The rest of us now know what most people acquainted with Donald Sterling have known for years: The guy is a racist. Audio recordings of a conversation Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, had with an ex-girlfriend, were posted on two news Web sites last week. In the recordings, Sterling is clearly heard telling his half-black girlfriend to not associate publicly with black people, for instance NBA legend Magic Johnson, and to not invite black people to Clippers' games–a team dominated by black players.
And as soon as the recordings went public, it was time to cue the communal outrage. So, the National Basketball Association's commissioner, Nate Silver, did the only thing he could–make a swift and painful example of Donald Sterling. The Clippers' owner can't have anything to do with the team he owns, or the NBA as a whole, and he is fined US$2.5 million. Although for the billionaire, that amount of money barely makes a dent in his fully-loaded bank accounts.
And while players, pundits and the public have had a field day waving their fingers and "tsk-tsking" in judgment and decrying how bad racism is, many of them knew about Sterling's views, tolerated them and looked the other way for years.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members