling humans.
Allah says I should sell.
He commands me to sell.
I will sell women.
I sell women.”
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/05/world/africa/nigeria-abducted-girls/
John Kerry responded by pointing out that terrorists don’t offer health care!
“They don’t offer anything except violence.
They don’t offer a health care plan, they don’t offer schools.
They don’t tell you how to build a nation, they don’t talk about how they will provide jobs.
They just tell people, ‘You have to behave the way we tell you to,’ and they will punish you if you don’t.
Our responsibility and the world’s responsibility is to stand up against that kind if nihilism.”
Ex-Sec State Hillary added a hashtag:
“Access to education is a basic right & an unconscionable reason to target innocent girls.
We must stand up to terrorism. #BringBackOurGirls.”
We are being dummied down to Idiocracy levels.
And selective as to our ”rasict” outrage, too.
DR JOHN !! can’t you even manage to get a quote correct? Clinton never said that Obama SHOULD be getting him coffee.
He said ” a few years ago this guy WOULD have been getting us coffee…..”
Yeah Yeah I now it was probably just a typo error, fat fingers and all….. the S key and the W key are so close an easy mistake.
The local president of the NAACP was forced to resign by the national because of his too cozy relationship with that racist Sterling. Free tickets and cash.
It is interesting also to note that the radical right seems to be giving up on the ObamaCare rhetoric and has gone back to BENGHAZI!!!
Americans are learning that the doomsayers on the ACA were wrong. Only 20% of Americans want to repeal ACA
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE LOSING THEIR COVERAGE !!!! wow that sure sounds like alot !! ummm but out of a population of 300 million doesn’t that happen as a matter of course?
@john: Well, I would put the pom-poms down, if I were you. First, the law hasn’t even been ENACTED yet; Obama has been holding back on the elements that would cause him political pain in elections (taxes, fees, penalties, payments) and handing out the free stuff. Since the chickens are being blocked from entering the hen house, they can hardly have come home to roost yet, can they?
Funny how a puny few million LOSING their insurance due to governmental mandates is nothing but a rounding error when the entire health care insurance industry, health care industry itself, as well as the entire economy has been turned ass over teakettle for the same measly amount that were uninsured, had the right to be insured and actually WANTED to be insured. Add to that the projection that after $2 trillion and ten years of this madness, we will STILL have 30 million uninsured.
Wa. Hoo. Great success.
@john: Chew on this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/obamacare-poll-expectations-2014-4
So, I’m wondering.
The state of California has computerized signs on all their freeways that might have a license plate number or a missing child or a warning to buckle up on it.
All across the state.
But today someone hacked that system and posted rap lyrics filled with the n-word.
So, I’m wondering.
Will it be a crime IF the hacker is black?
Or not?
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/05/05/N-Word-Rap-Lyric-Hacked-On-To-California-Electrical-Highway-Sign
Don’t wanna miss the award about the annual award. And I am glad to see that thee will be lifetime achievement award will be given.