Oh, man, wow! We did it! Every one of us deserves a nice hearty pat on the back. We ended racism! That's right, racism's over! Huzzah! With Tuesday's decision by the NBA to ban prune-faced bigot Donald Sterling from the NBA and to fine him a whopping $2.5 million--his net worth runs around $2 billion, so that fine's going to hit him where he lives: right in his beer money--we have seen the end of racial discrimination in our time. Whee! You might be tempted to think that, however brave a stand the Clippers' players, coaches and to a lesser extent fans and advertisers took on Sterling's racism, we might want to mute our celebration a little given how much racism still exists in the US, but thinking that might bum you out, so don't. No, sir: racism's over.
I mean, sure, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar pointed out in Time, Sterling has had several complaints of a racial nature lodged against him before, but those all focused on his discriminating against black and Hispanic families in renting the buildings he owns and nobody paid much attention. (I have an excuse: until he made his recent remarks, I'd never heard of Don Sterling because I'm not a sports guy.) (Just so I'm clear, basketball: that's the one with the baskets, right? And a ball?) But this time Sterling actually said stuff. And a hot girl recorded it. Wow. Busted! You know no one's going to let that pass. That's the kind of thing that just gets people angry--outraged in fact. (For once about something real.) That renting thing...I don't know, it sounds kind of boring. You know, like reading the New York Times. Or reading.
Okay, sure, some horrible people (like this guy) might point out that black men still only earn 75% of what white men make (and black women make only 69.6% of white men's wages), even after NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's monumental ruling. And the Supreme Court just last June in one of those nailbiter 5-4 decisions voided large parts of the Voting Rights Act so that Republican state legislators across this great land of ours could prevent black people from voting, but hey, that's just because black people by and large don't vote for Republicans. I mean, surely we understand that the Founding Fathers intended, if elections went against one party or another, that the party that lost should make sure that the people who voted for the other party not be allowed to vote any more. That's what we call democracy, and anyone who doesn't think so is a Communist. Or a Nazi.
And you know why the Supreme Court voided large parts of the Voting Rights act? Because racism is over. As Chief Justice and animated Macy's mannequin John Roberts wrote for the majority in that decision: "In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were." That's right, you people in Florida who waited eight hours to vote in the last election. It's totally a coincidence that most of you were in minority neighborhoods. So, okay, John Roberts might have jumped the gun by nine months, but this time it's for real. Racism? Done. Thanks, Adam Silver.
(If I were a sports guy, I'd probably make a joke about how the basketball court did what the Supreme Court couldn't--and hey, look, I just did anyway!)
Also, that same Supreme Court (because we only have the one, sadly) upheld a ban on affirmative action because equality! And plus also freedom! So if black people in Michigan don't have equal access to a college education, it's their own damn fault, because of how we're all done with racism. Great job, USA. Sorry, black people in Michigan.
So, well done, US, and us. Pat yourselves/ourselves on the back, collectively and individually. The deep corruption of racism, America's original sin, has ended, or nearly so. One horrible racist rich guy in a position of authority over African-Americans down, only a few dozen million left.
Let's do sexism next. Then obesity.