The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

Elliot: Race goes to the Swift-est

A lot has been made recently (not to be mired in the passive voice or anything, although there are worse things to be mired in) about comments by LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.

That lot has been made (he said, passively, passively) because the comments of Sterling and Bundy (talk about unfortunate surnames) seemed racist or, at the very least, hard-core bigoted.

(Perhaps that’s soft-core bigoted. I’m never sure where the dividing line between hard-core and soft-core is located. Google maps can’t seem to find it.)

Sterling, famously or infamously, reportedly told his girlfriend (who is apparently of Mexican heritage) that she shouldn’t consort with African Americans, at least not at Clippers’ games, and Bundy, who apparently believes the federal government is a foreign power, probably from socialist Europe, thinks that African Americans were better off under slavery.

Yeah. In a post-racial society such as postmodern America, those comments drew a lot of contempt and disdain.

Except, of course, America is about as post-racial as it is still located near the equator. (As it was, say, 350 million years ago, or so. A million years in geological time is akin to one of our lost minutes.

Trust me; human beings lose minutes. Where they go is anybody’s guess. The rings of Saturn, maybe.)

Which is curious to me, because I believe there’s only one race, so you can’t be post-racial any more than you can be racist.

(Yeah, I know; nobody but my friend Jason [who is from Harlem, not that it matters, really] and some scientists believe that.)

Anyway, according to an Elgin Baylor lawsuit (that’s the great Elgin Baylor, by the way, an extraordinarily great star for the Los Angeles Lakers, and I say that as a Celtics’ fan), Sterling used to bring his girlfriends into the Clippers’ locker room so the women could watch the naked black players shower after the games.

Can we say plantation here?

Yeah, I think we can. (And Baylor himself described the Clippers as a plantation. Just saying.)

And that’s not to put anything on the players; it’s all on Sterling. And his predilection for 20-something girlfriends. One wonders what his wife thinks, given that Sterling looks as if he’s a couple hundred years old.

I don’t want to say Sterling looks like a toad, because I don’t want to insult the toads of America.

Or the toads of the world, for that matter.

Although, if you truly wanted to protest Sterling’s comments, you could toss a cream pie in his face.

It would make your point, it wouldn’t hurt (much) physically, and it would improve his looks.

I don’t know what you do about Bundy, except to point out that he has spent a whole lot of his life looking at the south end of a bunch of north-bound cows.

And note that there is Neanderthal DNA in many humans. Nowhere is it more expressed than in the comments of Bundy and Sterling.

Not to put down Neanderthals or anything. But they’re only around these days in our DNA.

Interestingly enough, sub-Saharan Africans don’t seem to have any of that DNA. Just saying.     

And yes, I know, it’s all the rage (which used to mean something else, back in the days of dancing with PEDs) these days to say we don’t need any more affirmative action. African Amercians are doing just fine, thank-you very much, and whites are being hurt because of affirmative action.

So what we need is more negative nonaction.

Bundy and Sterling applaud you.

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