What Sterling does to his tenants in L.A. is WORSE than what he said in that phone call.

[Ken Burch]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/179551/donald-sterling-slumlord-billionaire

Hate words are just hate words.

Making life worse for the poor is a MUCH bigger crime.

Will we see people mobilizing about THAT?

Will we see NBA players standing with the tenants?

Will the league see THAT as just as much of a public relations nightmare as that phone conversation?

[elleng]

1. Would have,

if hadn't been covered up, probably, imo.

[former9thward]

3. How was it covered up?

It was a lawsuit. It was a matter of public record. No cover up at all. The league knew about it and the players knew about it. The NAACP knew about and gave him two awards and was ready to give him another. He was writing checks so no one cared to bring it to anybody's attention. This taping was placed before the public so now everyone has to say something. They can''t turn their head like they did before. There are NO good people here.

[elleng]

5. Sorry, you're right.

Was seriously downplayed, and then ignored, and now we're all forced to recognize.

[Ken Burch]

10. downplayed yes, but now it's out there.

And this is a moment we can use to make the majority of people in this country face some hidden truths about a lot of things.

It's teachibility "on the hoof&quot no offense to anyone WITH hooves intended).

[elleng]

11. ABSOLUTELY!

[elleng]

12. A Verdict on Comments, but the Conversation Isn’t Over.

Sterling’s Remarks Offer Chance to Examine Racism

Adam Silver did what he had to do Tuesday.

With advertisers deserting the Los Angeles Clippers by the hour, rumblings of a leaguewide player boycott and even fanciful talk that some fans might stay away from games, anything less than a lifetime suspension for Donald Sterling would have left Silver, the N.B.A.’s commissioner, with a moral train wreck on his hands.

He had little choice, given the racist remarks made by Sterling, the Clippers’ owner.

But where does the N.B.A. go now? With the public flogging over, some will declare the issue dead and the bad guy in the black hat vanquished. If that is the result, we will all miss a golden opportunity for a deeper exploration of racism.

Sports like professional basketball and football offer a particularly poignant insight into the power dynamics of racism. In these sports, the players are predominantly young and black and are being paid by an overwhelmingly white cadre of wealthy owners. Some of the owners, like Sterling, seem to take their role quite literally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/sports/basketball/a-fresh-start-to-talking-about-racism-may-it-continue.html?hp

[AverageJoe90]

2. In a way, I see what you're saying.

Hate speech is bad enough.....but this is even worse, IMHO.

[KT2000]

4. what I don't get

is how he managed to get a team in the first place. He should have lost it when he was sued over the tenant abuse.

[former9thward]

7. He got his team for $12 million.

It is now worth between $600 million and $1 billion depending on estimates. If they had cracked down on him at the time he would have made zero profit. Now he is going to walk away with about a billion, give or take.

[Ken Burch]

8. It's because the NBA doesn't see poor people.

I was going to say "doesn't see poor people as human beings", but then I realized that the truth was the league doesn't see them at all.

And it tries to force the players, many of whom come from poor backgrounds, to disown their class and to stop seeing them as well.

This is why the league(and the rest of the Sports-Industrial Complex) doesn't care that its repeated demands that municipalities build new stadiums and training facilities for the teams at municipal expense(giving the teams "tax incentives" to move in to cities or stay in the cities where they already play) cause massive cuts in both human services funding and funding for things like public transportation(a service the working poor usually depend on just to get to their underpaid jobs)to fund all of that.

The NBA, and the rest of the SIC, believes that all of that is their entitlement...and that they make up for that by running a few public service ads where a power forward reads to kids in a classroom.

[KT2000]

14. Agree

Seattle lost their basketball team because they city would not give them their palace.

[Ken Burch]

15. That's also why LA hasn't had an NFL team for eighteen years now n/t.

The fight against corporate sports extortionism has to be taken up.

[alp227]

6. Good points even tho i'm not a fan of playing "this issue is worse than that issue ergo irrelevant"

That's the "not as bad as" fallacy, but I reluctantly agree with your OP.

[Ken Burch]

9. I'm not saying the racism in that call doesn't matter.

The point is, it's not as if everything is hunky-dory if we just end up with the guys also-racist wife owning the team and everything else staying the same.

[TDale313]

13. You're right about that.

As I understand it, she was very much implicated in the housing lawsuits.