Discussion for article #223049
ā¦we all live in glass houses.
Maybe, but we donāt all live in gated communities.
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Cuban is worried about the stupid actions he might do in the futureā¦I
know when I see a self centered,me first billionaire I move to the other side of the street.
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Shaved heads and tattoos bother me just as much as any racial thought I might have, but I think Cuban is acknowledging what many people would prefer not to discuss. It takes some effort for people to overcome the natural tendency towards xenophobia. Fearfulness isnāt easily acknowledged, understood, and processed.
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Why is itā¦ when people speak of their bigotry, they always feel obliged to say āhow weāre all No Different from themā?
Iām an indigenous American, raised by a beautiful black Puerto Rican mom and my wife is white. Sorry bigots ā you get NO absolution > HERE<.
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What Cuban is admitting to is class bias as much as if not more than racial. And thatās the point here: Sterling didnāt say anything that the typical CEO of a major corporation wouldnāt operate on, and say if push came to shove, but as a nouveau riche low flyer (on the capitalist scale) he doesnāt have enough sense to know how to handle his private affairs. And since heās in a business where race and public relations matter, heās discardable. Cuban just doesnāt want such private life digging among the rich to become SOP.
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Regardless of how anybody thinks about Mark Cuban [and I know a lot of people think heās, at best, a giant idiot], but he still raises an issue that needs to be discussed and addressed. For my part, I know that I have thoughts similar to what heās talking about. I acknowledge it and I try to overcome them, but itās not easy. Weāre all raised different ways, we consume media that reinforces these beliefs, we think differentlyā¦so no one is ever perfectly neutral in how they deal with other people who might differ wildly from themselves. Itās complicated. But Donald Sterling is still a massive pile of rotten garbage.
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Damn. All I need is a couple of tattoos then.
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But how do those kinds of stereotypes relate to Sterlingās attitudes about Magic Johnson and the millionaire athletes he āgivesā money, and cars, and houses too? Not to mention Elgin Baylor and the tenants he took discriminatory actions against.
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Can someone please explain to Mr. Cuban the difference between caste system thinking and actual bigotry? He appears to have a bad dictionary.
Mind you, Iāve become pretty cognizant in the last few years just how many privileged white folk (mainly men but a goodly handful of women too) have that same dictionary.
BTW, the story doesnāt make mention of what is the probable catalyst that brought this on, and it wasnāt necessarily Donald Sterling (although if you read the link below Sterling is very much a creature of a culture that has existed for centuries). Based on his Twitter feed and ongoing āchatsā heās having with some people there, itās this amazing article by Ta Nehisi Coates.
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TNC dropped the mic on that one. That article was the first thing I thought of when saw this headline. I hope Mark Cuban reads it.
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ā¦as if Cuban would be walking in those neighborhoodsā¦
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Yeah, Mark we know youāre a bigot ala Sterling, but it is cute how you think we donāt already know it.
What an ass clown! I get what heās sayingā¦We all have biases, prejudices, etc. If I see a big burly dude in biker gear, Iām crossing the road. If I see a redneck coming towards me, I cross the road and clutch my handbag closer (In KY, that makes for a lot of road crossing and handbag clutching). Iām black and if I see a black person dressed a certain way or looking a certain way, Iām crossing the road too.
What I find completely annoying about his statement is that heās trying to somehow conflate two issues. One is Sterlingās abject racism, and years and years of racial discrimination. The other issue is the little biases we all carry that are sometimes as much about race as they are about class. Itās like talking about someoneās vehicular homicide/DUI conviction and somehow likening it to the speeding ticket you got for doing 62 in a 55 MPH zone. Itās asinine and itās stupid. If he chooses to vote against ousting Sterling, I hope his team finds out and immediately revolts. Heās such an ass and his face looks like one.
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My first true love was Jewish (the same as ChabeniskyāAKA Mark Cuban and TokowitzāAKA Donald Sterling).
Her father also had changed his name.
I have thought long and hard about what Toni Morrison was talking about when she posited the phrase āOn the Backs of Blacksāā¦
And I have mused about just what purpose the denigration of blacks as a permanent āout groupā serves in the race-addled United States of America.
For elite interests (before and after the Civil War), āraceā has served to permanently eliminate any substantive American treatment of class (since most energy is focused on āraceā).
For working class non-blacks, āraceā has served to provide a salve to soothe away other indignities which would otherwise be focused on (like not having health care, flat salaries over a 30-year period, etc).
For groups with histories of gigantic and tragic proportions (like Jews), āraceā has served as a great diverter of gentile animosities.
For Latinos trying to find a toehold in a white-oriented society, āraceā has served as an almost comical diversion (especially given the fact that vast chunks of Caribbean Latinos, Mexicans and Central Americans and South Americans have African ancestry).
Most of the MSM chooses to nurse the dying embers of race consciousness (cherished by the geriatrics watching FOX), even as millions of Millennials and younger folks do not look at black ancestry as the bugaboo that folks my age do.
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It really wouldnāt matter if every NBA owner was a secret racist. Sterling made remarks that became public and those hurt the league and thus he deserves to be gone. Society doesnāt actually punish crimes, it punishes getting caught, and the fact that others did the same but didnāt get caught is not a valid defense.
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Institutional racism is built upon hundreds of millions of small justifications of bigotry like Cuban is describing.
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I guess the real question is, āWhy do white people carry around so much fear?ā They are the least preyed-upon people in society. And why do they always feel that their narrow views are the marker by which everyone should be measured and judged? What a way to live.
White folks are just as uncomfortable around the clean-cut, business-attired black man as they are the stereotypical hoodie wearer. Just ask President Obama or any black man (or woman) at any business meeting.
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If you lack the ability to filter your most impure thoughts before they arrive at your mouth, then you have a very serious problem. I donāt care what Sterling thinks - but I do care what he has said aloud.
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Absolutely, but I really donāt think that was his point at all because he went from black kid in a hoodie to talking about bald, tatted up white guys. Itās also kind of ironic that he sees bald, tatted up white guy as being as menacing as a black kid in a sweatshirt.
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