Pound Sterling

Only having heard select portions of Donald Sterling's private conversations, I would suggest he deserves the opprobrium one usually attaches to those who make insulting remarks about others behind their backs.

But I am troubled by the extent of the reaction to what amounts to personal views, however reprehensible or repugnant, expressed in private to an intimate. I am not only troubled as a firm believer in freedom of thought and speech, but also as one who believes in a right to privacy. In this case, it seems to me that even had Sterling's words been made in public they would be classified as bigotry, but hardly "hate speech." With all of the concern about the NSA, internet privacy, and so on, it seems counter to the trend towards recognition of freedom of thought and private expression to react so very harshly.

More troubling to me than that is the thought that this response itself represents a kind of quasi-Girardian scapegoating; as if the wrath poured out on Sterling somehow shows just how righteous and unbiased the judges are. Society can feel itself cleansed by its righteous ire at the miscreant, as if that feeling somehow rendered the society itself innocent.

Because it isn't. Racism still runs deep in our society, however much we like to pretend it is a thing of the past. The simultaneous dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and the construction of mechanisms of voter suppression is just a case in point.

So the Sterlings of this world do us all a service, reminding us just how closely beneath the mask the old hatreds fester. I have no interest in making windows into people's souls -- the mobile phone apps will do that for us; and when they do, I think the proper response is not a fine and an exile, but the cold shoulder reserved for nasty people, followed by forgiveness and help to reform, together with the recognition that if all private thoughts were shouted from the rooftop few of us if any would be able to face each other in the street.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG