With all the negativity surrounding Clippers owner Donald Sterling, many people, including his wife Shelly, have been doing their best to distance themselves from him as much as possible. Naturally no one wants to be dubbed a racist as well because of any affiliation they have with Donald Sterling. Shelly was adamant and issued a brief statement.
“I’m not a racist,” she said. “Never have been, never will be.”
Now it seems that court documents from 2009 may suggest that Shelly Sterling isn’t being forthcoming with her true feelings toward minorities. Shelly was included in a discrimination lawsuit with Donald Sterling claiming that she had expressed racist sentiments toward minority groups. These accusations are coming from a former tenant Darrell Rhodes and one of Sterling’s building managers, Maira Oliva.
“I asked her, ‘Would you reduce the rent?’” Rhodes recalled in the deposition. “And she said, ‘Who do you think you are, you black motherf—–?’
“The way in which she said motherf—– was more lower voiced, under her breath. She said black loud enough for me to hear, she said mother loud enough for me to hear. F— part was a little lower. I had to look at her lips to hear her say it. And I did.”
Maira Oliva, a building manager at a Sterling property, said there was no lip-reading needed when Shelly Sterling bad-mouthed minority tenants to her.
“She said, ‘Oh my God. This is so filthy. I can’t remodel my apartments the way I want because Latinos are so filthy,’” Oliva recalled in her 2009 deposition.
Asked specifically what Sterling said, Oliva again quoted the billionaire wife’s remark: “I can’t remodel my building the way I want and that the building was filthy because of the Latinos.”
Clippers head coach Doc Rivers has been sympathetic to Shelly Sterling throughout the entire unfolding of her husband’s history of racism being told by the media, but Rivers may not even know that Shelly may also be implicated in the numerous lawsuits brought against her husband. If these accusations are true, then there is no question that Shelly deserves to be banned from the game in the same manner as her husband.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has made it clear that the league will not tolerate racism, so the next logical step is to investigate Shelly Sterling in the same manner as Donald Sterling was investigated. Although Shelly Sterling is trying to play the role of the poor, cheated on wife that had no clue of her husband’s hatred and disrespect for minorities, these court documents definitely suggest otherwise. If in fact true, the same justice that was handed to Donald Sterling must also be handed to Shelly Sterling.
[h/t NY Daily News]