Kandynce Jones loved her apartment. She was blind, paralyzed on one side and relied on several different medications. But her home was her castle, full of photos of her family and nice touches she added.
By all accounts, she was a good tenant. Paid her rent. Didnt cause a disturbance. Kept the place looking nice.
So when the heat stopped working and the refrigerator started dripping and construction in the building flooded her home, she asked the manager to come and do the repair work, please.
The manager went to the owner for approval.
The owners response, according to court papers, was, I am not going to do that. Just evict the b****.
Before the matter was settled, Kandynce Jones had died. She was 67.
Her landlord was Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and mostly recently, this countrys best-known racist.
Years ago, Sterling had bought Joness apartment building to add to his growing portfolio of real estate in greater Los Angeles area. He made it clear to the manager (who later sued Sterling for sexual harassment) that the current tenant roster was not in keeping with his image. They needed to go, he reportedly said. The black tenants smelled up the place. The Hispanic tenants were lazy and drank too much. Children of tenants were brats.
Hes been sued, time and again, by everyone from former tenants to former employees to a man who won a Clippers promotional free throw contest and claimed he never got his $1,000 prize.
Sterling doesnt care. In fact, he seems to enjoy a fight, even one hes destined to lose.
And yet, hes always seemed to get a pass.
Why? Because money talks and it always will.
Sports business writer Peter Keating detailed Sterlings life of wealth and attendant bad behavior for ESPN the Magazine back in June of 2009. Sterling was a self-made man, for sure, but he left behind a trail of broken promises and bad karma almost from the time he set up his first law practice in the early 1960s.
The complaints against himand they are grievous and extensiveoften were settled out of court. In other words, he threw money at people to shut them up. And those people, often facing huge legal bills from a protracted litigation, took the money so they could pay the lawyers and get back to their lives. There wasnt really much other choice for them. Donald Sterling often never even had to admit wrongdoing.
Thats what money can do.
Its hard to argue that Sterling is a racist, a misogynist and a bully. Even he probably knows it. He just doesnt seem to care. He is the owner of things, and thingslike basketball teams and apartment buildingsinclude people. Sterlings skewed logic seems to imply that he owns the people as well and can call them what he wants and treat them as he chooses.
But Sterling didnt get headlines for cheating tenants or harassing employees. Don Sterling is finally getting his comeuppance because the story now is sexier. Forget that he hurt thousands of poor tenants and mistreated Lord knows how many others, now hes dissed Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp to his Latino-African American mistress, the same woman who is being sued by Sterlings estranged wife.
NOW were hearing about it. NOW were outraged.
And while its gratifying to think the tables might get turned on Donald Sterling, its sad that its taken this long.
Sterling is the kind of man too many of us put up with. For years, NBA owners have sidestepped commenting on his behavior. After all, hes one of them. What do they know of his business outside basketball? With last weeks decision by new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to ban Sterling from the game for life, the owners are out in force for his head. The advertisers are fleeing the Clippers so fast the door is spinning. In this game, you dont touch hearts or consciences, you touch wallets.
Former players, some of whom he treated little better than trash, and any number of beat writers and journalists have stayed quiet, too. No one wants to raise the ire of the rich guy, the guy who can get you a job, the guy who buys a lot of advertising. But with Silvers announcement, they, too have joined the chorus: He must go. He must go.
And the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the United Negro College Fund, the Museum of Tolerance, the Black Businessmens Association of Los Angeles, all of which have honored him or taken his money over the years? Its easy to overlook the litigation when the defendant keeps giving you money to do good works, even though he doesnt want the people who benefit from the donation to be showing up for a Clippers game.
Sterlings estranged wife is appalled at his bigotry, as though she never in all those years of marriage realized who her husband really was. How very Carmela Soprano of her.
The good news is that Sterlings abhorrent behavior is now front and center. You can ban him and fine him, but my guess is he wont go quietly. And even if he does, he walks away with an initial investment of $12.5 million that now is estimated at $550 million (for a team that didnt win 90 percent of the time Sterling has owned it). It will be interesting to see.
One talk show host commented that everyone from Michael Jordan to Barack Obama is calling Sterling out now. A good number of those everyones are the same folks who ignored Sterlings behavior for years. So pardon me for not applauding for them now.
And lets face it, there are plenty of Donald Sterlings out there. They believe just as he does: minorities are inferior, but can be a means to a profitable end. Granted, most racists and bigots arent so stupid to be so open about their beliefs. But that doesnt mean they dont believe.
Now were going to find out something very telling about American society.
Will we learn from this and call out a bigot or racist because of his beliefs? Or will we ignore him because of the size of his wallet?
