California Dispatch
Californi
Leave the Pl
Bulow Plantation Ruins, Flagler Beach, FL
Lucia Chappelle on the insidious plantation mentality, still alive and well in some strata of society Hey, have you heard? You can leave the plantation now! It was two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, June 19, 1865, before the slaves in Texas got that message, an event that is commemorated by African Americans with the Juneteenth Celebration. The news has apparently not yet reached Donald Sterling, the owner of one of Los Angeles’ National Basketball Association teams, the Clippers. What started as a homegrown Southern California scandal quickly blew up into the national headlines, when a recording of a racially charged, private 26 EILE Magazine
conversation between the 80year-old Sterling and his 30year-old paramour (the exact nature of their expensive gift laden relationship has been left vague) V. Stiviano, was released to the press. The married Sterling harshly chastised Stiviano for Instagram pictures of her with black people, including the much-beloved basketball icon, AIDS activist, inner-city business development tycoon and philanthropist Ervin “Magic” Johnson. (In a later “apology tour” interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Sterling stooped to AIDS-shaming Johnson in defense of his own character). It didn’t end there. Stivano asked Sterling: “Do you
know that you have a whole team that’s black, that plays for you?” Sterling replied in astonishment, “You just, do I know? I support them and give them food, and clothes, and cars, and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Do I know that I have—Who makes the game? Do I make the game, or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?” Sterling’s plantation mentality had been exposed more than a few times over the years – in fact, “plantation” was exactly the word used by Hall of Famer, and former Clippers General Manager, Elgin Baylor, in a wrongful termination lawsuit against Sterling, that was ultimately