April 27th, 2014 | Uncategorized
Big story coming out/out right now is that the owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers has allegedly been caught on audio tape saying racist remarks. The meat of the rant was him supposedly admonishing his girlfriend for inviting NBA legend Magic Johnson to a Clippers game, for publicly associating with minorities (though she is a minority herself), and for broadcasting it on social media.
Obviously it’s a pretty big story and it’s getting a lot of attention both in the sports world and nationally as a race-relations hot topic. Nevermind the fact that the majority of Sterling’s Clippers are black, it would be just as bigoted if any random person had such negative things to say about minorities. I don’t really think that’s up for debate.
What I wanted to comment on instead is the naivety of some of the reactions I’ve read, and the self righteousness of some people’s commentary on the issue.
Do people really think racism doesn’t still exist? Everyone is going to act like this is so shocking? Grow up. You’ll see comments like “in 2014 this kind of thing shouldn’t still be going on” blah blah blah. Racism is still a huge issue around the world. Racism, sexism, classism… humanity has a lot of issues. I’m glad to have grown up in a place that exposed me to different cultures and taught me to see people for who they are, not the label they fall under. The public can’t really be so ignorant as to be surprised someone is a racist just because they have a position of power, or just because one of their ‘top earners’ is mostly populated by minorities. The NBA is a business and Donald Sterling is out to make money. The only thing I’m surprised about is that he put himself in a position for the rant to become public.
The other thing I wanted to say was that it’s so typical of our society to go into some huge uproar over a story like this. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be upset about it or that they shouldn’t stand up for what they believe in, but if it takes a billionaire telling his girlfriend not to hang out with black people for you to ‘start caring’, then you probably don’t care that much in the first place. In the next week there are going to be 10,000 half assed blogs written about how Donald Sterling is the devil incarnate, and to be sure, if this is true he’s pretty terrible. But my point is that I think people write these articles because they are easy rallying points to a cause, not because they actually care. It’s an easy Facebook share, an easy retweet, an easy way to get your name out there as a ‘writer’. If you really care go do something about it. The world doesn’t need a million people pretending to be distraught for a week over this, it needs a handful of people who actually care and are willing to do something about it.
If this story inspires someone to work to better our society then it will be totally worth it. Hopefully there are people out there who are up to the challenge. But if you’re just looking for a few Facebook likes and a pat on the back then you might as well just move along.
