The real tragedy of Donald Sterling's racism: it took this long for us to notice: The LA Clippers owner made his millions off racist housing policies. Where was the NBA and presidential outrage then?; Guardian, 4/28/14

Kevin B. Blackistone, Guardian; The real tragedy of Donald Sterling's racism: it took this long for us to notice: The LA Clippers owner made his millions off racist housing policies. Where was the NBA and presidential outrage then? :

"Neither the league, nor the players, nor the sports media paid much if any attention to Sterling's agreement in 2003 to pay upwards of $5m to settle a lawsuit brought by the Housing Rights Center charging that he tried to drive non-Korean tenants out of apartments he bought in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. Only a few observers noted in 2006 that the Justice Department sued Sterling for allegations of housing discrimination in the same neighborhood. The charges included statements he allegedly made to employees that black and Hispanic families were not desirable tenants.

And while a handful of us in the media excoriated Sterling and the NBA in 2009 when Sterling settled the lawsuit by agreeing to pay $2.73m following allegations he refused to rent apartments to Hispanics, blacks and families with children, the story didn't resonate – despite it being the largest housing discrimination settlement in Justice Department history...

But pro sports have their own legacy of ignorance as bliss.

The sudden Sterling backlash exposed a mythology that we've allowed to grow in sport's billion-dollar commercial industrialization: sport leads social change. In many cases, however, such as the blind eye cast to racial discrimination of prodigious proportion, sport is a laggard in social reform, its leaders tacit supporters – if not propagators – of unethical and immoral behavior."