Last week, the NBA had to deal with owner Donald Sterling’s racism caught on tape. They had no choice, in a league with just about every star being African-American, to come down and come down hard on Donald Sterling.
How do you defend Donald Sterling when he says on tape: “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?” He continues, “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.” He adds, “Don’t put him [Johnson] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games.”
Some people want to claim he has the right to free speech, but the right to free speech ends when you are an owner of an NBA team which is governed by rules and conventions much akin to a business. This is not the government threatening arrest, this is a private entity trying to save its business.
So the NBA has come down hard, banning Donald Sterling for life and planning to force him to sell his team.
Of course as former NBA Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar notes, “Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous.”
As Mr. Abdul-Jabbar wrote in a Time Magazine op-ed that the NBA was looking the other way for years at Mr. Sterling’s racism.
- 2006: U.S. Dept. of Justice sued Sterling for housing discrimination. Allegedly, he said, “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
- 2009: He reportedly paid $2.73 million in a Justice Dept. suit alleging he discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and families with children in his rentals. (He also had to pay an additional nearly $5 million in attorneys fees and costs due to his counsel’s “sometimes outrageous conduct.”)
- 2009: Clippers executive (and one of the greatest NBA players in history) sued for employment discrimination based on age and race.
“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,” he writes. “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,” he continues.
“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 writes. “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?”
On the local front, the news has been captivated by the insensitivity or racism of students who made the mistake of planning a drinking game scheduled for Cinco de Mayo weekend. On Friday, students counter-protested, perhaps numbering 100, and engaged in a sit-in at the Coffee House, where employees of the student-run organization planned the party.
An April 30 letter from students reads:
We, as concerned students of UC Davis and Davis community members, would like to declare our utter offense and disgust with an off campus event organized by UC Davis students.
It has been brought to our attention that a “Cinco de Drinko Sloshball” facebook event page was created by UC Davis Coffeehouse (Coho) student employees earlier this week. The event is a party intended to have attendees dress in “festive” attire, meaning stereotypical “Mexican” dress (a sombrero and sarape, fake mustache, etc.). In addition, attendees are given an image that demonstrates the attire they should wear, which includes a border patrol officer costume. These images are hurtful to our community and only serve to create a hostile campus climate by sending a message of disregard and disrespect for the Chican@/Latin@ and Undocumented/Immigrant campus community.
Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that marks and celebrates the victory over French rule that was momentous for the state of Puebla, Mexico. This holiday is often manipulated by individuals, who use inaccurate images of Mexican culture and affiliate it strongly with alcoholic consumption, despite the fact that there is no real correlation between the two. The fact that these student employees, who represent the university, are perpetuating this ignorance with no sensitivity towards the Chican@/Latin@ or Undocumented/Immigrant community on our campus,is a reflection of the lack of respect for different cultures and student experiences.
Similar events have been held in the past, such as the “Cinco de Drinko (Mayo) Sloshball” event that took place on May 5th, 2012 and the “Uni-Coho SLOSHBALL” event that took place on May 4th, 2013, both held at Slide Hill Park (See previous Facebook event pages). This should not be, nor should it become, a tradition for UC Davis students, especially not for student employees who should be upholding the UC Davis Principles of Community, since they are the face of the University.
It is ironic that this event is scheduled to take place on the same day as La Gran Tardeada (the culmination of La Raza Cultural Days), which in turn, marginalizes the Chican@/Latin@ community on campus even further. It is also an indication of where the campus-wide community stands when it comes to cultural competency and understanding and upholding our Principles of Community. La Raza Cultural Days and other cultural celebrations during the year are often denied adequate support. Regretful events, such as this “party”, tell us that we have not come as far as we’d like to claim with cultural competency and need to support these programs every opportunity possible. Cultural Days are in place as a means to educate the UC Davis and the community at large about the issues, culture, and struggle of various historically marginalized communities. This “Cinco de Drinko Sloshball” event invalidates years of work from multiple organizations, student centers, departments and students on a day that ironically is meant to celebrate and unite the community. We need to be mindful of the message that the UC Davis students who plan these racist and hurtful events send to prospective students, current students, their families and the community as a whole.
Students planning and participating in this event should be trained to understand why these events are hurtful, offensive, and backward. Despite the years of progress that have been made by strides in the Chican@/Latin@ community at UC Davis, these racist actions remind us that there is still much work to be done. We urge UC Davis and the Coffeehouse to hold its student employees accountable for their actions and take appropriate and effective steps forward to ensure that these type of events will not take place again.
University officials also quickly condemned it.
A letter from Adela de la Torre, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, stated, “Yesterday it was brought to my attention that a ‘Cinco de Drinko Sloshball’ Facebook event page was created by a group of UC Davis students. It encourages participants to wear stereotypical Mexican dress and depict images that debase the cultural identity of our Chican@/Latin@ students, staff and faculty. In addition, it has been scheduled during an important cultural period for our campus, La Raza Cultural Days, and a significant celebratory period for many Chican@/Mexican@ people, Cinco de Mayo.”
She would add, “Unfortunately, the insensitivity of this content has left many members of our UC Davis Chican@/Latin@ community feeling demeaned and demoralized. It is clear that the students’ actions are not aligned with our Principles of Community. As a teaching and learning environment, this is an opportunity to create a sustained dialogue about our distinct and diverse communities and to reaffirm our Principles of Community. Student Affairs staff will be working directly with the students who organized this event to heighten their cultural sensitivity and understanding of the impact of their actions.”
The students actions blew up the event. But some of the students did not seem to understand the fuss.
The Bee wrote this weekend, “Jonathan Beatty, one of the students wearing a sombrero during the protest, said he doesn’t think a drinking-themed party for Cinco de Mayo is racist, likening the holiday to St. Patrick’s Day festivities.”
“People were being overly sensitive,” Mr. Beatty said.
Perhaps, but perhaps they have reason to be overly sensitive. It was a few years ago that the College Republicans had the great idea of having an event called “Capture the Flag on the Illegal Immigrant.”
Everyone wants to believe we live in a color-free society, and that’s fine to aspire to. But, as we have seen in the past week, we are not there yet.
–David M. Greenwald reporting
I read a cartoon today that said Donald Sterling makes racist remarks and gets kicked out of the NBA. Al Sharpton makes racist remarks and gets his own show. Go figure.
Barack Palin
Nothing to figure out here. Racism should be unacceptable regardless of the color of the individual engaging in it.
One important distinction. I do not believe it is racist to point out historical or current fact. It is not for instance racist to point out that there are more Asian than African American students enrolled at UCD even though this clearly is a racial reference. It is racist to say that this is because of a potentially derogatory characteristic that one is attributing to one or the other group based on the color of their skin.
Tia wrote:
> It is not for instance racist to point out that there are more Asian
> than African American students enrolled at UCD even though this
> clearly is a racial reference.
I have been told that I was “racist” to point out UCD is probably doing a good job getting African Americans to enroll since about 6% of California’s elementary school students are African American and that about 2/3 of them graduate from High School (a little over half the African American male students).
told by whom and why?
“There’s white racist DNA running through the synapses of his or her brain tissue. They will kill their own kind, defend the enemies of their kind or anyone who is perceived to be the enemy of the milky white way of life.” — Jeremiah Wright”
“You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent.” — Joe Biden”
“The white man is our mortal enemy, and we cannot accept him. I will fight to see that vicious beast go down into the lake of fire prepared for him from the beginning, that he never rise again to give any innocent black man, woman or child the hell that he has delighted in pouring on us for 400 years.” — Louis Farrakhan
“White folks was in the caves while we was building empires,” he said. “We built pyramids before Donald Trump even knew what architecture was…We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it…Do some cracker come and tell you, ‘Well my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,’ you better hold your pocket. That ain’t nothing to be proud of, that means their forefathers was crooks.” — Al Sharpton
Sharpton, speaking of the black politician David Dinkins, said, “David Dinkins … You wanna be the only n—-r on television, the only n—-r in the newspaper, the only n—-r to talk. … Don’t cover them, don’t talk to them, cause you got the only n—-r problem.” — Al Sharpton
And then there was Al Sharpton and the Tawana Brawley non-incident. Brawley told them said that a cop had been one of her attackers, and Sharpton named that officer as Harry Crist Jr., a police officer from a nearby town who had committed suicide shortly after Brawley was found. Sharpton also named a local prosecutor, Steven Pagones, as one of the attackers. He offered no proof.
After a six-month investigation a grand jury found that the entire episode had been a hoax, with Brawley having defaced herself to avoid the wrath of her stepfather after staying out late to visit a boyfriend.
Subsequently, both of her attorneys had their law licenses revoked (Mason for unrelated reasons) and Sharpton was found guilty of defamation in a lawsuit brought by prosecutor Steven Pagones, who quickly had been able to establish he had been nowhere near the scene of the alleged crime.
A Times documentary shows a wild-eyed Sharpton responding indignantly to a reporter’s question of what proof he had of the policeman’s guilt: “I have Tawana Brawley’s words,” he sneers.
Crown Heights Riot – With ethnic tensions already dangerously fraught, riots erupted in the Brooklyn, N.Y. neighborhood of Crown Heights after a Jewish man accidentally struck and killed a black child with his car in the summer of 1991. Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, Sharpton spoke at the boy’s funeral, referring to the “diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights,” and also led a march during the race riots that followed in which stores were looted, Jews were beat in the streets, and one Jewish student was fatally stabbed.
Then on the Duke Lacrosse non-incident… Sharpton in an TV news talk interview said: “…I think that when you look at the racial atmosphere, when you look at the fact that there again were the allegations of racial statements, when you look at a lot of people feeling that they have been treated differently, where this girl has basically had a character charged in the media, there is a lot of racism that’s in the air.”
Sharpton has never apologized to those kids that had their lives about ruined by the lies of stripper Gail Mangum.
The social and personal damage caused by Al Sharpton are orders of magnitude greater than that caused by Donald Sterling.. yet her were are today gleefully persecuting Sterling and conveniently ignoring Sharpton. In this twisted and screwed-up American political correctness media swamp… it stinks to high heaven and it is sucking the entire country down with it. And Obama and American liberals are the great swamp royalty.
There is a clear double standard b/c if you’re African American or Latino, you aren’t held to the same standard.
We’ve even got JayZ (sp?), Beyonce’s husband, wearing a Five Percent Nation medallion, a group which considers white people to be devils. But he is invited to the White House. Add in Jeese Jackson, and others who aren’t held to the same standard.
I did not know that wearing a sombrero today is offensive. On St. Patrick’s Day, people drink green beer. I’m Irish, but my mom and dad didn’t drink. I’m not offended when people drink green beer and display leprauchans on St. Patrick’s day. I think it’s all playful, and kind of fun. I had no idea so many people find sombrero’s offensive. I see them as decorations in Mexican restaurants all the time.
And the border patrol costume? That’d be like dressing up at a St. Patrick’s Day event dressed like the IRA and British Troops.
I see your point about the border patrol but siesta’s, sombreros, and cervezas seem like innocent fun. If sombrero’s are that offensive, someone better tell Chevy’s to stop giving them away on customer’s birthdays. That’s where I got mine.
D.D.
Two points for consideration.
There is no longer widespread discrimination against the Irish in this county although there certainly was in the past.
Latino folks are still discriminated against in many ways largely because of a “blame the immigrant” mentality and many in our society who cannot differentiate except by color of skin and so use that as their discriminatory characteristic. One example from not so long ago. My dark skinned, Turkish ex husband and I were on a road trip in Southern California when some women in a car next to us took exception to his appearance and began shouting at him to “go back across the border where he came from” using the endearing term “wet back”.
Context is extremely important.
A white bed sheet on a bed or in the linens section of a store is completely inoffensive. A white bed sheet with eye holes cut out on someone putting up a cross to be burned is quite another matter.
A sombrero in a Mexican restaurant is most likely non offensive. A sombrero on someone who is deliberately getting drunk, wearing a fake and stereotypical mustache and “making fun of ” ( Cinco de Drinko !) a day of national pride…..maybe not so much so.
Just my thoughts.
Tia wrote:
> Context is extremely important. A white bed sheet on a bed or in the
> linens section of a store is completely inoffensive. A white bed sheet
> with eye holes cut out on someone putting up a cross to be burned
> is quite another matter.
Since the most of the “professional victims” in America are of Black and Latino decent we have a culture where you can dress as a Greek in a toga, a German in lederhosen or wear a beret on Bastille Day and that is “completely inoffensive”, but if a white guy even thinks about putting a sombrero on (or dressing like the guy in the link below) he must be an EVIL RACIST and it is “quite another matter”…
http://theobamafile.com/_images/ObamaAsMuslim.jpg
My dark skinned, Turkish ex husband and I were on a road trip in Southern California when some women in a car next to us took exception to his appearance and began shouting at him to “go back across the border where he came from” using the endearing term “wet back”.
Before I lived in Mexico, I had never seen or experienced any sort of racism in person. Perhaps this existed in parts of our country in my lifetime, but never where I lived.
So I was shocked by what I discovered living in Guadalajara and Mexico City in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Mexican racism is very intense, and it is largely based on hue. If you are a blue-eyed, super pale whitey (which I am), you are at the top of the heap. If you are a very dark Indian, you are at the bottom. Every shade darker than pale is one step down on the totem pole. Unlike the U.S. South, where Jim Crow laws enforced segregation, Mexican racism is entirely social. Some Mexicans are not racists. However, compared with Americans, their culture is.
The first time I experienced what goes on in Mexico was at a fancy night club. I was going out with my girlfriend (a blonde American girl) and a half dozen of our friends and colleagues who were Mexicans. I didn’t have any nice clothes to wear other than my two work suits, and they were at the dry cleaners. So I put on some Levi’s 501s, a pair of Nike high-tops (Carolina blues, if you know old Air Jordans) and a casual shirt. Everyone else in our group was dressed far nicer. When we got to the club, I discovered they had a strict “dress code.” But the doorman looked at me and let me and my girlfriend in. However, three of the Mexicans with us–the three with the darkest skin–were not allowed entry. They did not meet “the dress code.” Later that night, the Mexicans explained to me what exactly had happened. They said this sort of thing goes on all the time. I never again experienced anything exactly like that. But I recall other incidents–for example, I’ve seen private security guards in Mexico City harass dark-skinned people in front of fancy shops, making it clear they are not welcome inside.
I’ve been told the same thing by a fellow Aggie.
I also entered a restaurant once on a busy night, and couple after couple, group after group, who arrived after us, were seated before we were! After this kept happening, we scanned the crowd more closely and realized that most all of the people there were Persian, and we weren’t.
Rich wrote that he got in to a club before a dark skinned co-worker and TBD wrote that she got seated after Persians in a Persian restaurant.
If you ask anyone that works in the restaurant/bar/nightclub business the goal is to get the most “green”. A typical NYC doorman will look at the watches of the guys in line (and can also spot a fake a mile away). Any guy (of any race) wearing a JLC Spherotourbillion (just like a supermodel of any race) will never wait long to get in to a NYC club. Anyone that works in the restaurant business knows that some groups (both racial and socioeconomic) tip better than others and those groups tend to get better service when they are out.
Ouch. Davis folks won’t like this stereotype, but I’ve heard it many times. I will also add a positive stereotype I have heard. I met a woman who sells custom jewelry in a warm-weather vacation country several times a year, and she raved and raved about her gay customers. How they “had money”, had great taste, wrote her follow-up thank you notes, wanted to becomes friends, and we’re hands down the best customers she had.
I have a friend who owns a business. He met a guy from a “protected class” and offered to talk to him about a job. He ended up giving this unemployed guy a job.
As time went on, it turns out this large man had a huge temper. Women in the office were so scared they conducted a criminal background check, and he had done time for an extremely violent crime. Since he was from a “protected class”, my friend was scared. He was later one of two employees who were fired for a huge office blowup. This man then filed two separate discrimination claims. Even though a white male was fired for the same behavior, he sued him twice.
If you own a business, you know that superfluous lawsuits are just a very unfortunate cost of doing business. More often than not (not 100% of the time), if you treat your workers fairly, and pay them top dollar, they will not file fake workers comp or fake sexual harrassment or civil rights claims. If they are happy, and feel valued, they will not sue you, usually. And of course, it is prudent to spend the time & money to do a background check and do as many reference checks as possible.
A friend in the Citrus Heights area is in the “trades”. He hired an expereinced worker, and paid him the going rate. Turns out the guy had just come off disability of some kind, and after being on the job for a month or two, he let that out of the bag. My friend, a big liberal, had immediate concerns for his business, and what this worker could and couldn’t do, physically. This worker would then mess up his shops’ efficiency (limits on what he could lift or do), and he was already struggling to stay in business without having to ‘carry a worker’. The worker then went on disability of some type again, apparently he needed to meet certain time period requirements, so he worked a few months and went back to his gov’t check.
I have empathy for his injury, but can’t he do another kind of work?
“Rich wrote that he got in to a club before a dark skinned co-worker …”
To be clear, the darker skinned people in my group (two were colleagues and one was the wife of a colleague) NEVER were allowed in. It’s not that they were delayed entry. While there was no formal policy about racial exclusion (AFAIK), the de facto policy at that time in many night clubs, bars, restaurants and other businesses in Guadalajara (and in other Mexican cities) was to keep all people out who they deemed as too dark. … What I was told from Mestizo friends who faced this kind of terrible treatment was that they knew many Mestizos who would discriminate against people who were darker skinned than they were. They said this all emanated from a European sense of white is right and Indians are bad. The surprise is that so long after the U.S. changed its laws and our culture largely began to reject that kind of racism, nothing much had changed in Mexico. I have not lived there in over 20 years. So perhaps it is better, now.
My friend was there 10 years ago and had the same experiences.
Don’t you ever watch Spanish-language television?
The hosts / actors / actresses are almost exclusively light-skinned or white, whether it is novelas, the news, or Sabado Gigante (SG) on Saturday night. The host of SG might be considered medium-skinned, but the interesting sight is the few times I have seen the crowd, it seems as if there is a large contingent that is much darker skinned. My Spanish is poor, so I am not an authority. I also not sure which shows originate from Miami, and which are from central or South America. But across stations, it seems to hold true.
South of Davis
“If you ask anyone that works in the restaurant/bar/nightclub business the goal is to get the most “green””
And if you know that a large segment of your most devoted clientele prefer not to associate with others of different races, it will be in your “green” best interest to find a reason to exclude the less favored group.
I don’t go to clubs that size you up at the door before allowing only the hot women and rich men inside. Who would enjoy that type of place? It’s their own fault for going to the club and allowing anyone to treat them that way.
You’re saying that there is widespread discrimination against Latinos? We don’t enforce our immigration laws, our border, and we even allow millions of illegal immigrants to attend our schools and colleges, often for free! I have no idea how that is discriminatory.
You also take the ploy of not distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants, we love the contribution of immigrants.
Context is extremely important. Cinco de Mayo isn’t celebrated in most of Mexico! Also, the French re-armed and, according to the radio host I heard this AM, they went back and wiped out the small armed forces in Puebla, Mexico, in 1862.
“We don’t enforce our immigration laws, our border, and we even allow millions of illegal immigrants to attend our schools and colleges, often for free!”
that’s not a real accurate statement. we may not sufficently enforce our immigration laws, but we spend an incredible amount of border patrol, we have border patrol and ice, and i can tell as a prosecutor, there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes putting holds on defendants for immigration status. there are periodic raids.
but the other side of the issue is that if you have millions of people somewhat integrated into the social and economic fabric of society, how do you remove them without creating huge disruptions.
that has been part of the reason that more hasn’t been done, there is also the cost involved, and the question about the benefit.
The government uses an estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants, and keeps using that same number, year after year. When Ronald Reagan was president and signed Amnesty, the estimate was 1 million illegal immigrants. 3.5 million signed up for Amnesty. A top professional consulting group did an analysis years ago and estimated 20 million illegal immigrants. If we take the Reagan underestimated, the number could be over 40 Million.
Davis Progressive, we don’t even deport illegal immigrants who break lower-level laws. Yes, there are sections of the border we protect, and sections we don’t.
I have read of a number of cases where Mexican cartels are growing marijuana on public lands, and also have personal knowledge of one of these multi-million dollar busts years ago. Mother Jones recently wrote an article on this topic.
Yes, it is a sticky problem, but we also have had an explosion of gangs in California the past 30 years which includes the Nortenos, Sorenos, M13, and Bulldogs to name a few. Who could have ever imagined that Fresno would become one of the car theft capitals of the United States?