NBA owners can't afford silence on Sterling: Our view

No one thought the nation would mark the 50th anniversary of the epic 1964 Civil Rights Act by parsing the racist ramblings of a geriatric bigot. But when an 80-year-old basketball team owner is caught on tape berating his 31-year-old girlfriend for appearing in public with black athletes, you have to wonder how much plantation mentality lives on.

The tape — exposed by gossip website TMZ — is a mix of the bigoted and the bizarre.

"It bothers me a lot that you ... broadcast that you're associating with black people," says a voice purported to be that of billionaire Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. "Do you have to? ... The little I ask you is not to promote it on (Instagram) and not to bring them to my games."

The source of Sterling's ire, incredibly, is a photo of girlfriend V. Stiviano, who is said to be black and Latina, with basketball legend Magic Johnson. She resists, prompting Sterling to mollify her by suggesting she can sleep with black people, just not show up with them in public.

It's all so Gone With the Wind — and so much a measure of how long it takes to banish bigotry not just from restaurants and voting booths but also from the heart.

If the recording is what it appears to be — and the only denial is that it doesn't reflect Sterling's real views — the Clippers owner needs to be dealt with sternly. Nothing Sterling said was illegal, of course, but team owners answer to a different law, enforced by fans, players and most important by owners who worry about the cost of a toxic public image — especially in a sport in which almost 80% of the players are African Americans.

Major League Baseball set the precedent for handling such matters. After fines and suspensions failed to put an end to Cinncinnati Reds owner Marge Schott's grotesquely bigoted comments about blacks, Jews and the Japanese, her fellow owners ultimately forced her out. Like Schott, Sterling has a long public record of offense — including paying $2.7 million in 2009 to settle a Justice Department lawsuit in which he was quoted as saying that black tenants "smell and attract vermin."

But that prospect raises another question: Could Sterling's fellow owners possibly not have known how bigoted he is? The public record alone is damning, but his taped comments also suggest that his racism was loose lipped. Did the owners ever object, or did they just go along, like friends at a bar or a party or a golf course who hear someone tell a racist joke? So far, team owners have found it too easy to be silent.

The obvious bad news here is that you don't have to turn over many rocks to find evidence that racism is alive and virulent half a century after Congress began to outlaw its public manifestations.

The good news is that Sterling's words — just like Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's recent suggestion that black Americans might be better off if they were still slaves — brought immediate and widespread scorn.

No law can dictate what people think, but over time, public shame can drive attitudes like Sterling's and Bundy's so far back under the rocks that they may someday disappear. Or so, 50 years after the nation took some of its first firm steps to bury its racist past, we can always hope.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.