The Racial Justice Commission of the Diocese of Camden issued the following statement on Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was banned for life and fined for making racist comments.
Kevin H. Hickey, executive director of Catholic Charities, chairs the Racial Justice Commission. The staff director is James Andrews, commission vice-chair Curtis Johnson, and commission secretary Kevin Moran.
The gratuitous insult to African-Americans by LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling demands a response from the Camden Diocese’s Commission for Racial Justice, whose task is to make alive the social justice found in the gospel. Christians believe that Jesus wanted an end to all discrimination against any group since he instructed all to pray, “Our Father.” He exemplified all Samaritans, the butt of racial abuse in his time, as good people who, like the woman at the well or the lone leper, are equal in dignity.
Racial respect should be easy for someone who has financially benefitted at his court-side seat from the talent of African-Americans in a league seventy percent black. It also should be easy when remembering the white savagery that brought captive Africans to this country in chains, marketed them as free labor, while dividing their families in an institution as barbarous as it was ancient.
May the indignation felt by all decent people at the several recent instances of public racism result in a recommitment to fairness and equal opportunity for all, especially those habitually victimized by unprovoked pretenses of racial superiority.