I was 16 years old when I most vividly remember being judged for the color of my skin. I was a black kid with a crush on a white girl, and I’ll never forget the way I felt when she told me that her mother had made it clear that our relationship wasn’t OK. If the girl’s father were still alive, he absolutely wouldn’t have let it happen, she said.
Being judged in that way is a pain that is difficult to put into words. It’s a hurt that many of you who are reading this will never feel, and I’m thankful for that.
So as I watched Donald Sterling sit in his living room and speak to CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a two-part interview, that was the emotional background I carried with me.
That wrinkled and despondent individual rambled, ranted and raved in his first public interview since making numerous racist remarks on an audio recording released first by TMZ and then by Deadspin.com.
If you watched just the beginning and the end of his sit down with Cooper, you may find him sympathetic. But I beg of you, don’t be fooled.
To start the interview, Sterling broke down when speaking about his granddaughter, who was told at her Catholic nursery that she couldn’t have a snack because candy was not offered to racists (Sterling did not clarify who said those words).
At the end, he cried again about being hurt by V. Stiviano — the other voice heard on the released audio — a woman he thought cared for him and whom many assumed he was linked to romantically.
But if you watched the middle of the interview, you would have seen an embattled billionaire on the ropes, deflecting blame and trying to drag others down with him.
There was the portion when Cooper asks if Sterling had been in an intimate relationship with Stiviano — something she denies. Sterling tap-danced around the question.
“I don’t think a gentleman should discuss any of the personal items that go on with a woman,” he said.
It’s an interesting, even chivalrous, thing to say. Maybe I’d buy it if Sterling didn’t utter the following words in a 2003 sworn deposition:
“Well, I fool around sometimes. I do. When a girl seduces me and tells me all of these hot stories and dirty things and tells me how much she wants to suck on me and takes me shoes off and licks my feet and touches me.”
Don’t be duped by this man when he admits to the “terrible” things he says, calling them “stupid, foolish and uneducated.” He says time and time again that he isn’t a racist and appears flabbergasted that anyone would think he has a plantation mentality, even lashing out at Cooper.
“I think you have more of a plantation mentality than I do,” Sterling said. “I think you are more of a racist than I am because I’m not a racist, I’ve never been a racist and I’ll never be a racist. I don’t know what that means so have a (plantation) mentality.”
Well Mr. Sterling, if you had a plantation mentality, you’d probably say something along the lines of “I support (the Clippers’ players) and give them food, and clothes and cars, and houses,” like you did on the audio recording.
If you possessed that ass-backwards way of thinking, you would most likely still believe that those you feel you own are still loyal to you when it is quite clear that they aren’t.
You would probably tell Cooper something like, “they’re mine and I’m theirs, I would do anything for them and they would to anything for me.”
You would cling to false hope and your own pride in saying that your players, “still love you,” and you would of course say, “they know I’m not a racist.”
See Sterling for who he is: A man in complete and utter denial. Listen to him say that his players’ protest of turning their jerseys inside out wasn’t a consensus decision but peer pressure from a few within the locker room.
He thinks this is all a media ploy and a witch-hunt. He flat out refutes the concept of NBA commissioner Adam Silver ousting him as owner of the Clippers.
Sterling practically said all Magic Johnson was good for was being a 6-foot-9 walking block of AIDS. Sterling then pumped himself up by implying that he is better than the former NBA star because he gives to inner-city youth in Los Angeles and publicizes it in a way that Johnson does not.
Johnson got the platform to voice his opinion Tuesday in the second half of Cooper’s series and the Hall of Fame point guard took the high road as was expected. He was polished and gregarious with his 1,000-watt smile in a way that Sterling’s frumpy demeanor never could be.
Johnson is the face of the franchise that has forever treated Sterling’s club like the little brother across the hall in Staples Center, always living under the shadow of 16 purple-and-gold championship banners.
That is Sterling’s real purpose for bringing someone who, besides his skin color and sole fact that he was in the initial picture with Stiviano, has nothing to do with the entire fiasco. Sterling saw this as another Laker trying to get the best of him just like when former Clippers vice president Elgin Baylor -- also a Lakers great -- went after him in court over racist allegations in 2009, which Sterling thinks is in no way connected to this situation, I might add.
Sterling reeks of jealousy, hatred and racism, and he reminded us of that in a pathetic ploy to clear his name and make his own attempt to not be forever seen as a reviled figure in the court of public opinion.
Unfortunately for the soon-to-be-former Clippers owner, the buzzer has sounded on that wish. It’s too late. Game over.
Follow Richard Johnson on Twitter @RagjUF
Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling looks on during the first half of their NBA basketball game against the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 25, 2011, in Los Angeles. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has banned Sterling for life and fined him $2.5 million for making racist comments.
