How can Donald Sterling be racist if his girlfriend, V. Stiviano, is black?

What Donald Sterling said was really racist, but what about other athletes and their sexual assault scandals?

Yeah Donald Sterling said some messed up things, but what about invasion of privacy?

I’ve heard all of these questions on the Donald Sterling scandal, in various forms, since the tape’s release on TMZ, and each one of them is used in defense of or to distract from the issue of race.

This incident is neither condoning the invasion of privacy nor sexual assault, and it isn’t denying whatever true feelings of love or concern Sterling has or had for Stiviano.

This is about color.

And it’s absolutely nothing new.

From the racist rant, to housing discrimination, to the black girlfriend, to the position of power – history repeats itself.

Here’s a quick recap of America’s foundation: white men invaded red land to build a white house with stolen black labor. This power dynamic of white, European men stealing black and brown labor to reach a level of success all due to the very people exploited is tried and true to this very day.

Donald Sterling is making money off of mostly black labor. But no black people at the games? No black people in his housing? Sleeping with a black woman but justifying it by claiming she can pass?

Doesn’t this strike up any images of a slave plantation? But I guess that’s why people continue to ask the same questions.

Much like we cringe at the memory of an embarrassing childhood moment, America not only winces at the memory of the blood necessary for our nation to be founded, but America normally ignores it to the point of erasure.

Then, when Donald Sterling is caught with racist rhetoric, America says “How can this possibly be?!”

I am black, female, and a black woman – and these three things are the very reasons why I may judge the situation. In discussions of things as dense as race, it takes a person of color to evaluate the situation, because a person of color is the only one who fully understands the situation as both an isolated event and as a lifestyle.

While white people may only see issues of racism when a friend shares a story, or on the news or even just in history books, people of color see racism on the daily basis. We see racism as not just a black or brown face, racial slurs or denial of service, but as a system as old as the nation itself that has been institutionalized and embedded socially to such a degree that it becomes subconscious.

Sterling said a lot of crap, but one profound thing he did say was in response to Stiviano’s question of why he thought white Jews were better than black Jews.

Sterling said, “It isn’t a question – we don’t evaluate what’s right and wrong, we live in a society.”

The new kind of racism, to deny that racism exists, can be seen in the nation’s reaction to this controversy. We don’t question racist actions or remarks.

We don’t analyze the context of the racist actions or remarks. We don’t sympathize with the victim(s) of racism.

Instead we deny. We deny by bringing up faults of the past and comparing it to the present incident. We deny by blaming the victim and questioning if there was any real offense.

We deny by forcing people of color to live in the color-blind world many Americans, of both color and noncolor, believe exists.

Sterling gives a pretty great answer for why many Americans would rather believe color-blind illusions when he says, “I don’t want to change the culture because I can’t. It’s too big.”

Sterling may be a misogynist, racist slumlord, but he’s reading America’s mindset.

Sterling went so far as to tell Stiviano to “adjust to the world.” If a white person says denying black people access to basketball games isn’t racist, then it isn’t racist.

Stiviano asks why she should change for a world that “doesn’t do anything for me, and they don’t make me happy?” If people of color continue to feel hurt in a color-blind society, then they shouldn’t have to pretend to live in a color-blind society.

To clear up any further confusion – we do not live in a color-blind, post-racial society.

Topics like Donald Sterling and racism cannot be discussed through a color-blind lens because these issues, much like any other American issue, are steeped in color.