Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: You're just now realizing what Donald Sterling is?

A lot of us are thinking this, but no one has expressed it quite like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar does this morning in Time. The media are aghast all of a sudden because of a secretly recorded conversation in which Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling said racist (and quite bizarre) things to his partially black girlfriend, but for many years there has been plenty of evidence on the public record as to the true nature of Sterling's character. That includes several housing discrimination lawsuits as well as an employment discrimination suit, all based on race.

What Sterling said in a (supposedly) private conversation can't nearly damage minorities as much as the things he is at least alleged to have already done, but as Kareem points out in his essay, recorded words give the media and others the opportunity to finger-wag and play holier-than-thou in a way that really should have us examining ourselves as much as we do Sterling:

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. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? 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 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?

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Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it. Make no mistake: Donald Sterling is the villain of this story. But he’s just a handmaiden to the bigger evil. In our quest for social justice, we shouldn’t lose sight that racism is the true enemy. He’s just another jerk with more money than brains.

It's become a blood sport in this country to pounce all over people if they say things in the wrong way, and what Sterling said was certainly detestable. But people's words represent those honest moments when attitudes are exposed for what they really are, and I don't see how we do ourselves any favors when we demand that people who think ignorant thoughts keep them to themselves. Let's hear it, and then let's deal with it. Donald Sterling has been a pretty questionable character for a long time. By the way, have you noticed that he is catching no heat whatsoever for the fact that he has a girlfriend while he also still has a wife? (A wife who is weirdly quite involved with the running of the team. Interesting family this appears to be.) I guess purveyors of the culture condemn racist words because doing so allows them to appear morally superior, but they don't condemn adultery because they want to reserve the right to engage in it. At any rate, I hope you realize that there is really no way forward here that is going to satisfy anyone. If Sterling forced to sell the franchise, he cashes out and walks away with a fortune. If he keeps it but sponsors bail, that mainly hurts the players and others who work for the team - many of whom are black, by the way. And I don't know about you, but I am just a wee bit uncomfortable with the idea that we "punish" people because they say horrendous things. There is no law against saying such things, which is not to say we all have to put up with racist morons. But I believe people who reveal themselves to be ignoramuses tend to pay their own price along the way, and I'd rather see it happen that way than see big official officialdom mete out official "punishments" for things that are awful but are also within people's constitutional rights to do and say. And as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar emphasizes in his excellent piece, Sterling's actions - not his words - are where he really does damage, and for those he has rightfully paid a price. Words get the media's attention, but that's merely a symptom of a media that doesn't know how to deal in substance when form is so much easier to finger-wag over.