Donald Sterling, the Jewish owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, apparently has no more fondness for Jewish black people than he does for non-Jewish black people.
In a recording released today by the sports news website Deadspin, Sterling is heard telling his girlfriend that black Jews in Israel “are just treated like dogs,” and rather than “evaluate what’s right and wrong,” he’d rather “choose to live within that culture.”
Sterling has been subjected to a firestorm of criticism since Friday, when the web site TMZ published a recording of him instructing his girlfriend not to bring black people to Clippers’ games or post pictures of herself with black people on social media. NBA superstar LeBron James, President Obama and Omri Casspi, an Israeli player on the Houston Rockets, have all made withering statements denouncing Sterling’s remarks.
Sterling, 80, was born Donald Tokowitz. The Clippers told TMZ in a statement on Saturday that the recording “is the antithesis of who [Sterling] is, what he believes and how he has lived his life.”
The Anti-Defamation League called Sterling’s comments “reprehensible.”
“In Los Angeles, the most diverse major city in the country, we take as point of pride that our leaders – in business, in government and in the community – embrace and accept this diversity without bias or bigotry,” Amanda F. Susskind, ADL Pacific Southwest Regional Director, said in a statement. “Both are suggested in the shocking language attributed to Mr. Sterling. We hope he disavows both the language and the sentiment behind it.”
