IBT | In a tweet
Saturday evening, the California state NAACP, said: "As the
investigation is in progress, we urge the LA Branch of the NAACP to
withdraw Donald Sterling from the honoree list." The president of the
California state NAACP, Alice Huffman, said, "Racism is not a footnote
of our past but a reality of our present we must confront head on."
Despite Sterling's long history of racism, he has been honored twice previously by the NAACP's Los Angeles chapter. He was awarded
a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, shortly after former Clippers
general manager, Elgin Baylor, filed an employment discrimination claim
against him. Sterling also received the NAACP Presidents Award in 2008.
The branch's president, Leon Jenkins, attempted in 2009 to explain
why the august civil rights group would honor a man many consider a
racist. Jenkins began, by telling the Los Angeles Times, that the
NAACP's Los Angeles chapter had planned to honor Sterling long before
Baylor’s lawsuit. Seeming to sense the inadequacy of that response,
Jenkins added the Clippers owner and real estate mogul's years of
service to Los Angeles minority community.
“He has a unique history of giving to the children of L.A.,” Jenkins
told the Los Angeles Times, then. "We can't speak to the allegations,
but what we do know is that for the most part [Sterling] has been very,
very kind to the minority youth community."
Sterling is no stranger to racism accusations and has settled several
discrimination lawsuits. He settled a lawsuit confidentially in 2005
that accused him of discriminating against black and Hispanic tenants at
properties he owned. In another housing discrimination lawsuit in 2009,
he paid $2.7 million to settle the claim. Sterling denied wrongdoing
and said the settlement wasn't an admission of guilt, according to the
L.A. Times.
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