As riots exploded across America in early April 1968 in the immediate wake of Rev Martin Luther King's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson went on a Capitol Hill offensive to pass a law he hoped would, in part, quell some of the violence and best honor the man just slain. A day after King was buried, the Fair Housing Act was passed. 
 
 And in the nearly half-century since the enactment of that bedrock piece of civil rights legislation, which outlawed housing discrimination, there hasn't been a greater offender of it, perhaps, than longtime NBA owner Donald Sterling of the Los Angeles Clippers. 
 
 Yet it was just this Saturday that there arose a hue and cry for the NBA to act against Sterling. It came in reaction to an audio recording allegedly of Sterling, who is white, telling his mixed-race girlfriend not to bring black people to his team's games. 
 
 Decades of racist policy renting housing in Los Angeles, which turned Sterling into a real-estate mogul wealthy enough to buy and run a professional sports team, didn't elicit any such furor. But decades of lousy Clippers basketball under Sterling's stewardship turned the Clippers into the butt of late-night TV jokes. The Clippers were laughed at for losing, laughed at for being cheap, laughed at for moving in with the star-studded Lakers, laughed at for being a second-class franchise in a first-class sports league. 
 
 But all those years, not enough people looked at Donald Sterling as the racist landlord the law so bore him out to be. 
 
 Neither the league, nor the players, nor the sports media paid much if any attention to Sterling's agreement in 2003 to pay upwards of $5m to settle a lawsuit brought by the Housing Rights Center charging that he tried to drive non-Korean tenants out of apartments he bought in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. Only a few observers noted in 2006 that the Justice Department sued Sterling for allegations of housing discrimination in the same neighborhood. The charges included statements he allegedly made to employees that black and Hispanic families were not desirable tenants. 
 
 And while a handful of us in the media excoriated Sterling and the NBA in 2009 when Sterling settled the lawsuit by agreeing to pay $2.73m following allegations he refused to rent apartments to Hispanics, blacks and families with children, the story didn't resonate – despite it being the largest housing discrimination settlement in Justice Department history. 
 
 There was no investigation from the NBA, like the one new commissioner Adam Silver announced under pressure this weekend, promising to move "extraordinarily quickly". 
 
 There was no condemnation from black players who predominate the league like the one that erupted Saturday and Sunday from current superstars, including LeBron James and Chris Paul, and from retired icons like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Paul, the Clippers star and head of the National Basketball Players Association, joined his teammates Sunday in stripping their warm-up gear and throwing it unceremoniously into a pile in a demonstration to disown the team's nickname in protest of their owner's loathsomeness. 
 
 SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) An inside look at the Clippers' protest in Oakland of Donald Sterling. (via @ArashMarkazi) pic.twitter.com/WooMM3cIMg 
 
 And there was certainly no President Barack Obama to denounce Sterling, as he did Sunday. The comments with which the owner had been charged with spewing, the president said, showed how "the United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation." 
 
 But pro sports have their own legacy of ignorance as bliss. 
 
 The sudden Sterling backlash exposed a mythology that we've allowed to grow in sport's billion-dollar commercial industrialization: sport leads social change. In many cases, however, such as the blind eye cast to racial discrimination of prodigious proportion, sport is a laggard in social reform, its leaders tacit supporters – if not propagators – of unethical and immoral behavior. 
 
 Indeed, the NBA front office and its member owners continued to embrace Sterling, and players – black and white – continued to accept offers to play for him without condition. Paul, so apoplectic about Sterling now, jumped to autograph a five-year, $107m contract exactly one minute after the midnight free agent signing period opened last summer. Clippers coach Doc Rivers, who Sunday said he was uncertain about returning to the team next season in the wake of the newest unsavory report about Sterling, moved from Boston to Los Angeles last summer to accept Sterling's $21m offer to coach the Clippers. 
 
 That is the norm. 
 
 Instances wherein pro-sports participants have taken a stand against social intransigence, like the walkout of the 1965 American Football League All-Star Game by black players angered that they were denied rooms and board in the host city New Orleans, are few. It took Major League Baseball years before it ousted Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott, who became infamous for spewing barbs about black players and homosexuals and marveling at Hitler. And while the majority of American society became accepting of gay people in recent years, it wasn't until the past year that an active gay pro basketball player and would-be gay National Football League player felt comfortable enough to declare their sexuality in public. 
 
 It was an overdue reckoning this weekend when so many voices started calling for the NBA to sanction or oust Donald Sterling. Ironically, he was only able to become one of the league's owners due to the wealth he amassed – wealth amassed in part by refusing to lease land to people who look like most of the players in the NBA. As such, he should've been treated like a pariah years ago. But he wasn't rebuked, or worse, way back when – and that should be the biggest outrage of all. ||||| The NAACP said today they are still willing to work with Los Angeles Clippers' owner Donald Sterling despite yanking an offer of a lifetime achievement award over an audio tape containing racist comments that Sterling allegedly made. 
 
 At a news conference today, NAACP Los Angeles president Leon Jenkins said that an audio recording that surfaced this weekend on TMZ, which purportedly had Sterling's voice recorded making racist comments, was "devastating." 
 
 But the organization would be open to talking to Sterling, with whom they've worked for nearly 20 years. 
 
 Catch up on Donald Sterling Scandal Here 
 
 What We Know About V. Stiviano, Woman Accused of Leaking Racist Rant 
 
 "God teaches us to forgive, and the way I look at it, after a sustained period of proof to the African American community that those words don't reflect his heart, I think there's room for forgiveness. I wouldn't be a Christian if I said there wasn't," Jenkins said. 
 
 "We are negotiating with him about giving more moneys to African American students at UCLA, and so we are in preliminary discussions," Jenkins said. He also noted, however, they had not spoken since the scandal broke. 
 
 The news conference was held to discuss the organization's decision to cancel plans to honor to Sterling with a lifetime achievement in the wake of the tape, which allegedly contained an argument between Sterling, 80, and his girlfriend, Vanessa Stiviano, 31, in which the male voice on the recording makes many racist comments. 
 
 The male voice is heard telling Stiviano not to post pictures of herself with black people to Instagram or bring black people to Los Angeles Clippers games, including Magic Johnson. Stiviano's lawyers claim the recording is authentic and contains the voice of Sterling. 
 
 LA Clippers President Andy Roeser said in a statement Saturday the team did not know if the tape is legitimate or has been altered. Roeser said that Donald Sterling told him that Stiviano had previously said she would "get even" for the lawsuit brought by Rochelle Sterling. 
 
 The team released a statement saying, “Mr. Sterling is emphatic that what is reflected on that recording is not consistent with, nor does it reflect his views, beliefs or feelings. It is the antithesis of who he is, what he believes and how he has lived his life." 
 
 The recording sent shock waves through the NBA. The Clippers players protested Sterling by wearing their jerseys inside out at a playoff game Sunday, and the league is investigating what actions it may take against Sterling if the voice on the tape is verified to be his. 
 
 The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP posted on its website over the weekend that it would not give Sterling the Lifetime Achievement award after all. 
 
 Jenkins said that the NAACP had been working closely with Sterling on contributions to the black community in southern California, including creating an endowment at a predominantly black college in the LA area and a scholarship program for black students at UCLA. 
 
 "The mission of the NAACP is to eradicate discrimination and racial hatred in all its forms, and each year our executive board votes on who we decide that we are going to honor," Jenkins said. "Mr. Sterling has given out a tremendous amount of scholarships, he has invited numerous African American kids to summer camps, and his donations are bigger than other sports franchises." 
 
 "That is something that shows that there is a consciousness of the plight of African Americans in this country," Jenkins said. 
 
 Jenkins noted that Sterling had previously been awarded a humanitarian honor from the group and that it would not revoke that. 
 
 In 2009, ESPN Magazine went with Sterling to the awards ceremony for that honor, which the magazine described as Lifetime Achievement Award, though Jenkins denied that term today. The magazine profiled Sterling amid legal allegations by the Justice Department that he discriminated against minorities in housing units he rented. Sterling ultimately settled with the government. 
 
 Jenkins was quoted in the 2009 article saying that Sterling had donated $10,000 to $15,000 in that year alone to the NAACP. 
 
 Sterling is quoted in the story saying about the reporter, "Do you know why they're here? They want to know why the NAACP would give an award to someone with my track record." 
 
 Jenkins said at the press conference today that the NAACP has worked with Sterling for 15 to 20 years and that Jenkins' predecessor nominated Sterling for the 2009 award.
– Everyone from NBA colleagues to the NAACP to President Obama is outraged over Donald Sterling's alleged racist comments—but this is a man who made the millions that allowed him to buy the LA Clippers in the first place through decades of racist rental policies, writes Kevin B Blackistone in the Guardian. In 2003, he paid $5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging he tried to force non-Korean tenants out of apartments in LA's Koreatown; in 2006, he was sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination including allegedly telling his employees "that black and Hispanic families were not desirable tenants" and refusing to rent to them. Where was the NBA investigation and the widespread condemnation then? The New Yorker's Ben Greenman agrees, tweeting yesterday, "It's not just Donald Sterling's ignorance that's the problem. It's the decades that ignorance has been tolerated because of wealth." And on Slate, Josh Levin takes it further, delving into what he sees as a troubling truth: "Pro basketball is a business in which most of the employees are black and the vast majority of the owners are white," he writes. And that dynamic is celebrated, with NFL announcers treating owners "like royalty." Sure, most of them probably treat their players well, "but there’s something creepy about celebrating their beneficence, as if money necessarily buys virtue." In fact, that's why Sterling "has remained ensconced in the NBA penthouse" for so long despite his racism. Click for Levin's full column, or Blackistone's.