Race relations expert that he is, Mark Cuban this week marked his assessment on the ever-sensitive issue by all but pouring salt in the still open wounds of all those who yet bemoan the Trayvon Martin killing as one of the most black and white illustrations of society’s imbalances to come about over the last several decades.
In evoking the false equivalency between that of a black child pulling on his hoodie while walking home in the rain and an instance where one consciously chooses to tattoo their face and shave their head in ways that clearly suggest proud ownership and indoctrination of a certain dangerous ideology, Cuban seems to reveal he’s perhaps a bit more “bigoted” than even he’d have you realize.
I mean, history is what it is, and our revolting experiences clearly tell of a time of the latter preying on the ancestors of the former— and rocking a hoodie didn’t have a damn thing to do with.
“I know that I’m not perfect,” said Cuban. “While we all have our prejudices and bigotries, we have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control, that’s part of my responsibility as an entrepreneur, to try to solve it, not just kick the problem down the road.”
At least the outspoken Dallas Mavs owner is right about the not being perfect part. In at all rendering the Trayvon Martin example and the utterance of some of his other inner-most thoughts at a time when the NBA finds itself mired in the controversy of having to disassociate itself from its longest tenured owner, Cuban displays a sense of callousness and no-rules-apply-to-me mentality many have painfully come to expect from billionaire businessmen such as himself and L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
“You’ll find out,” Cuban told Inc. Magazine when asked how he plans to vote during the league’s upcoming proceedings aimed at forcing the 81-year-old Sterling to sell his team. “I know how I’m going to vote, but I’m not ready to comment on it.”
News to Money Mark, there can only be one way. The only way you truly right a wrong is by doing the right thing. And everything you hear about Donald Sterling’s dealings with minorities over the last four decades or so are as wrong as the act of racism itself.
That slippery slope Cuban likes to preach about that would have an owner relinquish any of his corporate power based on the way he actually treats his people may not be the way of the business world, but if we’re ever going to live in the kind of righteous utopia even Cuban hints he’s all for, it should and needs to.
Here’s to Mark Cuban putting his money where his mouth is and saying no to the likes of Donald Sterling.
