The Donald Sterling Supremacism No One’s Talking About

Guest post by Jesse Myerson

Amid the great trove of unattractive qualities revealed to be possessed by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling in a recently-released tape of a conversation between him and his then-girlfriend V. Stiviano, it is understandable that one should have gone underappreciated. But without taking into account his grotesque economic ideology, Sterling’s segregationist Instagram doctrine and less-than-enchanting romantic life lack crucial context.

When Stiviano asks, sensibly, whether he is aware that the athletes to whom people refer when they speak of “the Clippers” are black, Sterling goes full capitalist:

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 make the game, or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?

What he has articulated is capital supremacy, the position that capital is prior to and independent of labor. In a for-profit operation like the L.A. Clippers, the guy who owns the capital and extracts the surplus is the one really pulling the heavy weight, and it’s the athletes he employs who are living high off the league that he and his buddies created. Capitalists, far from being parasitic, are “job creators.”

Americans Sound Confused About Equality if You Ask the Wrong Question

According to Drew Desilver at the Pew Research Center, most Americans (65%) agree that the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing, which is true. “But ask people why the gap has grown, and their answers are all over the place.”

Among people who said the gap between the rich and everyone else has grown, we asked an “open-ended question” — what, in their own words, the main reason was. About a fifth (20%) said tax loopholes (or, more generally, tax laws skewed to favor the rich) were the main reason. Ten percent pinned the blame on Congress or government policies more broadly; about as many (9%) cited the lackluster job market, while 6% named corporations or business executives.

But well over half of the people who saw a widening gap cited a host of other reasons, among them (in no particular order): Obama and Democrats, Bush and Republicans, the education system, the capitalist system, the stock market, banks, lobbyists, the strong/weak work ethic of the rich/poor, too much public assistance, not enough public assistance, over-regulation, under-regulation, the rich having more power and opportunity, the rich not spending enough, and simply “a lot of greedy people out there.”

This is presented as a combination of public confusion and disagreement.