The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP will not bestow its “humanitarian of the year” award to embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, a national NAACP official said today.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” interim vice president Lorraine Miller said, “he is not receiving a lifetime achievement award from the NAACP.”
The national NAACP then made an identical statement on its Twitter feed.
In Los Angeles, the local NAACP chapter would say only that its president, Leon Jenkins, would address the Sterling controversy at a news conference scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at Fox Hills Mall, 6000 South Sepulveda Boulevard, Culver City.
Several months ago, the local NAACP branch had scheduled the award for Sterling, to be bestowed at its 100th anniversary gala banquet on May 15.
Sterling had run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws for singling out blacks and Koreans as non-desirable tenants, and had since become a major philanthropist for the NAACP and other civic groups in recent years.
The celebrity website TMZ.com released an audio Friday of a man it alleged to be Sterling telling a woman said to be his girlfriend not to bring black people to sit in her Clippers seats.
Another Internet site, Deadspin.com, today posted an “extended version” of the recorded conversation. That five-minute tape has the voice identified as Sterling say black Jews are treated “worse than dogs” in Jewish tradition and that he has no interest in changing that culture.
The NBA is investigating if the voice was indeed Sterling’s, and said the three-decade owner of the team agreed not to attend Tuesday’s NBA Playoffs game at Staples Center. Sterling’s employees have implied the voice may not Sterling’s, and said it was recorded by an employee accused of embezzling $1.8 million.
In the audio that has rocketed around the blogosphere, the voice identified as Sterling told his girlfriend that he did not want the woman to bring black men to Clippers games, or socialize with them publicly.
“You can sleep with them, you can bring them in, you can do whatever you want,” the male voice said. “The little I ask is that you not promote it … and not bring them to my games.”
The man on the audio also criticized the woman for posting a photograph of her and former Laker star Earvin “Magic” Johnson on Instagram.
In Malaysia, U.S. President Barack Obama was asked about Sterling’s purported comments.
“When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk,” Obama said. “That’s what happened here.”
Obama said Sterling’s reported comments are an example of how “the United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation.
“That’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination,” he told a worldwide audience from Malaysia. “We’ve made enormous strides, but you’re going to see this percolate up every so often.”
