April 29, 2014

Slate: Donald T. Sterling, Plantation Owner

Josh Levin writes in Slate to endorse the spreading meme of Donald T. Sterling as Leonardo DiCaprio's Southern slaveowner character in Django Unchained:
Yes, Donald Sterling Sees His Basketball Team as a Plantation

It’s a provocative comparison, but in this case it’s an accurate one. 
By Josh Levin

Donald Sterling has been banned for life from overseeing his plantation....

... I wrote that Sterling views the men on his roster “as tenants on a basketball plantation.” This analogy isn’t just supported by words Sterling said to his girlfriend. It’s been Sterling’s modus operandi for years, and the NBA is only now doing something about it. 
... As the New York Times’ William Rhoden argues in his book Forty Million Dollar Slaves, “money does not necessarily alter one’s status as ‘slave,’ as long as the ‘owner’ is the one who controls the rules that allow that money to be made.” Still, I don’t believe it’s fair to label any NBA commissioner a plantation overseer, an analogy that—in that case—trivializes slavery. 
 In the case of Sterling, the plantation comparison has less to do with dollars and cents than with how he views black people. 
It’s not just that Sterling said he gives his players “food, and clothes, and cars, and houses.” As Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski writes, Sterling “has an absolute plantation prism with which he sees players: He always preferred long, strong, physical players. To him, that’s a basketball player: Big, black and strong.” 
Wojnarowski goes on to report that Sterling nearly scuttled the team’s agreement with white shooting guard J.J. Redick because, in the words of a source, “He thought it was too much to pay for a white player.” 
Elgin Baylor, the Clippers’ longtime general manager, laid out Sterling’s plantation mindset in a 2009 employment discrimination lawsuit. Baylor, an African-American, accused Sterling of saying he “wanted the Clippers team to be composed of ‘poor black boys from the South’ and a white head coach.” (In the years hence, Sterling did bring in Doc Rivers to coach the team, so I guess that’s some kind of progress.)

Over the offseason, Sterling fired his white coach, Vinny Del Negro, who had led the Clippers to a franchise-history best 56-26 record last season, and hired the black Rivers with a contract of about $23 million over three years. Under Rivers' much more expensive tutelage, the Clippers improved to 57-25 this season.
If you don’t catch a whiff of the plantation here, your nose is broken. 
   
Actually, the only thing Southern about Sterling, who was born in Chicago, is that he's lived in Southern California for almost 80 years. But, don't let that get in the way.
 

62 comments:

Anonymous said...

""""""If you don’t catch a whiff of the plantation here, your nose is broken. It’s about time the NBA caught the scent, and gave Sterling the punishment he’s long deserved."""""""

Remember that famous quote during American Revolution?

"I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."-(usually attributed to Voltaire)

Seriously, Sterling really better consider hiring the ACLU. When free speech can be this blatantly infringed upon, illegally, and a private conversation at that, he's gonna have to bring in the big boys that always claim to defend the rights and liberties of people's free speech.

The NBA looked the over way for decades re: Sterling's behavior. Is any owner among them perfect? If they want to get him on something, do it legally and not take away someone's free speech.

ACLU, where are you?

Tom-in-VA said...

I caught a whiff of something, at least...

Anonymous said...

Well, it doesn't mean much, but I'll never watch anothr NBA game and I'm really disappointed that Mark Cuban totally gave in to pressure and caved today.

I thought maybe the country could learn something from him. Nope.

Anonymous said...

"I wrote that Sterling views the men on his roster “as tenants on a basketball plantation.” This analogy isn’t just supported by words Sterling said to his girlfriend." ----------------
The analogy is supported by words Sterling said to his girlfriend???? Silly me, I thought Sterling was telling his girlfriend not to post Instagram pictures with her and black athletes which, of course, has Dick to do with whether he views his own players as 'tenants on a plantation.' This article would be comical if the writer weren't so serious.

Just Awful said...

It's not a free speech issue in the sense that the ACLU is concerned with. The government isn't making him sell, a private consortium is.

It is ridiculous, but it's not government restriction of freedom of speech.

Anonymous said...

So that's what a plantation is? And NBA players are slaves now? Please enslave me.

Knicks executive Larry Johnson wants an all-black league. Does the NBA care that one of it's team's executives wants racial segregation? Maybe it's okay to say publicly, but not to your mistress.

Johnson caused a stir by saying:
“We’ve got a lot of rebellious slaves on this [Knicks] team.”

When asked at the time why he referred to his teammates as slaves, Johnson said:
“I’ve got to explain that to you? We don’t go with the mainstream.’’

foseti said...

Note to self . . . try to get a job on a plantation.

Athletes get compared to slaves all the time. Apparently, slaves were people who got paid millions and got to have sex with whomever they wanted to have sex with. Maybe their descendants should pay reparations to the rest of us.

Anonymous said...

All his players and his coach knew full well what his history was when they signed up to play for him. They didn't show any outrage then and took his money, but now they want to act morally superior? Is any public figure going to point out this absurd hypocrisy.

Semi-employed White Guy said...

I don't know if Donald Sterling is like a plantation owner but Adam Silver sure looks like Gizmo the gremlin.

Anonymous said...

>>Just Awful said...
"""""It's not a free speech issue in the sense that the ACLU is concerned with.""""

The ACLU also accepts cases at the private sector vs private consortium.

PLUS, a Public elected official (Obama) DID PUBLICLY weigh in BEFORE the NBA banned him. It can thus be demonstrated that the President had an adverse direct effect upon the ruling as the public statement by the President of the USA came first.


""""The government isn't making him sell, a private consortium is."""""



""""It is ridiculous, but it's not government restriction of freedom of speech.""""""

That can be debatable. It is an elected public official PUBLICLY weighing in on the issue BEFORE the NBA ruling. A smart attorney can argue that this had the direct an harmful effect of bias vs the client/citizen.

It is a form of restriction of freedom of speech, which can be done in the private sector as well as in the public sector. In this case, Obama represents the government.


In either case, Sterling has a case. It is also illegal under CA law to record private conversations. He has a case and if he cares about saving anything left of his reputation he better move fast. He can win, but he has to get moving mighty quickly.

Anonymous said...

Sterling's nose works just fine apparently:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-donald-sterling-past-controversy-20140426,0,1205990.story

"The lawsuit also accused [Sterling] of saying “black tenants smell and attract vermin.”

peterike said...

Sterling fired his white coach, Vinny Del Negro

This stuff just writes itself.

Nobody said...

Note to self . . . try to get a job on a plantation.

Athletes also get to be in a Union, something not allowed to the IT drones in the USA who have no job protection at all. I suspect this is by design as these are positions critical to the economy, but are jobs that elites do not want to do.

H said...

Sterling fined $2.5 million, and banned for life, the NBA is forcing him to sell: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba-bans-donald-sterling-for-life--fines-him--2-5-million-for-racial-comments-181803437.html

Anonymous said...

Sterling didn't want to pay a white player too much money. I guess he didn't want to enslave whites.

"Through the years, his racism has been sometimes subtle and often overt. For those failing to understand why a racist like Sterling never preferred white players, it cut to the heart of his stereotypical stances on athleticism and strength and talent.
Mostly, he's never loved paying white players. In that way, he has an absolute plantation prism with which he sees players: He always preferred long, strong, physical players. To him, that's a basketball player: Big, black and strong.

When Sterling became reluctant to honor Rivers' sign-and-trade agreement for J.J. Redick, there was a belief race played a factor. As one league source said, "He thought it was too much to pay for a white player."

Yes, Sterling didn't want to so easily part with Eric Bledsoe, despite Rivers telling him they could never afford to pay Bledsoe in restricted free agency next summer. That was part of it, yes, but those who knew Sterling – who had history with him – believed largely that his disdain for paying $7 million per year for a white player caused him pause."

Angelo said...

Idea: All non-black owners and executives in the NBA should be fired and replaced by blacks. Forward to this time next year: The NBA goes out of business. Just like Detroit.

Anonymous said...

As an earlier Sailer takimag illustrated, there were plenty of Jews in the south who were cool with slavery.

So yes, Sterling is like a southern man. A Southern Jewish man.

Fiddler on the Plantation.

If I had a Negro...

Anonymous said...

No cuntry for old men.

Anonymous said...

I'm actually starting to feel sorry for Sterling.....

Anonymous said...

There's got to either be a "Journolist" site we don't know about that has seen the Sterling-as-Cotton Candie-misdirection emerge by consensus, or many lefty writers are copying the same guy's lead. It would be interesting to see who hatched this disinformative description of Sterling first, and see if perhaps he has birthed any other groupthought-spin for the left on any other items.

I'd hate to think the lefties are so coordinated as to have made this determination via phone calls and emails before putting any of it out on the water, but this stuff ( politics and culture) indeed is their religion for the most part, so that probably is a dispiriting possibility.

Anonymous said...

""""I'd hate to think the lefties are so coordinated as to have made this determination via phone calls and emails before putting any of it out on the water, but this stuff ( politics and culture) indeed is their religion for the most part, so that probably is a dispiriting possibility."""""


An easier explanation is that he has made a lot of enemies over time and were salivating at the chance to bring him down. Probably isn't that hard to find quotes from disgruntled employees, people who lost lawsuits filed vs him, etc.

David said...

Sour grapes on the part of Slate slugs and pencil necks. "He always preferred long, strong, physical players." Yeah, what about us short, weak, unphysical people? He discriminated against people like us who can't play b-ball at a high level. So F him and his team - it's nothing but an F-ing plantation man, like in "Django" - who needs it anyway?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
As an earlier Sailer takimag illustrated, there were plenty of Jews in the south who were cool with slavery.

So yes, Sterling is like a southern man. A Southern Jewish man.

Fiddler on the Plantation.

If I had a Negro...

4/29/14, 7:29 PM
Education AND entertainment. iSteve is the best. The Government owned leftist ABC in Australia is all over the story like a rash. Ohhh, you racist yanks... if I didn't have a REAL source of news I'd be shaking my head in disgust. MT Isa Miner

Reg Cæsar said...

The silence of Mr Tokowitz's fellow "tribe" members (and their detractors here) is more deafening than that of Rev'ms Jesse and Al, et al., (and their tribe) during poor Viki Knox's persecution not long ago.

I can't keep track of who really runs this country!

Stauffenberg said...

Tokowitz for gods sake. Tokowitz!

geschrei said...

Sterling fired his white coach, Vinny Del Negro

Ah, maybe THAT's what Cliven Bundy was really talking about when he got in all that trouble recently: the situation with the Clippers.

"I want to tell you one thing more I know about Del Negro..."

Anonymous said...

After all the homo, homo, homo stuff and all the white/Jewish gentrification of cities that blacks could do little about--as urban gentry are Democratic supporters of Obama--, blacks are finally so happy to have some red meat to get crazy about.

They felt ignored by rich 'progressives'--who felt they'd done their duty by voting for Obama--and felt as if sent to the back of the bus by homos...

but they finally got something happening.

Also, so many big black issues turned disappointing in recent yrs.

KKK at Oberlin was a hoax, like so many other bogus alarms. A bummer.
Even the 'white hispanic' Zimmerman wasn't all that white... and he was acquitted. Blacks couldn't even reverse stop-n-frisk-the-negro.

Man oh man, such paucity of moral outrage red-meat for blacks.

But finally!

Still, it's funny that the biggest 'racist' villain is a Jewish guy who came so close to being honored by the Naacp.

Only in America.

Anonymous said...

New acronym

UGLE

Urban Globalist Liberal Elites.

Anonymous said...

"Sterling didn't want to pay a white player too much money. I guess he didn't want to enslave whites."

Shylock?

Frederick said...

"If you don’t catch a whiff of the plantation here, your nose is broken. It’s about time the NBA caught the scent, and gave Sterling the punishment he’s long deserved"

-A Scots-Irish can't possibly act this way because DIVERSITY, so he's a, a... a racist redneck!

Anonymous said...

he “wanted the Clippers team to be composed of ‘poor black boys from the South’


Kind of stupid of him to pay them tens of millions of dollars per year then, wasn't it?

Svigor said...

Americans used to have a reputation for honesty. Now, they can't call the racist Jew a Jew, but they all jump to call him Southern, even though he's not Southern at all, and really is a Jew.

Svigor said...

'Course American culture isn't rotten to the core. That's why bigot Kevin Johnson said he wants all the "bigots" in America to look at Sterling and remember they can fall, too.

'Cause that's not textbook bigotry at all.

Whiskey said...

Oh indeed stop and frisk is dead killed in NYC by the Mayor with Black kids and wife. Nationwide by Eric Holder.

Dutch reader said...

Isn't Sterling's reluctance to hire white players an example of "the soft bigotry of low expectations"?

DCThrowback said...

@Anon 7:50 "There's got to either be a "Journolist" site we don't know about..."

It's called Twitter and liberal journos juicebox their thoughts about how to bend the narrative right in front of you now. The good news is it's public AND you can call them out for it. (Until they block you.)

Anon 6:17pm. - "I'm really disappointed that Mark Cuban totally gave in to pressure and caved today..."

If you think Silver went up to that podium w/ out the support of at least 24 owners in his back pocket already, you're fooling yourself. He's a lawyer. He's not asking any question he doesn't already know the answer to.

IMHO, this lends support to the conspiracy theory. Girl goes to TMZ for $$, TMZ holds tapes and calls NBA about Sterling. NBA decides this is a Sister Souljah moment, and Silver grabs the mantle and separates himself from the Stern shadow WHILE extricating himself from Sterling AND getting a black owner in Magic. Everyone really benefits w/ the exception of Sterling - who, even then, might be okay because he'd be forced to sell the team in a bubble market that might top $1Bn. Is it fair? Not really. But you've got to break an egg or two to make this omelette.

Finally, Chris Paul wouldn't sign a contract extension with the Clippers unless they fired Vinny Del Negro, who according to basketball wags, couldn't coach up an offense. Of course, what has Rivers won without Tom Thibodeaux, but that's another story for another time...

Ichabod Crane said...

My question for Steve is the same one Calvin Candie posed to Django:

"I heard you been telling everybody them mandingos ain't no damn good, ain't nothing nobody is selling is worth buying - I'm curious. What makes you such a mandingo expert?"

Anonymous said...

As long as the private conversations of public figures are being scrutinized, how about this oldie but goodie?

Go ahead and Google, with the quotes:--actually just copy and paste it, as it is below, in the Google search bar.

"king" + "kennedy" + "coffin" + "off one last time"

This will bring up a public figure's private thoughts a few months after JFK's assassination.

One of the references you'll see is from a book called "The Word of the Lord is Upon Me", it's a Google Books entry for that book. Open it and scroll through the book preview from pgs 37-61 or so. Especially the last 10-15 pages. Very interesting. More people should know about it.

Anonymous said...

Sterling should declare himself tranny.

Anonymous said...

"Mostly, he's never loved paying white players. In that way, he has an absolute plantation prism with which he sees players: He always preferred long, strong, physical players. To him, that's a basketball player: Big, black and strong."

I am not sure these people actually watch the games. Blake Griffin, while big and strong, his half white. Matt Barnes, while ghetto as hell, is half white. Reddick is, of course, as pasty white as they come and neither big, nor strong (by NBA standards). And he signed a Turk (at a bargain price, mind you), who is big, but a finesse player. So yeah, I suppose he signed DeAndre Jordan, who, as a center, is by definition supposed to be big and strong.

Mr. Anon said...

"peterike said....

""Sterling fired his white coach, Vinny Del Negro""

This stuff just writes itself."

The "Del Negroes" would have been a great name for a doo-wop group.

Fernandinande said...

“We’ve got a lot of rebellious slaves on this [Knicks] team.”

Sounds more like histrionic babies.

Anonymous said...

Donald Sterling seems to have a certain fixation common amongst Jews and weak whites - an obsession bordering on the homoerotic with large, strong, well-chiseled black athletes.

Anonymous said...

Also, Steve, it is rumored that Donald Sterling hired a black coach, Doc Rivers, only to keep his star athletes Chris Paul and Blake Griffin satisfied.

To be fair, Vinny del Negro wasn't a great coach anyways.

Anonymous said...

I find it kind of odd that so many white conservatives are sticking up for the Jewish plutocrat here. Do you guys think that Donald Sterling would waste one second of his time or any significant amount of his money for any cause that you care about? No, he wouldn't.

There are no 1st Amendment implications here. This is a business decision. A mostly black league's mostly black players won't play for this jerk anymore.

Do you all expect the other 29 owners in the league to potentially sacrifice, or at least endanger, the playoffs and all the revenue they get from it? For what? A disagreeable old kook's freedom to spout racist nonsense to his mistress?

Welcome to America in the 21st century. Economic opportunity is dead and buried, we are still mired in the 12th year of a war that everyone hates, and the only priority in Congress to ensure that poor people remain poor and uninsured.

But of course, the right of an elderly kook to talk like an elderly kook to his mistress with no repercussions really is the most important thing in the world.

jody said...

the accusation that professional sports team owners are somehow slave owners or plantation owners is nothing new. but maybe now this flagrant logical inconsistency can become a mainstream trope. herr derr, look, here comes the plantation owner.

horrible, wicked slave owners who provide 100 million dollars worth of paychecks every year to guys for playing with a ball, most of whom would be minimum wage employees if europeans had not invented all the sports from scratch, pioneered the concept of league play, developed all the necessary infrastructure to establish the television sports era and all the huge contracts that go along with it, which generate those paychecks in the first place (not to mention inventing television itself).

those poor, terribly treated athletes. they got it rough!

oh by the way, that one NCAA basketball player from connecticut who simply flat out lied when he said the university makes money selling his jersey, while he goes to bed hungry - that's such a total lie i'm shocked not one reporter objected. D1 athletes never, ever, EVER go hungry. that's absolute bullshit. the guys in track & field, soccer, swimming & diving, wrestling, tennis, golf, cross country, get all they need, and the guys in football, baseball, and basketball get all that and more. they get everything for free the whole way and we're not talking just food.

jody said...

"It's not a free speech issue in the sense that the ACLU is concerned with."

i bet if i figured out which employees at our family's software company donated to any democrat politician's election campaign, or made a financial contribution to a democrat led gun control initiative, say, bloomberg's new everytown, and we fired them, the ACLU would instantly be interested.

in fact, i believe conservative business owners should begin firing liberal employees immediately. we should define the terms of what is acceptable grounds for termination, and begin right away. in fact, we should just start writing it into company policy that we don't even interview you for job openings, if you voted for obama twice.

free speech, right? private company policy, yes? no concern of the government, correct?

what the democrats are doing, firing people for their political opinions, is, or should i say, was, flagrantly illegal, in the real united states of just 6 years ago. we don't live in that country anymore, so it's time for conservatives to go on the offensive. they always talk about how they are always defending, and never attacking. well this is their chance. a good place to start is by simply firing people who vote for gun control, campaign for gun control, or donate to gun control.

they probably won't do that though, because, as jared taylor showed in his most recent american renaissance video, conservatives seem to prefer getting punched in the face and kicked in the groin over and over and over, while at the same time promising they will never, ever hit back. as taylor so correctly puts it, they would rather die, than change tactics. and so, they will die.

jody said...

i'm not clear at all on how they can force him to sell. steve needs to do a separate post on this. i have some things to say. in short, i bet tokowitz can fight that in court and win. he has a good case, and a billion dollars for resources.

jr565 said...

It's kind of hard to say someone is a plantation owner when the "Slaves" are making millions of dollars. Even if he hated to associate with black people, its not as if he didn't hire them and pay them top dollar. TO the point where he wanted to pay white people on his team less. He thought black players wer worth more than white players.
That's a weird kind of racism, where those he hates get the better deal.

jr565 said...

"Mostly, he's never loved paying white players. In that way, he has an absolute plantation prism with which he sees players: He always preferred long, strong, physical players. To him, that's a basketball player: Big, black and strong."


What was that old movie with Wesley Snipes called? White Men Can't Jump?
He's not the only one holding such stereotypes.

Pat Boyle said...

I think I wrote about this before but it may have been elsewhere. I don't keep records.

In any case the idea that anyone could seriously mention Leonardo Di Caprio's plantation owner is an ominous notion. Maybe we will have to institute censorship on movies if citizens are found to be taking Hollywood history seriously.

Di Caprio in 'Django' is basically 'Leather face' from 'Texas Chainsaw massacre'. Django is a horror movie or a alternate reality Sci-Fi movie like "Inglourius Basterds'.

In Fogel's 'Time on the Cross' he points out that plantations even those which had a hundred or more slaves seldom had more than six whites of which half were women. The pattern was for a single white family to own the plantation no matter how large. The slaves largely ran the operations through black overseers.

The cotton plantation was a successful economic institution and as such it had to keep costs down. There was no margin for maintaining the dozens of armed white gunmen seen in Django.

Slaves ate more calories than whites. They needed them of course because they worked harder. But they also ate a lot of meat, vegetables and fruit. They had relatively long lifespans and were more or less content on the better run farms.

It was good business to keep the slaves content. Adultery and promiscuity were suppressed and family life encouraged. Most slave families lived in single family homes - usually log cabins. The biggest plantations had hospitals but even the smallest had nurses and nurseries.

The Southern plantation was an economic institution that supported division of labor techniques much the way the same thing was being done in factories in the North.

In the span of five minutes in the movie Di Caprio murders two young healthy field hands in their prime. Some businessman.

It's hard to believe that anyone could credit such a lunatic historical vision. It would be as if they could believe that a single skinny woman could chop up forty professional gangsters all of whom that day were only carrying swords not guns.

All slavery everywhere was not the same. The Founding Fathers based much or our system on the Roman Republic. The Republic fell in part because the large latifundae (slave plantations) were replacing the free peasant farmers who were the backbone of the legions.

Slaves on the latifundia were often prisoners of war who were worked to death. They lived in horrific conditions rather like the Jewish slaves in the underground factories of the Nazis.

In the Americas black slaves were not bred in Brazil or the Caribbean. They didn't last long in the sugar fields but were easy to replace from Africa. They lived in barracks, ate poorly, were beaten often and abused.

In the brief period when there was black slavery in America, the Southern Planation was by far the best place to be.

Tarentino has a fevered imagination.

Patrick Boyle (AKA Albertosaurus)

Anonymous said...

So, my comments aren't even going into the spam filter any more?

~Svi

Steve Sailer said...

Google dumps most of Svigor's comments into the Spam section, along with a small, seemingly random selection of the comments of others. I try to go through every 24 hours the 500 or so spam comments I get daily to rescue Svigor's and other good comments, but it takes about 15 minutes and leaves my brain fried from looking at machine-translated gibberish about "movie star Tom Voyage" and the like.

By the way, my posting that has attracted more spam than any other is one from 2001 entitled "Andrew Sullivan and Armed Pederasts." Spammers just see that one as a potential gold mine. I can't begin to say why.

Steve Sailer said...

Svigor,

Have you thought about a name change? Google is out to get you. How about Svigor2 or xSvigor? That might be good enough.

wiseguy said...

Speaking of starving athletes, does Jameis Winston have his celebrity endorsement deal with Red Lobster signed yet?

Anonymous said...

Have you thought about a name change? Google is out to get you. How about Svigor2 or xSvigor? That might be good enough.

Svigor X, hehe.

I don't mind a name change. I just figured it was going by IP, or something. I'll give that a whirl.

Anonymous said...

P.S., sorry if I make more work for you. I certainly don't consider it your job to go out of your way to rescue my comments. I'll work out a series of never-ending S-V-I-G-O-R anagrams, or something, if it solves the issue.

Anonymous said...

I really have to add, I feel somewhat flattered by Google's opprobrium.

Or maybe it's just cuz I'm one of the few ANTI-SEMITIC!!! idiots dumb enough to keep using the same handle...

Steve Sailer said...

By the way, almost immediately after I posted that comment above explaining how Google is out to get Svigor, Google dumped all the spam comments into my main comment folder rather than my spam comment folder for the next hour, then stopped.

So ...

Dear Google guy who likes me but doesn't like Svigor,

Message Received!

iSteve

North Django Forty said...

The team? We're not the team. We're just the equipment

little dynamo said...

Dear Semi, Let's be fair to Gizmo, can we? Who did Gizmo ban, after all?


Also your chosen nomenclature constitutes Lookism. But seriously, if I looked like Adam Silver I might do anything for money, too. There but for the Grace etc. Hi-Ho Silver looks born desperate.


Thanks for caring.

Anonymous said...

the accusation that professional sports team owners are somehow slave owners or plantation owners is nothing new. but maybe now this flagrant logical inconsistency can become a mainstream trope. herr derr, look, here comes the plantation owner.

Jamarcus Russell was better off getting raided and forced to live on the plantation rather than being a freeman wherever he is now.