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If nothing else, the alleged racist comments
made by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling to
girlfriend V. Stiviano will tell whether the
African-American community has a pulse. Last week, the
celebrity news organization TMZ posted a recording online in
which a male voice, purportedly Sterling’s, argues with
Stiviano over an Instagram photo of her with Magic Johnson.
In the conversation, Sterling also told his girlfriend not
to bring blacks to “his games.”
How should a submissive black community that
has a recent history of accepting injustices without
protest, respond?
“Commissioner Adam Silver is going to need
to be able to do something about this,” says public
relations professional B. J. Fischer of Thread Marketing.
“Sterling has been saying a lot of this despicable stuff for
a long time so he can’t just sanitize this by saying ‘I
misspoke’ because it appears to be an ongoing trend that
includes a housing discrimination suit where he had to pay a
$2.8 or so million dollar judgment. With icons speaking out
like Magic Johnson, one of the 20 most popular people in the
country, and Michael Jordan, a guy who never wanted to get
in the middle of controversy, this won’t go away. There are
going to be protests,” adds Fischer.
So far, player protests, like the Clippers’
players decision to wear their warm-ups inside out to
conceal the Clippers’ logo, have been subtle. The National
Basketball Association, a league where nearly 80 percent of
the players and a sizable proportion of the fans are black,
may still feel pressured to sanction or even require
Sterling to sell his team.
Yet activists such as Cynthia McKinney,
outspoken former Congresswoman and Green Party presidential
candidate, suggest more drastic measures. “… the likes of
this Clippers owner (and others) practice their racism in
private—but thanks to his girlfriend, it’s all public!
Notice that Sterling talks about how blacks and Mexicans
feel about each other, which is exactly the way the divide
and conquer game is orchestrated. The owner doesn’t want
black people at his games?? Good, that includes players,
coaches, and those who stand in solidarity with them,”
McKinney exclaims.
However, we could be missing the point.
Targeting Donald Sterling or his NBA business investment
through protests, boycotts or the withdrawal of financial
support by major corporate sponsors certainly provides the
emotional satisfaction that comes with revenge. Yet it is
unlikely that responding to Sterling will do much to erase
contemporary racism, suggests Duke University professor
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, PhD:
“The remarks by Mr. Sterling are
reprehensible and in keeping with his long history of
anti-black sentiment and discrimination against people of
color. However, it is a horrible mistake to assume Mr.
Sterling is an example of the typical racism that permeates
America today. For every Mr. Sterling, there are millions of
good-intentioned whites who rely on what I have labeled in
my work as color-blind racism to justify the contemporary
racial order of things. It is their ‘killing me softly’
approach, which explains black and brown poverty, high
unemployment and higher incarceration rates as the product
of their culture or due to seemingly non-racial market
dynamics, that prevents us from moving forward in the race
terrain. Albeit we must vigorously censor Mr. Sterling as
well as Mr. [Cliven] Bundy (the old-fashioned racist Nevada
rancher), the bulk of our attention and efforts must be
dedicated against the "racism without racists" that
undergirds racial profiling in stores, in the labor and
housing markets, in schools and in the streets. Jim Crow
racism is all but dead, but normative, seemingly civilized
racism with its compassionate conservative undertone is the
new racial monster we must work hard to defeat.”
Like Bonilla-Silva, I am more insulted by
being treated as a n*** than being called one. To fight only
against obvious outrageously racist quotes and private
conversations while remaining nonresponsive to the
indignities manifested in disparities in employment,
education, wealth and the criminal justice system is what
Kunjunfu calls the n*** spirit.
Racism needs to be challenged everywhere. In
failing to do so, we help to preserve racist attitudes and
inequality.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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