Why the NBA can discriminate against Donald Sterling

The troglodytes of the Internet never fail to impress me with their complete lack of understanding of the document our country is constructed upon. With this Donald Sterling business, and the many other cases of senile old men not being strictly within the bounds of “political correctness”, I think it is necessary to explain how the First Amendment to our great Constitution works.

“[Congress shall make no law] abridging the freedom of speech or the press”. This means that Congress cannot make certain kinds of speech illegal, nor can it censor what a news outlet prints. A Neo-Nazi may deny the holocaust all he wants, but at no point can we silence him by force. This is an essential piece of our democratic process because, if we can deny one kind of speech, who’s to say we can’t ban any kind of speech that disagrees with the majority? Now, while we can’t drive down to that Neo-Nazi’s house and slap cuffs on him (assuming he has not acted upon his hatred), we don’t have to provide him an outlet to espouse that speech. He can use any outlet within his own financial means (a blog, for example), but other outlets are not required to convey his views to the wider public. Therefore, private companies can, and usually will (as in the case of that rambling hillbilly Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty), fire people for speaking their minds if they deem that it is bad for business. They provide you with a job, and they reserve the right to take that job away.

This is what is currently happening with the NBA and Donald Sterling. He said some pretty off-putting things about black people to his mistress, and now everyone is up in arms. And rightfully so—the world will be better off when people who think like him finally die of old age. Being that he is the owner of the Clippers, however, the responsibility has fallen to the NBA to take action. I find it a bit unsavory that they can force him to sell his own team—I think it would make more sense just to exclude the Clippers from the NBA until he does—but if that was in his contract then, hey, more power to them. I say that because it’s always a better lesson for society when the market is allowed to punish bigots, rather them being dealt with by the government, in-house, or not at all.

We—the people—are the market. We hold the dollar bills that guys like Donald Sterling are clamoring for. Knowing that, wouldn’t it send a more potent message to the old, decrepit racists that we—the market—have decided not to give our money to them? I’m not just talking about NBA team owners anymore; I mean businesses of all kind. Isn’t a more effective cultural statement to come together as a marketplace and expunge people who have an ancient view of the world from it, rather then have the government just pass a law?

This is where discrimination as it applies to private businesses comes into play. We’ve already established that it is the right of the employer to withhold a job from you because of your racism—as that job is theirs to giveth and taketh away—so wouldn’t it follow that they should be able to deny anyone a job based on any criteria? Again, that job (or perhaps the money they are paying employees with) is their property. An unpopular view, yes, but remember… We are the market. If someone refuses to hire and/or serve someone based on their race or sexual orientation, then we can and should take it upon ourselves—as a society—to close our wallets and let that person’s business die. If we just leave that sort of thing to Congress we are also denying ourselves any real social change.

The Supreme Court overturning Plessy v. Ferguson legally de-segregated schools, but look at the composition today. Are our public schools not still primarily filled with homogenous student bodies? For the most part, they are. According to Eleanor Barkhorn of The Atlantic, school demographics have essentially stagnated since the 60s. The government simply overturning a law did not make society change overnight. The same is true of businesses being legally forced to hire without discriminating. People have the assumption that, because there is a law banning it, we don’t have to worry about discrimination. But has the United States been cured of racism and discrimination? Far from it, I’m afraid.

The First Amendment allows walking corpses like Donald Sterling the right to say whatever he wants, but it also allows the NBA to kick him out of their club for saying it. Expanding on that idea, it seems apparent that allowing business owners the right to choose how they operate their company in whatever way they see fit as a generally positive thing, as it places the burden on the market to act. If we, as a society, can change without using the force of the federal government to punish people we don’t like, then I see a day where men like Donald Sterling are where they belong—living on a street corners displaying their views on cardboard signs.