Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Regarding his behavior of not wanting to rent to blacks in Koreatown, that was probably more cold business practices than outright racism.
Koreans in LA don't like black people, and the black people in LA don't like the Koreans. This was made even worse by the LA riots in 1992.
Sterling probably (correctly) assumed that some Koreans would move out if blacks moved into his buildings, so he didn't want that.
I'm not saying it's right, and I agree that such a policy is racist, but I believe he did that more to pacify his existing Korean tenants than because he hated black people.
With that said, I do believe the guy is racist and a general sleazeball, but he seems to belong to the "the blacks and whites should be separate from one another" 1950s-type racism, rather than "I hate blacks and wish they were all sent back to Africa" kind of racism that is prevalent among white supremacists and other hardcore hate groups.
The fact that he's married (something I didn't realize when this story first broke) is also being glossed over, and is also pretty bad. It's one thing for an old, rich bastard to take a young trophy girlfriend (like James Woods), but another altogether to publicly attend basketball games with your gold-digger girlfriend 50 years your junior, while your wife has to stand by and take it. What an asshole.