How far back must we go before we realize that the shame of our past is now staring us in the face today?
In a time when we witnessed the Supreme Court put forward the same states’ rights argument for access to education as the slave states of the past did for slavery. In a time where we see the most significant portions of the voting rights act being gutted thereby neutering the Justice Department’s ability to protect the very core of our nation’s democratic process, the right to vote. We now see the vicious and vitriolic past rearing its ugly head in a manner that brings its racism to our very front doors, televisions and computers. Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with our shameful past.
With the slip of an intentional tongue Sterling has taken this nation back to a time when the economic lifeline of the brutal ruling class survived on the backs of an oppressed and disregarded people. Today Sterling’s overseer mentality is being used in a modern fashion where the backs, hands, legs and the basketball IQ are good enough to be used for his economic success, but these same attributes are not good enough to make the same individuals equal in humanity.
We are witnessing a group of class act gentlemen, the Clippers players, who have played by the rules and embraced a commitment to community shamed by association because of their owner, for that I say we must rally behind these gentlemen.
But today the equilibrium of this nation that we call America has been knocked off balance and now we all can see that in a very short period of time the heinous actions of one can turn this nation upside down. If humanity is to ever exist for all mankind everyone who has heard of this incident must denounce these actions as not only racist, not only prejudiced but, also as an affront to humanity.
Today the Los Angeles Urban League unequivocally says that Donald Sterling represents everything that is wrong in society; Donald Sterling represents that which we must move firmly away from. Donald Sterling does not embody American ideals, and Donald Sterling cannot be looked at as anything other than a shameful individual whose mean-spiritedness can never be tolerated.
For these reasons the Los Angeles Urban League calls on the NBA and its Commissioner, Adam Silver to swiftly investigate, take decisive action and intentionally rebuild the trust that has been lost in America in general and in its minority communities in particular. Justice must roll down into every community in a more forceful manner than the cancer that Sterling has deposited into our nations vital organs, so that our equilibrium can once again be balanced.