Money Talks, Racism Walks: In Ten Minutes ESPN's Bomani Jones Lays Waste To The Sterling Issue [View all]

[Fred Sanders]

Last edited Wed Apr 30, 2014, 04:34 PM - Edit history (4)

http://deadspin.com/in-10-minutes-espns-bomani-jones-lays-waste-to-the-ste-1569195989

Start at 6:30 if you have the time, well worth it. Apartheid in America is still the topic that must not be spoken.

Jones isn't calling anyone dumb, he is saying many commentators in the media don't care about the issues that matter. Decisions made by powerful white people like Sterling are destroying black prospects today, but the only time he gets negative widespread attention is when he tells his girlfriend to keep her black relationships private. That's not dumb, that's horrible.


What was laid waste is that it is only when the wealth of rich black people, like professional basket ball players, like the NBA executives, like sponsors and corporations, only when losing money entered the equation and was endangered did they speak out.

Jones jokes that more people read his prescient media column on the racist acts of Sterling just yesterday than in the nine years since he wrote it.

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"Let's start talking about the real stuff and have people stop wagging their fingers at Sterling having an argument with his mistress aka girlfriend", says jones.

"Housing discrimination based on race is why we have so many dead kids in Chicago today", says Jones, referencing the recent violent death of a non-violent activist friend of his and the construction of massive freeways over the areas of Chicago so white people did not have to travel through black neighbourhoods created by housing discrimination by the likes of Sterling.

Jones compares the creation of black neighbourhoods purposely created by outflow of tax dollars, a place where poor kids are institutionally doomed to poor education and crumbling infrastructure as a means of repression that continues to this day, thrown crumbs of hope by the minuscule chance of winning the lottery and siring a professional basketball player......to be paid by the likes of Sterling who was instrumental in creating the whole system.

"I could delve deeper into some of the points Bomani Jones made yesterday on the Dan Le Batard Show, about how fundamentally silly this whole Donald Sterling affair sounds when you really listen to what's being said, about how exasperating it is for those of us who see the everyday effects of race to have to deal with the performative sanctimony of those who deny race's continuing impact in all but the most obvious, largely inconsequential situations, or about the collective failure of the NBA, the media, the players, the coaches, and just about everyone else to comprehend, condemn, and take action against the actually harmful things Sterling has done over the years, but instead I think the flamethrower Jones uses is plenty hot enough."

Bill Haisley