{"id":241,"date":"2014-05-14T17:19:56","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T17:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/?p=241"},"modified":"2014-05-14T17:38:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T17:38:38","slug":"how-not-to-be-racist-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"How not to be racist in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s simple, really.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get involved with other races, ever.<\/p>\n

The accusations against Donald Sterling have a particularly personal sting with me.\u00a0 Not just because the whole town is ganging up on one guy, not just because he\u2019s a fellow Jew, but because I too am in the property management business.<\/p>\n

The epithet \u201cevil Jewish slumlord\u201d has been hurled at me quite regularly, generally as a joke, which gets an uneasy laugh out of me.\u00a0 But underneath also a disturbing bit of entrenched anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

Not to divulge too many details about my dealings – but when you run properties, on any level, you piss people off. \u00a0It doesn’t matter how much you put yourself out for others. \u00a0You\u2019re not Santa Claus or a miracle worker, you\u2019re beholden to material laws, market forces and the banks.\u00a0 And tenants tend to take out their aggressions on you for things you have no control over.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, they take advantage of your legal liability, and threaten to sue you no matter how unfounded the charges.\u00a0 Even on my minor level, it\u2019s happened at least once (the threat quickly dropped once I accused the lawyer of extortion).<\/p>\n

So I figure for a large landholder like Sterling, it gets that much worse. \u00a0And it gets even worse than that when you realize he\u2019s lived his life surrounded by other races, holding property in racially and economically diverse neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

I did the usual cursory Google research on his discrimination lawsuits, and pulled up this CNN article<\/a>.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, nobody ever won one of those lawsuits.\u00a0 In a couple of the cases the charges were even dropped entirely, and yet today they\u2019re being used in the case to strip him of his team.<\/p>\n

You could make all sorts of arguments about this, that he\u2019s a sneaky rich lawyer with lots of money, yadda yadda yadda.\u00a0 But then you\u2019re just making my point.\u00a0 You wonder why poor neighborhoods are so run down?\u00a0 You wonder why nobody invests in them?\u00a0 You wonder why White Flight was a thing?\u00a0 Here\u2019s your answer.\u00a0 Donald Sterling built his life on relatively poor neighborhoods. \u00a0And now he\u2019s being eaten alive.<\/p>\n

Who would want to invest there, in this kind of climate?\u00a0 What kind of Santa Claus were you hoping for?\u00a0 Did you want the government to come in and build stuff for free? \u00a0Do you want to be a photo-op for politicians who come and billoviate about the plight of the poor?\u00a0 Because those same politicians just go back to the faceless corporate behemoths who take over these properties and sell them for scrap.<\/p>\n

Why bother? \u00a0People attack Sterling, but the biggest racists in this country never actually get called racists. \u00a0You know, the really wealthy ones, who safely shield themselves from any kind of Black or Mexican, save for one or two tokens who dance to their tune.\u00a0 It reminds me of Malcolm X\u2019s preference of the Southern racist, who is open and actively deals with Blacks, over the Northern racist, who just says the flowery catchphrases while shielding their actual life from any contact with other races.<\/p>\n

I fully realize this is a debate I\u2019m not going to win.\u00a0 The mob has the support of the town press, they will cry and howl and snowball rumors until the filthy Jew is run out of town on rails and they happily gorge on his expropriated property.\u00a0 I just want to go on the record saying this will only make racial tensions, and class divisions, worse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s simple, really.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get involved with other races, ever. The accusations against Donald Sterling have a particularly personal sting with me.\u00a0 Not just because the whole town is ganging up on one guy, not just because he\u2019s a fellow Jew, but because I too am in the property management business. The epithet \u201cevil Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[79,122,129,128,127,126,124,125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}