Donald Sterling, Racism, and The Clippers

I have personally been a Clippers fan for years now. Win or loss the Clippers are my team. One thing I have known for sometime is that Donald Sterling is a racist, I look back at the day that Baron Davis was the lead star of the team. Sterling would sit on the sidelines and harass him. Yep that’s right harass his own star player with racial slurs. Even when Davis said something it was swept under the rug. There have been numerous other accounts as well. Including settlements outside of court to keep things hush, hush.

This recent audio that has surfaced is truly saddening but there is a wider issue as a whole with the NBA owners in general. Anybody remember when Lebron James left Cleveland and his owner wrote a letter that stated he felt like he owned him personally. As if to imply he was his slave, oh yeah you all let that one pass because you were mad at Lebron. Right???

Here are some things I gathered from the audio.

Sterling’s girlfriend states several times she wishes she could change her skin color
Sterling claims he was raised that way and that it is okay to admire black people privately but not publicly
That black people have a culture Sterling does not agree with but is useful to him as along as they don’t come to his games
That his girlfriend should be looked at as a delicate white woman or Latina woman.
Sterling’s girlfriend apologizes for being mixed

I have to say as a mixed women (Black & Native American) I am sorely disappointed in her. What happened to make this woman apologize for who she was born to be. When has it become okay for you to just wish your skin color away. I would love to have a one on one chat and tell her she is beautiful just the way she is. As for Sterling this did not come as a shock to me. He has over the years demonstrated this behavior in one way or the other.

I am not happy at all about Sterling’s personal choices but I will not be boycotting the players and Doc Rivers (Clippers Coach) that worked so hard to get to this point in the season. I support Doc Rivers statements as well as other players statements to maintain their personal character. One thing is that there are racist people all around and living in Southern California I still experience it more often than most people would like to think.

Here is the audio below so you can hear it for yourself.

http://www.tmz.com/2014/04/26/donald-sterling-clippers-owner-black-people-racist-audio-magic-johnson/