I support them and give them food and clothes and cars and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? … Who makes the game? Do I make the game or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners that created the league?"
Black people are the Enemy" (including his Black girlfriend)
~ Donald Sterling
Prologue: When Arkham Insane Asylum becomes Arkham Nation
I am an intellectual. That means I think very deeply about everything I write on like a philosopher. That makes most people very uncomfortable in reading my work because my type of prose is intended to provoke substantive change: perhaps even a personal epiphany experience where status quo is no longer possible to maintain. That said in writing about the Donald Sterling/LA Clipper racist affair it is always helpful to begin my apologetic by hearkening back to first principlesVeritas (truth) cowardice complicity careerism Hannah Arendts banality of evil thesis Elie Wiesels silence is consent thesis are all essential elements of human nature and human history.
Most writers write on a micro-level discussing details of a specific narrow subject event or person. Other writers discuss ideas on a macro-level putting specific ideas in a larger context. Here I will write on a metaphysical-level launching my critique against Donald Sterling (micro) against America (macro) and against what the Nazis called Weltanschauung (worldview) that allows and encourages a scoundrel like this to be successful in America while the hundreds of employees he has from his NBA holdings to his commercial and residential property holdings etc. and the tens of thousands who attend his arena hundreds of times over his three decades of ownership enable this slumlord racist and happily cash his blood money checks enjoy what the Roman poet Juvenal condemned as bread and circuses" and now have the audacity to fake like I didnt know…" Thats a meta-level analysis or at least the beginnings of one. In other words in this article I will hold everybodys feet to the fire.
A meta-level view of a racist society
Here are two Socratic questions you should consider to use as a lens to view the universal condemnation of Sterlings words by the media politicians academics sport figures and writers etc... Use these paradigm questions to test their authenticity:
- America if you are so outraged at Sterlings racist comments in April 2014 and hes been an NBA owner since 1981 with a well-known history of racist immoral and hateful acts can you show us one statement one substantive act of trying to fight against Sterling on behalf of the many people he has abused during his 33 years as an NBA owner prior to April 25 2014 when the racism story first became public?
- America so you claim to hate racism and in words of LeBron James has no place in our league" then why does the NBA a league with almost 80 Black players not say one word of criticism of the policy by Obama and the Democrat Socialist Party that annually pays over $500 million to the abortion group Planned Parenthood for the specific charge of killing 36 of all little Black babies born in America(15-25 million since 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade)?
