Kareem, on Donald Sterling: ‘Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media?’

One person I’ve been waiting to hear from during
the
fascinating
Donald Sterling controversy is basketball legend, former
teammate of the slurred Magic Johnson, and former employee of
Sterling himself, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem, author of multiple
books that at least touch on the history of America’s troubled
racial history, is also a
prickly sonofagun, and I mean that in the best way.

Kareem’s Sterling piece for
Time is an entertaining read, regardless of whether you
agree with his conclusions. Using the power of selective quotation,
you could use some of Abdul-Jabbar’s formulations as the basis for
a Sterling defense, or at least a righteous plea for
contextualization:

Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous. The whole country
has gotten a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome from the newest
popular sport of Extreme Finger Wagging. Not to mention the neck
strain from Olympic tryouts for Morally Superior Head Shaking. All
over the latest in a long line of rich white celebrities to come
out of the racist closet. […]

[N]ow the poor guy’s girlfriend (undoubtedly
ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his
racism. Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of
that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing “pin the fried chicken
on the Sambo.” She blindfolded him and spun him around until he was
just blathering all sorts of incoherent racist sound bites that had
the news media peeing themselves with glee.

They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on
a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him
whooping. […]

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.

But if you think Kareem’s letting off the Clippers owner easy,
read on:

I don’t blame them. I’m doing some whooping right now. Racists
deserve to be paraded around the modern town square of the
television screen so that the rest of us who believe in the
American ideals of equality can be reminded that racism is still a
disease that we haven’t yet licked.

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 [about
Sterling being sued multiple times for racial discrimination] 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?