In Which American Society Resurrects The Burning Of Heretics
Good news, everybody: the NBA is going to investigate Donald Sterling for racism. Mr. Sterling was outed as a racist the other day when... um, he was on the phone with his girlfriend, who is at the very least biracial (to use the current popular phrase) and might actually be Black by some measures. In the phone conversation, Mr. Sterling tells his girlfriend that she is free to sleep with Black guys. Still waiting for the racism? Don't worry, we'll get there. Okay, here we are. In the convo, Sterling tells his girlfriend to stop hanging out with Black guys, putting their photos all over Instagram, and bringing them to the basketball games. Let's cut to the chase here. This is an old white guy cashing out a young woman of indeterminate race to hang out with him. He doesn't expect her to be faithful. What he expects her to do is to stop "showing out" with a bunch of ballers on Instagram and at the games of the basketball team that he owns.
How racist is that? Is it racist enough for the NBA to investigate and possibly penalize Mr. Sterling financially? 'Twould appear so.
"But Jack," you're no doubt saying, "the racism comes from him telling her specifically about Black guys." Fair point. What I'd suggest here is that Mr. Sterling is humiliated by the implication of his girlfriend's Instagram photos --- that implication being that she hangs out with him for cash, and these other guys for personal or sexual gratification. On this point, I have no sympathy for Mr. Sterling. If you want to mess around with much younger women, particularly those who are clearly in it for the money/fame/power/whatever else you can bring them, you have to understand that there are drawbacks to doing so. One of those drawbacks is that nobody believes that a thirtysomething woman is dating an eighty-one-year-old man for anything other than cash on the barrelhead.
Sterling's request of his "girlfriend" is pretty minimal. Don't bring these dudes to my games. Particularly the ballers. Unfortunately for him, Ms. "Stiviano" has decided she'd rather take her case to the media.
The question is, why does the media care? I have a theory --- but before I get to that, let's catch up with Cliven Bundy. Mr. Bundy is also on the Internet's front page for "racist remarks". In this case, it's a monologue in which Bundy suggests that African-Americans might have been better off having intact family units under slavery (which, to be fair, was rarely the case) than with the current welfare-fueled destruction of the Black family. A high-profile defense of Mr. Bundy courtesy of a friend who happens to be both a Marine and African-American didn't do much to stem the tide. Nor did the fact that Bundy wasn't attacking African-Americans directly so much as he was questioning the impact of government programs on them.
In fact, if you read most of what's been written about Bundy, the primary problem seems to be that he used the word "Negro." You know, like United Negro College Fund. Like MLK, who said "But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free," All I get from Bundy's use of the word "Negro" is that he doesn't consume enough mainstream media to know that we don't say that anymore. That, in and of itself, shouldn't be a sin. I sure as hell don't say "Negro", but I grew up on the East Coast where "Black" was the preferred phrase. The day will come, mind you, when I'm seventy-something years old and I say "Black" or "African-American" and my kid's going to visibly blanch. "Dad, we say Chromosone-18-flipped now." Hell, you can't even say "Afro-American" in polite conversation and the use of that phrase was once a gold-plated demonstration of progressive credentials.
It would be naive to watch these two high-profile public hangings (let's not say "lynching") without trying to draw some parallels between them. "Duh, Jack," you say. "They're both creepy old white racists." Well, maybe --- but the media doesn't spend 100% of its time leaning on creepy old white racists. "They're high-profile creepy old white racists." I'm not sure about that, either. An NBA owner and a rancher pursuing a confrontation with the BLM in Nevada are not necessarily the most newsworthy people out there. Note, as well, that the "racist" coverage on both vastly surpasses the fact-based coverage of their actions. The media hasn't bothered to report much on the fact that Sterling has potentially made up to half a billion dollars on an investment that he has comprehensively and willfully mismanaged over the past thirty years, nor has it been particularly keen to untangle the Gordian knot of the Bundy/BLM disagreement.
What I'd like to suggest is that the media has chosen the racist angle in both cases because it, as a group, despises both individuals. Sterling's a crappy team owner who abandoned his wife to play hooky with a barely disguised prostitute while his players and fans suffer his incompetence. Bundy had the nerve to respond to a Waco-like move from the federal government with an Arab-Spring-like counter-revolution. They're both the wrong race and sex as far as modern media people are concerned. The general sentiment is that they should have their faces pushed into the ground. But how do you shame people in a world where we've systematically removed the stench of shame from everything to adultery to molesting children? (Think we haven't? Ask Dylan Farrow, or look at Roman Polanski's army of high-profile supporters.)
The fact is that our self-consciously "tolerant" era has but one sin which it cannot tolerate: the sin of racism. Therefore, that charge will be levied against anyone who displeases the media machine, the same way that heresy was the charge levied against anyone whom the Catholic Church of the medieval era thought would be better off dead. Piss off the ruling class in 1450, and you'll find yourself accused of denying the divinity of Christ; piss off the ruling class in 2014, and you'll find yourself accused of racism.
The actual truth of the charges is irrelevant, because racism is a guilty-until-proven-innocent thing. I recently had a fellow journalist test-float charges of racism against me, primarily because he was angry with some statements I'd made regarding his work. It's a wonder he wasn't successful. I could point to any number of non-racist things I've done, from hiring African-Americans personally to serving as the Minority Adviser to my freshman dorm, but that would simply lend credibility to my accuser. "He says he plays music with Black people... well, so did Leonard Chess, and he was a racist!" The minute I started defending myself, I'd have conceded the fellow's right to accuse me, and I'd be toast.
If you float, you're a witch.
If you drown, you're innocent, and dead.
In the future, the accusation of racism will be used, wholesale, to level opposition to any position or figure that doesn't have the favor of our corpo-govern-media machine. Future generations might see it as the equivalent to the "Red Scare" or the Puritan witch hunts. But note this: it does you no good to be exonerated by posterity if you're dead, or homeless, or beaten, in the present life. This is what's going to happen. Mr. Bundy is going to be told to give up his claim to the land, and eventually he's going to do it. Mr. Sterling will have it suggested to him that he sell his team at favorable rates to someone whom the media and the NBA like better, the same way Anheuser-Busch moved a Hispanic manager aside to make room for Jesse Jackson's sweetheart deal. Business will go on as usual. Bundy and Sterling will be swept aside. And it will, as the French said, encourage the others. To comply, to play nice, to do what they're told.
How long will it be until children can denounce their parents for racism, 1984-style? Hint: you'll be alive when it happens --- and, most likely, so will Donald Sterling.