Well, that escalated quickly.
Audio recordings of Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling, telling his girlfriend not to be seen in public with black people (Instagram counts as “the public”), leaked Friday night on TMZ. By the following Tuesday, he was banned from the NBA for life.
Raise your hand if you saw that coming.
Not the “Donald Sterling is racist” part, but the “getting kicked out of the NBA forever” part, mind you. Because people knew about the former for years. During a sworn testimony from a 2003 housing discrimination lawsuit, Sterling is quoted as saying hispanics “smoke, drink, and just hang around the building”, while blacks “smell and attract vermin” (Sterling paid upwards of $5 million in settlements for this case). He paid $2.765 million in a settlement after being accused of housing discrimination in 2009.
::Quora: Who is most responsible for holding Donald Sterling accountable?::
This was old news to many, including Bomani, who wrote this now prescient, much discussed article in 2006 – which received more hits this past week than it did when first published. As Bomani’s put it on LeBatard in this now viral clip, it’s much easier to jump on stupid things people say (especially when it involves mistresses) than it is to face the roots of an issue (can we go back to discussing mistresses please?). And for all the social media outrage and rumored player boycotts, the story gained a new momentum only after Clippers’ sponsors like Kia and State Farm pulled their financial support from the team.
The question above of who is most responsible for holding Sterling may be outdated with NBA commissioner Adam Silver banning him for life, as well as fining him $2.5 million (answers for the above question ranged from “the LA community” to “himself”). Maybe a more poignant question should be “what took so long”? Better leave that to the next time someone gets caught with their pants down.
Social Media To The Rescue
People have asked themselves what the point of tweeting is as long as Twitter’s been around. Twitter came of age, and showed it seriousness, during the Iran’s election protest in 2009, thus proving to Twitter existentialists that spending all day on Twitter did matter. A year later, protesters for the Arab Spring used Facebook as an organizational tool. See, this thing matters.
At the end of March, a tweet from The Colbert Show twitter account started a #CancelColbert movement and brought hashtag activism to the mainstream. It trended, it got people’s attention, it crossed into pop culture, and Colbert addressed it on his show. So in that sense, it worked. But it did take away a larger point of the intended joke – Dan Snyder’s refusal to change the Washington Redskins name. Both topics – the nickname, and tweet – touched a nerve, and are undoubtedly important discussion points. But are we somehow missing a larger point? And Colbert, for all the troubles, was named the replacement for David Letterman on The Late Show.
You could say we had to start somewhere, and banning Sterling from the NBA is a message. Who knows, maybe that event coupled with the reactions, including Bomani’s article and radio appearance, becomes sort of tipping point to a deeper exploration. On the other hand, it is telling that it took a mistress, a video recorder, and TMZ to do what years of lawsuits and court rooms could never accomplish. Leaked audio recordings and hashtags brought down a billionaire owner. But there’s things that retweets can never bring back.