{"id":7466,"date":"2014-05-08T14:43:55","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T18:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/?p=7466"},"modified":"2022-10-04T13:03:32","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T20:03:32","slug":"sterlings-racism-finally-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/?p=7466","title":{"rendered":"Sterling\u2019s Racism: Finally News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, that escalated quickly.
\nAudio recordings of Clippers\u2019 owner Donald Sterling, telling his girlfriend not to be seen in public with black people<\/a> (Instagram counts as \u201cthe public\u201d), leaked Friday night on TMZ. By the following Tuesday, he was banned from the NBA<\/a> for life.
\nRaise your hand if you saw that coming.
\nNot the \u201cDonald Sterling is racist\u201d part, but the \u201cgetting kicked out of the NBA forever\u201d part, mind you. Because people knew about the former for years. During a sworn testimony from a 2003 housing discrimination lawsuit, Sterling is quoted<\/a> as saying hispanics \u201csmoke, drink, and just hang around the building\u201d, while blacks \u201csmell and attract vermin\u201d (Sterling paid upwards of $5 million<\/a> in settlements for this case). He paid $2.765 million<\/a> in a settlement after being accused of housing discrimination in 2009.
\n::Quora: Who is most responsible for holding Donald Sterling accountable?<\/a>::
\nThis was old news to many, including Bomani, who wrote this now prescient<\/a>, much discussed article in 2006 – which received more hits this past week<\/a> than it did when first published. As Bomani\u2019s put it on LeBatard in this now viral clip<\/a>, it\u2019s much easier to jump on stupid things people say (especially when it involves mistresses) than it is to face the roots of an issue (can we go back to discussing mistresses please?). And for all the social media outrage and rumored player boycotts, the story gained a new momentum only after Clippers\u2019 sponsors<\/a> like Kia and State Farm pulled their financial support from the team.
\nThe question above of who is most responsible for holding Sterling may be outdated with NBA commissioner Adam Silver banning him for life, as well as fining him $2.5 million (answers for the above question ranged from \u201cthe LA community<\/a>\u201d to \u201chimself<\/a>\u201d). Maybe a more poignant question should be \u201cwhat took so long\u201d? Better leave that to the next time someone gets caught with their pants down.
\nSocial Media To The Rescue<\/strong>
\nPeople have asked themselves what the point of tweeting is as long as Twitter\u2019s been around. Twitter came of age, and showed it seriousness, during the Iran\u2019s election protest<\/a> in 2009, thus proving to Twitter existentialists that spending all day on Twitter did matter. A year later, protesters for the Arab Spring<\/a> used Facebook as an organizational tool. See, this thing matters.<\/em>
\nAt the end of March, a tweet from The Colbert Show<\/a> twitter account started a #CancelColbert movement and brought hashtag activism to the mainstream. It trended, it got people\u2019s attention, it crossed into pop culture, and Colbert addressed it<\/span> on his show. So in that sense, it worked. But it did take away a larger point of the intended joke – Dan Snyder\u2019s refusal<\/a> to change the Washington Redskins name. Both topics – the nickname, and tweet – touched a nerve, and are undoubtedly important discussion points. But are we somehow missing a larger point? And Colbert, for all the troubles, was named the replacement for David Letterman on The Late Show.
\nYou could say we had to start somewhere, and banning Sterling from the NBA is a message. Who knows, maybe that event coupled with the reactions, including Bomani\u2019s article and radio appearance, becomes sort of tipping point to a deeper exploration. On the other hand, it is telling that it took a mistress, a video recorder, and TMZ to do what years of lawsuits and court rooms could never accomplish. Leaked audio recordings and hashtags brought down a billionaire owner. But there\u2019s things that retweets can never bring back<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Donald Sterling\u2019s lifetime ban from the NBA, we examine Sterling\u2019s history of racial discrimination based on housing practices and lawsuits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[96],"class_list":["post-7466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-boblogs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}