Sterling is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
May 5, 2014
More-and-more contributors to my beloved Times have been closing in on what I began writing on May 5th – (today being May 14th); so I decided that I had better complete this article ASAP (during finals week) – before someone can suggest that I plagiarized him/her.
Donald Sterling is merely part-of-the-tip of the wealthy, racist iceberg: there are plenty more who have not yet risen to the surface (they stay submerged [or in the closet]). I bet some of them are also sports team owners…just a small sample of the multitude of racists who are floating out there in plain sight.
I have found myself comparing Donald to Richard Nixon: in that they both got caught. Any “thinking” person knows that Richard Nixon was neither the first, nor the last, US president to disregard the law. Thankfully, none of the published contributors to The Times have mentioned Nixon in this regard (so I have my copyrighted moment): but a number have already corroborated Donald’s aforementioned standing with the racist rich.
And this has really opened up a can of worms! Everyone with money will have to watch what s/he says these days: If some employee is in a-blackmailing-state-of-mind – the racist or bigoted boss could be in a whole lotta trouble. Not that this incident will hurt Sterling – he’s liable to come out $500 million wealthier (even if his wife takes half) – but other rich folk might not be so lucky: their businesses may NOT be as lucrative as the Clippers have turned out to be.
My readers have heard me suggest that I am color blind – that race is not an issue for me – but when my college students put me to the litmus test about my color blindness; i.e., when they ask me who would have me reaching for my wallet more quickly: two white youths sporting hoodies? Or, two black youths without hoodies? — I fail the test every time. My human education has doomed me…
…and whenever I am faced with an issue regarding race, D.H. Lawrence’s lines from “The Snake” reverberate in my mind: Curse my human education for engendering my fear of the Black Man! The White Man has parted me from more of my money than the Black Man ever could! Fear is taught!!
I remember neighbors getting their guns ready during the Detroit riots of 1968. Our subdivision was miles from Detroit and certainly there were no Black Folk living in our suburb; but I was repeatedly exposed to the “N” word for those 2-3 days. And speaking of the “N” word – I can’t believe how often it was used in “Django Unchained” (which I only saw recently).
I also recently attended a presentation by Pepperdine scholar, Lou Cozolino, who reminded me that there is a social part to our brain – a part of the brain that is activated in the social context – which goes a long way in explaining what D.H. Lawrence and I commiserate about.
So I guess that as long as those icebergs can float (before melting) – we will be dealing with racists above and below the waterline. In the world of relational therapy, we psychotherapists suggest that it takes half-the-length-of-the-relationship for the divorced parties to get over their anger. So if US practiced slavery for-300-years-or-more – then everyone should be getting over it in about 150 years. The problem, however, is to determine whether slavery has officially ended…
READERS: I will be on hiatus for 5 weeks and hope that World Cup doesn’t slow me down any further. May the best team win!