In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial covenants in housing. At the time, housing segregation was codified through passages in deeds specifying the race of the subsequent purchaser of a property. With overt housing discrimination illegal, segregation was achieved by other means. In an aside in Code 2.0, Lawrence Lessig discusses the ways built environments and zoning laws were put to work so whites could avoid living with blacks. As others have noted, the building of suburbs can be understood as an enormous transfer of public money that largely benefited those engaged in white flight. The effects of residential segregation are generational in that they prevent the concentrations of wealth in communities that lead to improved public services and combat some sources of social stratification. Middle-class black had to pay more for homes because of diminished supply, counteracting a lot of the benefits that come from middle-class salaries. Residential segregation, therefore, is an expression of white supremacy, a tool for systematically denying people of color access to the American Dream. It is one of the ongoing evils in American society, although one buried under the ideal of consumer choice. So when you read that Los Angeles real estate mogul Donald Sterling (who until yesterday was an NBA team owner in good standing) paid multiple multi-million dollar settlements in housing discrimination cases, it is important to understand what that actually means in the larger currents of history.
The point, then, is that Sterling finally being banished from polite society over a vile cartoonish racist rant leaked to a gossip website is a little bit like putting Al Capone in jail for tax evasion. Sterling received a lifetime ban from new NBA commissioner Adam Silver. The ban touched off a lovefest in the NBA. As I watched the Warriors-Clippers last night, praiseworthy tweets from important cultural figures scrolled along the bottom of the screen.
The lifetime ban came with a promise to hold a vote to force him out of the NBA. If NBA owners oust Sterling, it will not because of Sterling’s racism. They worked around that for years. It will be because he was costing them money and goodwill. And it will be because their workforce demanded swift and severe action under the threat of destroying the integrity of the playoffs. In a 30-way partnership, there seems no reason to tolerate 1/30th of it destroying your hard-won market position. All other side issues are irrelevant to this particular situation.
But as repugnant as Sterling is, it would be wrong for him to come to represent the face of American racism. The Sterling affair must not be reduced to another post-racial fairy tale, where we celebrate how broad and righteous outrage took down an obvious villain and closes off any sort of discussion we might have about how Donald Sterling came to be in possession of an NBA franchise, how some NBA owners amassed their billions, and how the NBA put Sterling’s Clippers in a position to be relevant this year. Sterling is the racial covenant in this story. Everyone knows enough to shun that.
It is more challenging to write about the ways Sterling’s views like this one are actually pretty pervasive:
I support (Clippers players) and give them food, and clothes, and cars, and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Do I know that I have—Who makes the game? Do I make the game, or do they make the game?
This view of athletes and the place of a team owner should be understood as the zoning laws and conveniently placed placed freeways in our story. In the context of Sterling’s rant, the bigotry is obvious. This is an owner speaking the language of gifts, rather than understanding the ways he profits from people’s work. This denigrates the role of labor in general and athletes in particular. Columnists and fans who think overpaid athletes should just shut up and enjoy the tenuous perks of their position rather than seek to improve their situations are channeling Sterling’s sentiments. So are those who praise the paternalism of certain executives and coaches. So are those who refuse to see athletics as a real form of work, even at the pro level. These beliefs are not developed in a vacuum. They are the result of messages about what is valued in society and judgments about the people who tend to occupy those positions.
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