Donald Sterling, Eddie McGuire, And The Real Face Of Racism

For those who came in late to one of the week’s most discussed stories, Donald Sterling is the owner of NBA team the LA Clippers (but not for long), and we hate him.

Last week, V. Stiviano, Sterling’s (now ex-) girlfriend, made a secret recording of him criticising her for hanging out with NBA legend Magic Johnson, and asking her not to hang out with or pose for photos with black people anymore, if that’s not too much trouble, ta. For this, Sterling has been fined an NBA record US$2.5 million dollars, forced to put the Clippers up for sale, and banned from any involvement with the NBA for the rest of his life. In summary, gross racist gets squished. Good story, right? Sure, but one with a few uncomfortable implications.

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Institutional racism vs one ol’ bigot

Firstly, there’s a whiff of entrapment about the whole secret recording thing, not to mention the precedent set by the NBA in compelling Sterling to sell off a private asset due to comments made in private and obtained through deception.

Sterling may have been stitched up, but make no mistake, he has been a punk of some magnitude for a while now. A lawyer by profession, Sterling made his fortune as a real estate developer. In 2009, he was successfully sued by the US Justice Department for his discriminatory practices as a landlord. Allegedly, he didn’t like renting to blacks, because “they smell and attract vermin”, while Hispanic tenants just “drink, smoke, and hang around”. There’s a lot more bile where that came from, but you get the drift.

Basically, he’s one of the very few people left that probably wouldn’t protest if you called him a dirty racist — well, maybe except for the ‘dirty’ bit. It’s great that he’s been exposed. Even better, he has united the NBA in their condemnation. The league has long been a progressive — though largely apolitical force — in US race relations, but the solidarity between players, owners and administrators on the Sterling issue was a positive move.

The only problem, though, is that when it comes to race, dinosaurs like Sterling aren’t the issue anymore. The real issue is structural: they may be united in their condemnation, but the NBA’s players are still predominantly black, and the owners and administrators overwhelmingly white. Black guys run around, white guys do brain stuff. That’s institutional racism, and as good as it feels to go all John Galliano on a sorry old bigot like Sterling, the institutional stuff does a lot more harm. It frames what a young kid deems possible, it perpetuates stereotypes, and it slows the process of wider change. The danger with the Sterling case is that one spectacular victory will obscure a thousand clandestine defeats.

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The problem with Not Racists

If you can cast your mind back to about a year ago, you’ll remember that Collingwood President Eddie McGuire, for reasons known only to himself, joked that Adam Goodes could play the eponymous role in a new stage adaptation of King Kong. This was less than a week after McGuire led the chorus of condemnation when a young Collingwood supporter called Goodes, the current Australian of the Year, an ape.

Like the NBA, the AFL has a strong recent record on racism. Unlike NBA commissioner Adam Silver, AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou accepted McGuire’s public display of contrition and drew a line under the episode. The football public seemed happy with this. That might be because the entire AFL PR machine mobilised in defence of the second-most powerful man in the game, but it might also be because McGuire’s comments were uncomfortably familiar for most white Australians.

You hear shit like that at the pub, at some barbecue, or on the street. If you’re really lucky, you’ll hear it at home. You might have even riffed on some racial stereotype for laughs yourself at some point. You probably felt a pang of guilt, but you got a laugh and you let it slide.You don’t have a problem with Asians, but you don’t have any Asian friends. You avoid an Indian guy in class because you can’t pronounce his name. It’s all relatively small stuff, but in aggregation, the noise it makes is deafening.

Guys like Sterling are a blessed relief to anyone with good intentions and a distaste for the sort of rigorous self-examination that is required to deal with the structural inequities and day-to-day slippages that constitute the true face of contemporary racism. He is a throwback, a heritage racist, a monstrous Other, easily identified and safely condemned. He is comforting, and he allows us to perform the role of Not Racist, without forcing us to confront our own complicity in maintaining the structures of racism through inaction, passivity, and a failure to interrogate ourselves and others.

McGuire’s comments are a lot trickier. His rhetoric around racism is strong, which should make him a Not Racist, but he still made a joke that hinged on Adam Goodes resembling an ape. This makes him a Not Racist Who Said A Racist Thing. Now, I can’t speak for all white people, but a lot of us fit into this category, or at least the category of Not Racist Who Condoned A Racist Remark Because It Was Easier Than Sticking My Neck Out On That One Occasion.

This is why I’m not exactly punching the air with joy over Donald Sterling’s fall from grace. For every Donald Sterling, there are a lot more Eddie McGuires with good intentions, bad actions, and an overriding interest in alleviating our feelings of guilt. We’re everywhere, and most of us don’t even know that we’re part of the problem.

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