Held to answer

White supremacist groups probably score a few more sympathizers every time the American media explode in outrage over a racist comment.

What must a white guy think when he finds that even private, negative thoughts about blacks are not allowed? It could make a guy seethe. Especially if he can’t find a decent job, can’t afford college or an apartment or even a car.

Everyone – even struggling whites – is expected to join in the collective denunciation of Donald Sterling or risk being called racist. His private telephone conversations with a girlfriend have been deemed newsworthy because he’s the wealthy owner of the L.A. Clippers.

The victims in the Sterling saga are supposed to be the well-paid, black athletes who play on his team. The media, especially Oprah Winfrey, would have us believe that Sterling is acting like a plantation owner and treating the prosperous, privileged young black men on his team as slaves.

I’m not so sure Sterling treated his players with any less regard than a corporate CEO considers his rank-and-file employees, who represent dollar signs on a balance sheet. (I say that as someone who has worked for two corporations – Gannett and MediaNews Group.)

The only person Sterling, 80, acted as if he owned was his girlfriend Vanessa Stiviano, 31. He may have thought she was bought and paid for when he told her he didn’t like her being photographed with certain black athletes.

Had Sterling known he was being taped, would he have still made those comments? Possibly, especially if he didn’t think they were racist. Kind of like the late Mike Wallace of CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” caught on camera interviewing bank executives about blacks and Spanish-speaking persons who had lost their homes in foreclosure.

“I wonder why they sign those contracts without reading them,” one of the bankers said.

Replied Wallace: “They’re probably too busy eating their watermelon and tacos.”

The media did not pile on Wallace. They offered excuses.

His executive producer Don Hewitt explained, “Like almost everyone else in America, Mike sometimes indulges himself in ethnic humor. It has been my experience that the people with the least bias sometimes tend to do that.”

Wallace himself told the Los Angeles Times that the remark was off the record and was “partly intended to elicit any ‘latent racist’ views on the part of the bank executive he was interviewing.”

Perhaps Sterling’s excuse should be that he was only testing the loyalties of his mixed-race girlfriend. Or maybe he was making sure the American news media’s obsession with white racism is alive and well.

As it is, Sterling’s story was bumped by another popular American media outrage: The pain and suffering of a man on Death Row who was executed. (Most American Death Row inmates are more likely to die of disease or old age, often not a pain-free exit either.)

The over-the-top coverage of Clayton Lockett’s execution is a nice companion piece to Sterling’s alleged racism. Both stories have been taken to absurd lengths to score political points.

Imagine the anticipation among death penalty opponents at organizations like the Death Penalty Information Center as they calculated how best to exploit the details of Lockett’s “botched” execution. At the same time, Oprah, David Geffen and Larry Ellison were planning to divvy up the L.A. Clippers, hoping to buy the team on the assumption that Sterling would be forced to sell.

Death penalty opponents and the mob screaming for Sterling will continue to use these events to get what they want. Anti-death penalty groups cheered when the execution of Charles Warner was postponed. (Warner, 46, raped and killed an 11-month-girl.) The Sterling-haters urged recipients of his past philanthropy to return his money. (No attempt, though, to force Stiviano to give up the home and cars Sterling bought her.)

There’s a third event, however, that puts Lockett’s execution and Sterling’s racism into context about what is really cruel and unusual punishment and what is really slavery: The kidnapping of almost 300 young girls in Nigeria to be sold as wives.

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, and its leader has said the girls would be required to “give their hands in marriage because they are our slaves. We would marry them out at the age of nine. We would marry them out at the age of 12.”

Africa has a history of slavery that has nothing to do with white people.

Boko Haram’s violent acts also include the recent murder of 50 teenage boys, some who were burned alive.

Clayton Lockett’s minutes of pain and the racist ramblings of an elderly man seem so irrelevant.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

Related:

Sacrificing the Small Fry