WWYD?

Wow.

One of my boyz texted me early Saturday morning and told me the latest. His ending was that I HAD to blog about this.

What he was talking about the (alleged) crystal clear comments made by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling regarding minorities. If you really got listen to the actual language, you can easily find it on the Internet. I won't repeat it here. To put it lightly, the comments were, as Charles Barkley would say, terrible, terrible, terrible.

While the NBA brass twiddle it's thumbs as how to deal with this, saying that the information has to be verified, I believe TMZ's account of the story along with the actual conversation that was provided by the website. TMZ has gotten my respect ever since they were the first to report that Michael Jackson died. Got to give them their props. As usual, they were the first to report this.

As for the my feelings about the comments themselves, the main point I want to get across is:

Are you really that surprised?

These comments come from a man who has had a cloud of racial controversy over his head like Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoons. Just eight years ago, the Justice Department sued Sterling for housing discrimination for refusing to rent to non-Koreans in the Koreatown neighborhood and to African-Americans in Beverly Hills. He eventually had to pay almost eight million dollars in fines and court costs. Three years later, NBA Hall-of-Famer Elgin Baylor sued Sterling for for employment discrimination on the basis of age and race. One of the comments attributed to Sterling was "Personally, I would like to have a white Southern coach coaching poor black players."

The 80-year old Sterling is the owner of a new type of plantation. The days of the cotton fields have been replaced by the sports fields and arenas. It would be a affront to compare those who worked those cotton fields to now. At least now, in the case of the NBA for example, the average rookie contract is three years, ten million dollars. If handled properly, the player wouldn't have to work another day in his life. But it does bring up another interesting question: How would you have responded? Would you have played yesterday? Would you have boycotted the game and paid the fine and possible suspension? Or just wore your t-shirt inside out?

I can't help but paraphrase Mark Twain who said something to the effect that, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a racist than to open it and remove all doubt."