The Don Sterling affair has given way to the \u201cFinger Wagging Olympics,\u201d as Kareem Abdul-Jabbarhas colorfully put it.\u00a0 Given that those on the right have participated just as aggressively, if not more so, than those on the left, I urge them to bear the following considerations in mind.<\/p>\n
First, Sterling had a private <\/i>conversation, in his own car, with his girlfriend.\u00a0 Unbeknownst to him, this conversation was recorded.\u00a0 Yet scarcely anyone seems to be in the least bit concerned that the line between the private and the public has now been decisively obliterated\u2014<\/i>and all for the cause of outing, not a terrorist or gangster, but an old white \u201cracist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Secondly, Sterling is being crucified in the court of public opinion, and by the National Basketball Association, for a thought-crime. <\/i>Let\u2019s be crystal clear about this.\u00a0 Sterling hadn\u2019t been caught on tape plotting to harm someone, much less actually harm anyone.\u00a0 In fact, he neither hurled nor even uttered any racial epithets.<\/p>\n
Sterling is being made to suffer a humiliating social death\u2014a figurative crucifixion\u2014not for what he did, <\/i>but for what he is said to have thought. <\/i><\/p>\n
Thirdly, in fueling the campaign against Sterling, the right has given the left a helping hand in rendering \u201cracism\u201d a limitless\u2014and, thus, meaningless\u2014concept.\u00a0 Sterling supplies jobs\u2014extremely lucrative jobs\u2014for blacks, has a black <\/i>girlfriend, and has been extraordinarily generous with his own resources vis-\u00e0-vis black causes.\u00a0 In fact, such is Sterling\u2019sphilanthropy that the NAACP was preparing to bestow upon him its distinguished \u201cLifetime Achievement Award.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, now, a white \u201cracist\u201d is one who avoids blacks and a white \u201cracist\u201d doesn\u2019t avoid blacks.<\/p>\n
A white \u201cracist\u201d dates blacks and a white \u201cracist\u201d doesn\u2019t date blacks.<\/p>\n
A white \u201cracist\u201d does what he can to keep blacks unemployed and a \u201cwhite racist\u201d goes to great lengths to employ blacks.<\/p>\n
A white \u201cracist\u201d discriminates against blacks and a white \u201cracist\u201d discriminates in favor of blacks.<\/p>\n
A white \u201cracist\u201d is one who seeks to keep \u201cthe black man down\u201d and a white \u201cracist\u201d seeks to make millionaires out of blacks.<\/p>\n
A white \u201cracist\u201d cares nothing about assisting the black underprivileged and a white \u201cracist\u201d is one who gives a small fortune of his own resources to helping blacks.<\/p>\n
In any other setting, on any other topic, the foregoing contradictions would strike the most cognitively challenged among us with all of the force of a body blow.\u00a0 Not so when it comes to the issue of white \u201cracism,\u201d however.<\/p>\n
Sterling\u2019s actions don\u2019t matter, you see.For privately imploring his girlfriend not to publicly<\/i> cohort with the black men who, presumably, he suspects she is spending her time with privately, <\/i>Sterling is reduced by commentators on the right and left to the incarnation of evil.\u00a0\u00a0 Words now mean more\u2014infinitely more, judging from this incident\u2014than deeds. With one swift stroke, our topsy-turvy culture has spun the wisdom of generations on its head and made it possible to accuse and destroy any white person of \u201cracism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fourthly, by stretching and pulling the net of \u201cracism\u201d so widely that any white person at any time and in any place can get caught up in it, self-declared conservatives have aided and abetted the left in paving the way for the federal government to annex even more power to itself in the future.\u00a0 The pretext of combating \u201cracism,\u201d doubtless more than any other, has served as the federal government\u2019s Trojan horse in its efforts to transform itself from the handmaiden of the states envisioned by the Founders into the Leviathan that it is today.<\/p>\n
Finally, though they wouldn\u2019t dare to admit it, even to themselves, those on the right have joined in on the Sterling feeding frenzy for the sake of proving to the world that they are not the \u201cracist\u201d monsters\u2014the Sterlings\u2014that Democrats and leftists are forever making them out to be.\u00a0 Yet they either don\u2019t realize, or don\u2019t care to realize, that in addition to engendering cowardice and cruelty, the strategy of joining a lynch mob for the sake of gaining moral credit in the eyes of your mortal enemies is self-defeating.<\/p>\n
Average everyday folks\u2014you know, those who don\u2019t make their livelihoods publishing commentary or speaking on a microphone in front of cameras\u2014simply don\u2019t obsess over this kind of stuff. If their moral sensibilities are offended here, they are rocked by the treatment to which Sterling <\/i>is now being subjected.\u00a0 The \u201cfinger wagging Olympics\u201d that every media figure and his (or her) mother is rushing to participate in strikes the average person not as a circus, but a circus freak <\/i>show, something at once intriguing and revolting.<\/p>\n
As for the left, it should<\/i> go without saying that it will never spare a single resource to reinforce in the popular imagination the belief that the right is \u201cracist\u201d to the bone. And in doing their best to scream more loudly than anyone else, those on the right only render themselves more vulnerable to the charge that they \u201cdoth protest too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Don Sterling affair has given way to the \u201cFinger Wagging Olympics,\u201d as Kareem Abdul-Jabbarhas colorfully put it.\u00a0 Given that those on the right have participated just as aggressively, if not more so, than those on the left, I urge them to bear the following considerations in mind. First, Sterling had a private conversation, in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n