Sterling Comes By His Racism Honestly.
When I listened to the recording of Donald Sterling talking with his girlfriend, talking to his girlfriend, I was driven almost to tears – Tears of compassion. I heard the voice of racism, to be sure – but not the voice of racism driven by hatred or even disdain. I heard the voice of racism driven by fear. I heard a victim of racism, not a purveyor of hatred. I heard a man stuck in the past, fearful of his lover's well being talking to a young woman who grew up in a far less racist world than him who can't understand his fear.
Sterling doesn't have a hatred for black people. He has a fear of white racists.
I'm a man of Obama's generation. Like him, I was born in the early 60s to a mixed marriage, and got to watch a single mother bring up mixed race children. I got to watch the battles for equality from within, and I grew up to benefit from those fights. My mother loved a black man, who died when I was 3, and she had me cut my hair short to hide it's curliness. When I rebelled against that, she had me bobby-pin my hair down each night to make it look flatter. It took me a long time to understand her fear, but I do now.
Sterling is not your overage rich white man. He's a Jew who was born in the early 30's and lived through one of the most racist periods in mankind's history. He was born to parents who managed to emigrate from Europe before a slightly less racist America shut the door on 'their kind'. I don't know how many of his relatives died in the death factories of Nazi Germany because America refused to let them into the country, but I doubt that the number was zero.
Sterling grew up in an America where the KKK was at it's height, and hated Jews only slightly less than blacks. He learned to hide his jewishness in plain sight. He changed his last name from Tokowitz to Sterling so that people had to look closely to notice his origins. He grew up fearing racism.
He probably had flashbacks when he found out that Bush-Senior's father had make a fortune siphoning Nazi-sympathizer money to Germany during the second world war.
Had he loved a woman like V. Stiviano when he was a young man, he would have probably stayed up nights worried that the following conversation might take place: (excuse me while I go Django on you):
RING yeah?
Grand dragon? I've got a live one for you.... A rich white-passing Jew with a Nigger girlfriend – and she's damned near broadcasting the fact.
No fear, eh?
None.
Well, we're gonna have to put some fear into her before she dies.
Yeah. Well, there's a fringe benefit – she's a real looker.
Guys are gonna want a piece of her?
Everybody's gonna want a piece of her. We can make the Christ-killer watch before we string them up.
Sounds like a good idea. Well, hood up. I'll have my boys make some crosses this afternoon.
I think that he still has nightmares like that. That's why he's saying what he is to Vanessa.
If you set aside your disgust for a moment, and listen carefully to the recording of his argument with her, you'll notice that he's not telling her to abandon her black friends. He's asking her to not broadcast it. He still fears racism. He doesn't realize that that war is, for the most part won. I think that his relationship with Vanessa is, in part, a quiet F U to the KKK, but he's still worried that – if she gets to blatent about things, that the call will go out.
Vanessa, on the other hand, has tasted racism, but mostly against her Spanish side – but the racism she's experienced is much muted from when Sterling grew up in the 40s and 50s. She's defiantly proud of her heritage, and she doesn't understand the depth of Sterling's fears.
Yes, Sterling is racist, but his racism arises from fear, not disdain. He fears a backlash from racist whites, but now he's facing a backlash from his anti-racist allies. People, now are so quick to put down any sort of racism, that we don't realize that, in this case, we're taking part in a friendly-fire exercise.
If I had a minute to talk to Donald Sterling, what I'd say to him is this:
It's OK Mr. Tokowitz. You're safe now.
You're safe. Your Family is safe. Your lover is safe.
Peace, Mr Tokowitz.
Really … Peace.