let me bring your attention back to a facebook status i posted in light of the most recent NBA/sterling scandal:

"no, sterling, NBA doesn't stand for 'No Blacks Allowed'. you're out of your league...and now you're out of ours. see ya. you've been clipped"

though a clever status if i do say so myself, i ended up taking it down a few hours later due to the fact that i felt like a hypocrite.

that's right, a hypocrite.

please hear me out. racism is wrong, very, very wrong. and so is what sterling said, but if we're all being honest, we all struggle [or have struggled] with some form of racism or prejudice towards people who are different from us.

maybe it's not 'as extreme' as what came out of sterling's mouth. maybe it came out of yours when you got cut off from a certain race when you were driving to work the other day ["certain races shouldn't be allowed to drive"], or for my serving friends, maybe your comment came out of your mouth the minute you saw a certain race sit in your section ["they shouldn't be allowed to eat out if they don't learn how to tip"], or maybe, just maybe, you fall into the "i bet he's a terrorist" category, or the "i'm going to cling to my boyfriend's arm when a certain race walks by at night" one. i don't know. but what i do know is that throwing stones isn't going to get us anywhere. especially if it prevents us from doing a heart check of our own.

is sterling's mindset off? absolutely. was what he said/implied wrong? for sure. but let's not forget that what he said was taped without his knowledge or permission. after all, how many of us would be in trouble if our thoughts were exposed for the whole world to hear, or if someone we knew backstabbed us like his girlfriend did him?

look, i know that this is a sensitive issue, not to mention a controversial one; my point in writing this blog isn't to make light of racism, or downplay what recently happened in the NBA, but to make us think about how quick we are to point fingers, and how slow we are to self-reflect.