Donald Sterling

@Thomas,

BillRM wrote:

It is my understanding that there is no appeal allowed of either the commission rulings or actions in the ownership agreement either to the courts or to a third party binding arbitration, and once more how legal can that be?

Thomas wrote:

It can be perfectly legal. In general, contract law allows you to sign away your rights to resolve disputes through the legal system --- with specific exceptions designed to protect the weaker partner in an excessively asymmetric power relationship. (See, for example, Wikipedia's article on arbitration clauses.) But I don't see these exceptions applying to billionaire Donald Sterling, so I don't see how a court would sack the contract on these grounds. (Again, though, I'm not a lawyer, so my not seeing the way this would work doesn't mean there isn't one.)

To MY mind, the commissioner is being regarded
as a SUPER-Arbitrator in this situation. The courts have been
dis-inclined to disturb arbitration provisions in contracts,
but doing so is not un-precedented. In my opinion,
the greatest likelihood is that there will be no judicial intervention,
but (I think) the current system of athletic administration
is such a monstrosity, that its stability is doubtful.
Effectively, thay have erected a king, or a Saddam.

I remain confident that in the end, the courts will DO what thay wanna do.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

The courts have been dis-inclined to disturb arbitration provisions in contracts, but doing so is not un-precedented.

From following the story, do any precedents come to your mind that might apply to Sterling's case?

OmSigDavid wrote:

Effectively, thay have erected a king, or a Saddam.

I think you may be looking for the word Leviathan.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

No precedents come to mind; I did not have much work
in that area of endeavor.

David

0 Replies

A former friend of Sterling, who said he procured women for him, told CNN that he made the tape, and that Sterling didn't know about it. Thus, the tape is illegal under CA law. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/15/former-pimp-tells-cnn-i-released-sterling-tapes-after-he-started-going-crazy-on-magic/

1 Reply

@Advocate,

errrrr no

from your link

Quote:

However, Maseratimet did note that he was not responsible for releasing the conversation between Sterling and girlfriend V. Stiviano that precipitated the wave of outrage against him.

the article is about other tapes apparently released later

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Quote:

The real public service Donald Sterling has done
Sandy Banks
Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2014

You didn't have to be a Clippers fan to root for the players this season. Their playoff loss on Thursday night was heartbreaking, especially given all the turmoil they've endured..

The only upside to this season-ending defeat is that it signifies the end of Donald Sterling's career as a basketball mogul.

Sterling's been banned for life from the NBA. His fellow team owners are expected to vote soon to strip the team from him. But he's not going down without a fight; he's already refused to pay the $2.5-million fine the league imposed for his disparaging comments about blacks that were captured on a recording. If the NBA does not back down, he's threatening to sue.

That's classic Sterling. He's always thrown money around and silenced his detractors — settling discrimination cases before the facts reach a jury, padding the bank accounts of civil rights groups, reveling in his image as life-of-the-party sports tycoon.

Selling the Clippers now will make Sterling many millions of dollars. But this is about more than a businessman's bottom line.

Sterling has hung his social standing for 33 years on being an NBA owner and the adulation that brings. One hundred percent of Clippers' fans and all his players love him, he told CNN.

I get the feeling that for all his money, that delusion is the thing that matters to him most.

Since the audiotape surfaced three weeks ago, I've been trying to understand why I don't feel appropriately outraged by Sterling's race-based insults.

His contempt for black people is clear. He doesn't want us at his Clippers games or in his friends' Instagram photos — unless, of course, we are giving him an award.

But I don't really care whether Sterling likes black people. I don't want a man like that on my team. He's a bigot and a bully whose social peccadilloes are magnified by his stunning stupidity.

I do care if he refuses to rent to black people or pay them what they deserve — both of which he's been accused of doing in lawsuits over the years.

At this point, what's just as disturbing is the circus atmosphere created when Don and Shelly take their antebellum sideshow on the road — and we wait and wonder how much weirder this is going to become.

Their television performances have been painful to watch. Sterling and his wife both want to hold on to the Clippers so badly, they come off as desperately loopy and comically out-of-touch.

"It's part tragedy and part farce," said USC law professor Jody Armour. "That's some of what attracts us."

The Sterling saga gives us a chance to castigate a public bigot without examining our own attitudes or considering the actual damage that broad racism inflicts.

"It's cut and dried," said Armour, the author of "Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America." "We can all agree that racism like this is bad. It's Archie Bunker, it's Bull Connor … we recognize that. The choir is all together now, singing as one.

"But we can't let this distract us from what real racism is. The kind of racial injustices that black folks face today are from historic inequalities that have accumulated over generations," he said. "Overreact to this and we're scapegoating Donald Sterling for sins of discrimination that go way beyond him."

Still, the collective chorus of outrage has been heartening. It's fun watching Sterling squirm. "People are calling from all over the world, asking 'Are you a racist?'" he complained to CNN.

Wouldn't it be great if bigotry could be so easily dispatched?

We find the ogre, chase him into the woods with our pitchforks and torches and return to our racist-free lives.

I think we've spent more public attention on Donald Sterling than the man deserves. Civil rights attorney Connie Rice put it best: He's just an old man with no filter; a relic it's time to retire.

But he's done the country a public service by reminding us how pernicious prejudice can be.

I've realized I'm too jaded to be shocked by what Sterling said; I've heard worse from readers who can't resist slinging racial slurs when they find fault with my column.

Still, I can't help but wonder: Is Sterling part of a small group with views so out-of-sync with the mainstream that they constitute news? Or do the views he expressed in private, and later on TV, reflect what many others really think but know better than to reveal?

I'm going with the outlier explanation; my spirit needs that to heal. And I'm encouraged by the soul-searching among folks horrified by the attitudes that Sterling unwittingly displayed.

Entertainment agent Paul Haas has been a Clippers season ticket holder for 16 years, with pricey courtside seats. He felt awkward even walking into Staples Center this week.

"I've been pouring money into that team, and I feel guilty and ashamed for ignoring what we've known for years," Haas told me. "Everyone turned a blind eye, until it was so in our face we couldn't afford to look away."

It's reminded him of how hard it is to dislodge discrimination. "I cannot believe we're still going through this. You can drink at my water fountain, you can sit where I sit.... But don't live in my neighborhood. Is it ever going to end?"
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0517-banks-donald-sterling-20140517-column.html

1 Reply

@firefly,

Thanks for the clip (LAT is another newspaper that has a paywall - the limit per month is 15 articles and I can hit that pretty fast. Good to see Sandy on this.

0 Replies

Donald Sterling is actually Jewish. The Jewish controlled news media has portrayed him as a White Man

2 Replies

@MarkC,

Quote:

Donald Sterling is actually Jewish. The Jewish controlled news media has portrayed him as a White Man

???????????????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

0 Replies

@MarkC,

MarkC wrote:

Donald Sterling is actually Jewish.
The Jewish controlled news media has portrayed him as a White Man

R u disputing the whiteness of Donald Sterling????

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

MarkC wrote:

Donald Sterling is ... Jewish.
The Jewish controlled news media has portrayed him as a White Man

Since Mr. Sterling is WHITE, how else would you like to see him portrayed?

Now to your "claim": What's this I see you've written about 'The Jewish controlled news media"? I'd like to see the proof for this comment...Please!

1 Reply

@Miller,

Sandy Banks Quote:

"It's reminded him of how hard it is to dislodge discrimination. "I cannot believe we're still going through this. You can drink at my water fountain, you can sit where I sit.... But don't live in my neighborhood. Is it ever going to end?"

---------------------------------------------
MILLER:

I don't think that many white people would object to Oprah moving into their neighborhood and yet, if a black person were to move into a 100% white community ( solid middle class), many homeowners would sell their homes, because of fear that their property values would rapidly decline and they would be left with very little real estate value in their home.

The mass migrations of the 60s, 70s and even 80s in Chicago and other large cities, provide support for this assumption by many white, middle class and even black middle class individuals.

But is it racist, that white people want to preserve the equity in their homes, and to do so ( presumably) they must be one of the first to sell their homes, when property values may be supposedly threatened by race?

Instead of race as the issue, I like to believe that the real issue is CLASS...

2 Replies

@Miller,

I think the real issue is fear of others you are not used to and have heard some bad stuff about, usually generalizations based on fears such as color and different speech. You could call that racism - I would. (I bought in a real estate redlined neighborhood, ugh, the whole redlining thing.)

0 Replies

@Miller,

Quote:

I don't think that many white people would object to Oprah moving into their neighborhood and yet, if a black person were to move into a 100% white community ( solid middle class), many homeowners would sell their homes, because of fear that their property values would rapidly decline and they would be left with very little real estate value in their home.

That was true decades ago, but I don't see it happening any more, not in my community anyway. This community was pretty much 100% white back then, they pretty much wanted it kept that way, and I heard people, my neighbors, expressing fears their property would decline in value if blacks moved in. But, over time, those attitudes dissipated, and quite quietly, this community became much more integrated. The most expensive home on my block is currently owned by a black family. And property values here have increased, not decreased.

Quote:

But is it racist, that white people want to preserve the equity in their homes, and to do so ( presumably) they must be one of the first to sell their homes, when property values may be supposedly threatened by race?

Instead of race as the issue, I like to believe that the real issue is CLASS...

I think the issue was race back then, but I think a good part of that issue involved socio-economic class differences. Obviously, blacks that can afford to buy homes in middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods are on an economic par with the others living there. But that rational thought was eclipsed by stereotypical notions about poorer urban blacks and thoughts such people would bring crime, drugs, physical decay, etc. to middle class (or even working class) suburban neighborhoods--and this thinking was racist, it was based on biased assumptions about all blacks.

In the past several decades, there has also been an increase in the number of middle and professional class black people that others met in the workplace and elsewhere, mingled with, got to know, in much larger numbers. That considerably decreased fears based on race, familiarity led to the recognition of shared middle class values about homeownership, wanting good schools for the children, etc., and the realization that these people weren't really different than "us". That seems to have stopped a great deal of the concern about the neighborhood declining if a certain group moved in. The concern had been based on a perception that blacks didn't share the same values, and that the values and behavior they would bring to a neighborhood would be undesirable. Actual familiarity changed that, that's why integration happened very quietly in my community--blacks who could afford to buy here were no longer perceived as a threat, to property values or middle class and family values, they bought homes here and no one blinked an eye, no one rushed to sell because of that, and it became a non-issue. And now, a different generation of homeowners don't even seem to think the same way their parents and grandparents did on these matters.

I think that quote from the Sandy Banks article isn't just meant to be taken literally. I think, outside of the workplace, close socialization between groups is likely less integrated than housing in middle class neighborhoods. A man might not mind a black family living next door, but he still might mind if the male teen who lives there began dating his daughter. Or, he'd consider those blacks "acceptable", but still harbor demeaning attitudes toward blacks as a group. Or he wouldn't mind black neighbors, but that's not who he and his wife go out to dinner with.

Plenty of vestiges of racially biased thinking still exist--the demeaning just tends to be subtle rather than blatant. They are so common, they go barely noticed when they are expressed. And a lot of that sort of thinking is expressed in threads like this, and was even more apparent in the thread about the Zimmerman trial regarding Trayvon Martin and his family, where many of the remarks about them, and the characterizations of them, were quite racially biased. And this wasn't due to class differences--the Martin family, including Trayvon, are middle class, with a middle class lifestyle, and middle class values and aspirations for their children--but they still became the victims of racially biased thinking and negative stereotypes in that thread.

So, racism, and biased attitudes, are still with us, and not just based on class differences. It is a lingering vestige of the unfortunate racial history in this country.

1 Reply

@firefly,

Pretty much nobody cares if blacks or somebody else wants to buy in, but watch all hell break lose if anyone talks about locating a halfway house, shelter, or low income housing in a middle class neighborhood!

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Pretty much nobody cares if blacks or somebody else wants to buy in, but watch a hell break lose if anyone talks about locating a halfway house, shelter, or low income housing in a middle class neighborhood!

Do you think those things are really appropriate in a residential middle-class neighborhood of single family homes?

Where I live, they'd all violate zoning, which prohibits multiple occupancy dwellings. Even mother-daughter two family housing is very limited and restricted around here.

Quite honestly, I wouldn't want any of those things on my block either. I wouldn't welcome any sort of housing with a lot of different strangers constantly coming and going.

1 Reply

@firefly,

In my neighborhood we had renters who turned their place into a fosterhome for mentally handicapped, who aged sometimes into the 30's from what I could tell. It was an issue. They ended up moving out. We are 210 house subdivision of white, asians, blacks, indians ( from india), some muslims from somewhere, an extended Pakistani family....but a boarding house for mentally handicapped adults was not going to fly here.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

A boarding house of any sort would not be welcome on my block either.

The surrounding area I live in is exclusively one family homes. That's the character of the neighborhood people wanted when they bought here, and the one they want to keep. They don't care about the ethnic or racial identity of the other people in the one family homes, they just don't want multiple occupancy dwellings. And they aren't legally permitted in this area.

In the part of my community where there are apartment houses located, I doubt they would mind as much, or at all, to having a group home like the one you mentioned, although it would still have to meet zoning requirements.

But, this issue has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

1 Reply

@firefly,

Quote:

But, this issue has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

It is not race but class that matters to most people, you are right about that. This dispute between Sterling and Magic, two rich guys, is unusual.

I think that a great deal of all of this chatter about race is driven by democrats practicing their identity politics purely for advancing their power. Garden variety americans care a lot less about race then outside observers would guess by watching our media. Even Sterlings alleged racism was almost all about class, he wanted a better class of tenet. I dont get the idea that he cares much about skin color in spite of the fact that his alleged girl getter says that he wants his hookers to be light skinned blacks, not darkies.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

No, I think it is about race with Sterling, not just about class.

NBA players are all rich guys, including those on his own team, but Sterling's attitude toward them is really like that of a plantation owner. He doesn't see them as his social equals, he really doesn't. Listening to Sterling during that Anderson Cooper interview, I was really struck by his plantation mentality. It is about race.

And he made clear Magic Johnson isn't his equal, Sterling doesn't see him as being as charitable as he is, he apparently doesn't see any affluent African Americans, as a group, being charitable to their community, despite the fact such thinking isn't true--it's quite untrue. They just aren't promoting their charitable efforts on billboards and in newspaper ads the way he does. But he was negatively characterizing all blacks in his remarks, and that's where he reveals his racially biased thinking.

Then Sterling, an open adulterer himself, slammed Johnson for being sexually promiscuous--another stereotype of black men--and said Johnson was a poor role model for children, because he had AIDS, and he shouldn't be looked up to because of that. So, not only is Sterling a racist, he's now trying to reinvigorate the stigma against people with AIDS. Rolling Eyes

And, even after Anderson Cooper corrected him, that Johnson is HIV positive, and doesn't have AIDS, Sterling kept saying, "He has AIDS." In Sterling's mind, apparently, we should even discriminate against people with certain diseases.

In terms of his housing tenants, his offensive remarks were about blacks--blacks as a group--he didn't reference class . Why would a slum lord expect to attract a "better class" of tenant? People who could afford it, wouldn't rent from a slum lord.

And Elgin Baylor, a 79 year old NBA Hall of Famer, and former Clippers general manager, also made racial allegations about Sterling in a 2009 lawsuit he brought against him--allegations that now sound familiar, and reflect the sort of attitudes everyone has now heard Sterling expressing.

Quote:

In the original lawsuit, Baylor said that Sterling had a “vision of a Southern plantation-type structure” for the Clippers and accused the owner of a “pervasive and ongoing racist attitude” during long-ago contract negotiations with Danny Manning. The lawsuit also quoted Sterling as telling Manning's agent, “I’m offering you a lot of money for a poor black kid.”

Baylor alleged Sterling said he wanted the Clippers to be “composed of ‘poor black boys from the South’ and a white head coach.”
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-elgin-baylor-donald-sterling-20140426-story.html

Quote:

I think that a great deal of all of this chatter about race is driven by democrats practicing their identity politics purely for advancing their power. Garden variety americans care a lot less about race then outside observers would guess by watching our media.

Do you think African Americans aren't concerned about racism or issues of race--they are "garden variety Americans" too, aren't they? It's the white guys, like you, who try to downplay or minimize or ignore racial issues. If blacks didn't make noise about these issues, they'd be even more swept under the rug.

Race is a very hot button issue--this has nothing to do with the democrats--we live in a society where racial tensions still very much exist. And racism is expressed in all sorts of ways. Just because Sterling isn't an extreme example of a racist doesn't mean people shouldn't react to his racially demeaning attitudes and words. That's why I said in my other post that many expressions of racism are so common, people don't even comment on them, we take them for granted.

But, in a sport where the overwhelming majority of players are black, those attitudes and words, on the part of a team owner, do matter. They affect the entire sport, they do affect the NBA. And those black voices very much had a say in what to do about Sterling. And it's good they had the power to help get something done about him. That's progress.

1 Reply

Donald Sterling

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